Thank you for sharing your story Joanne. As you know, suicide attempt prevention is a cause near and dear to me that I write about and using my prompt in the manner that you did will help readers avoid attempts or help them help others.

I agree that suicide is neither selfish nor cowardly. Personally, I also don't see it as courageous. It doesn't have to be labeled any of those things, it just needs to be understood and those that label it selfish and/or cowardly do not understand.

You said that the deep depression that leads to suicide is so deep that one feels nothing. As I understand it, the professionals label that state anhedonia--the lack of ability to feel any pleasure from anything in life. It seems you may have been there but that your niece's call snapped you out of it--you were able to feel her love.

That story of the call coming at just the right time and it being the hand of god, or perhaps a guardian angel that prompted her to call, reminds me of this anecdote that I have included in a few of my stories and I'm sure you recall it and I am dropping it here to help others:

"During my first and mostly forgotten foray into the 12-Stepverse [way back in 1996], the rehab took us to a “meeting.” The speaker told the story of his suicidal ideation. He had terrible insomnia along with alcoholism. He would stay up nights, drinking in his basement, planning his family-annihilation-suicide. He spent many a night meticulously planning for and rigging the boiler to explode to take out himself, his wife, and his children as his loved ones slept. Then, the night he was ready to pull the switch — he fell asleep.

Listening to him tell that story was the first time I felt the follicle-exciting surge of energy pulsing through my body that announces the presence of entities from the “other side.” It was the first time I felt the presence of God in my life. A presence I later forgot about for too long, but God never forgot about me."

I want to add that many people who have lost loved ones to suicide blame themselves for not making a call like your niece did, and they absolutely should not blame themselves. When a suicide is successful there is nothing anyone could have done to stop it. Our dates of death, but not the how, are "written" before we are ever born. That is why suicide is pointless and worse, very harmful to the loved ones left behind, particularly children.