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This week we reported on heartbreaking stories of parents grieving the loss of their children in the most tragic of circumstances.
In Ivory Park parents of four pupils from the same school who died, allegedly by suicide, are struggling to make sense of what would have driven their children to take their own lives. Another parent of a 14-year-old girl from Midrand has been left with more questions than answers following her daughter’s death after 17 days in a coma due to poisoning.
Gugulethu Khumalo related how teen Nomfundo Palesa Khumalo collapsed after she had picked her up from netball training at school. The teenager who Khumalo described as a high achiever was looking forward to travelling to the US later this year. So good was Nomfundo at playing netball that she made it for trials abroad in August. But all her dreams were shattered by exposure to a toxic substance.
In all these cases, the overwhelming sense of grief for the parents is compounded by not having answers as to why their children lost their lives in this way. There can be no greater pain than the loss of a loved one and not finding closure over what happened.
We treat cases of suicide by young people as isolated, but the truth is they are not and reflect a society that is betraying its youth. What is it about today’s society that would drive young people to take their lives in the manner that it happened in Ivory Park? Is it lacking information about where to seek help when one is faced with difficulty and has suicidal thoughts or perhaps lack of knowledge about signs of those needing support?
The answers to these questions are not easy but wanting to take one’s life, experts tell us, does not happen overnight and it can also be due to a number of factors. It grows over time in an environment a society has created and enabled. Next time it will be another child in another school. Our call is for communities to do the little they can by supporting those with suicidal thoughts.
In Nomfundo’s case it remains a mystery where her exposure to poison may have been from, but our hope is that investigations will bring her family the closure they deserve.
