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By John Darling for the Mail Tribune November 16. 2014 12:01AM From loss, comes healing Charlie McChesney of Ashland found support and healing through WinterSpring's Suicide Loss group after losing her longtime partner to suicide. Mail Tribune / Jamie Lusch Her son’s wedding in Portland 20 years ago was a joyous gathering. But only hours later, Jan Cooley McChesney was plunged into the most painful trial of her life.   She got word that her 29-year-old daughter, Wendy, had left the event and hanged herself.   "It was a horrible shock," recalls McChesney, 68, a retired teacher from North Medford High School who now lives in the Portland area. "It leaves you with so many questions, ‘what if’ and ‘if only,’ over and over. You’re not just processing the loss of someone you love but also the circumstances of why, why. I’d just seen her just hours before."   McChesney feared the tragedy would drag her into a depression so deep she might never recover.   A colleague at the school urged her to join a Suicide Loss group at WinterSpring, where people with similar trauma can express themselves and cry freely, come to grips with inevitable feelings of guilt and talk through the seemingly endless details of the uniquely shattering experience.   “This sounds so strange, but I feel WinterSpring saved my life,” says McChesney. “The struggle was so hard, I would have wasted away."   At a loss for what to say, family and friends were very uncomfortable talking about Wendy's death, McChesney says. But in her WinterSpring group, McChesney could laugh and cry with the others and “process our terrible grief and talk about viewing the body and the details of suicide, which are not pretty," she says. "The experience sets you apart. You’re in a club you don’t want to belong to.”   The eight-week groups help provide the support that survivors of suicide loss need to get through the shock and pain, McChesney says. The openness she fostered in group  helped her begin a friendship with a new man, who’d recently lost his best friend to suicide. They fell in love and married, an outcome she calls “my gift from Wendy.”   Ashland resident Charlie McChesney (no relation to Jan), 65, underwent similar shock, pain and healing 12 years ago, when her longtime partner, Susan, overdosed on sleeping pills.   “It was the most traumatic event of my life,” says Charlie, who went through the WinterSpring Suicide Loss group. It was hard to relive it and talk about it, she says, but it helped her heal and move on to a new life.   Like so many who contemplate suicide, Susan kept her plan secret. She had confided she was depressed, but Charlie never suspected Susan would take her own life. Susan saved up sleeping pills that she got, one at a time, from a friend. Charlie came home from work and found Susan lifeless in bed.    “She was depressed all the time. It colored her view of life," Charlie recalls. "That she was in such pain she would choose to die, it’s just awful. She did leave me an amazing note explaining what she felt like, that every day it was harder to pull herself up. She felt she had to go and felt that, if not for me, she would have gone sooner.”   Charlie recalls walking the floor of her house for hours, mourning.   “In group, we’d share stories and go back into it. Everyone had been through it,” she says. “It was very difficult, but life-affirming. It just helps to share. I felt completely at home there, whether I was sad, angry, crying in grief.”   WinterSpring regularly puts on new groups for Suicide Loss and other types of grief. It also hosts an annual International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day on the  Saturday  before Thanksgiving. Local panelists will share their experiences, and a screening of a new documentary on suicide loss, "The Journey," will be shown. The event is from  10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Nov. 22  at the Smullin Center on the campus of Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center in Medford.   Graduates of WinterSpring’s Suicide Loss group say the hardest part to deal with was the guilt — the persistent and overwhelming feeling they could have, should have, seen the signs of impending suicide or should have taken their loved one's depression more seriously. The feeling that if they had, they would've done anything to save their loved one.   After losing her husband to suicide in 2003, Shirley South of Medford went through the group and became a WinterSpring board member.   “It helped me know I’m not alone and I would be OK coming out the other end,” says South. “Being able to talk to others in the group, I was able to let go of the guilt early on and not have that burden to carry. I healed more quickly and have been able to be pretty open about his suicide, not saying he just passed away. Some people have reacted with shock and anger, and it was me who ended up comforting them.”      WinterSpring Executive Director Julie Lockhart says the Suicide Loss group is important because of the devastating effects of that kind of loss.    “You need special care to realize you are not so alone and have a place to feel safe and comfortable," she says. "It’s so common, feeling guilt and saying, ‘How could I have missed the signs?’ It takes longer to heal. It’s such an individual process. Everyone does it differently. So many complicated emotions come with it.”   WinterSpring will host an eight-week Suicide Loss support group in January, and a workshop on suicide loss on  Dec. 6 . For information, see  http://winterspring.org/group-support-information  or call  541-552-0620.   During the  Nov. 22  event, an electric candle will be passed around so audience members can say something if they choose, says Lockhart.   “It's very meaningful to the people who come, and often is the only time they have ever  felt safe to share about their own experience,” says Lockhart. “Crying is welcome. What I love about this event is it's helping to break the cultural taboo around suicide and the sense of aloneness that survivors feel.”   John Darling is an Ashland freelance writer,  [email protected] .    If you goWhat: International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day, with local panelists and a screening of a new documentary, "The Journey," by the American Foundation for Suicide PreventionWhen: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 22Where: Smullin Center, Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center, 2825 E. Barnett Road, MedfordAdmission: Free http://www.mailtribune.com/article/20141116/NEWS/141119777 © 2015 Copyright © 1995-2011 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Statement -->