"It’s a Wonderful Life": A Suicide Loss Survivor’s Perspective

One of my all-time favorite films is Frank Capra’s Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life. I don’t remember when I began to watch this film, but viewing it is a Christmas tradition in our family. Recently I’ve been meditating on why I like the film so much: why its story resonates with me on such a deeply emotional level. Over the past several years I’ve begun to work through the pain of my father’s suicide when I was 15 years old, and I’ve discovered some connections with the film which I had not noticed previously.

Like many suicide loss survivors, I’ve struggled with feelings of abandonment, guilt, anger, regret, and shame. I’ve spent countless hours trying to figure out what my father may have been thinking the day he killed himself. I’ve asked myself how I could have intervened if I’d been more aware of the possibility of his suicide. What clues did I miss? What would have been different if our family had reached out to him in some other way when we knew he was in turmoil? These are common questions suicide loss survivors ask themselves at varying levels of intensity. The simple and painful fact is that we almost never have complete answers to these questions and have to come to some type of negotiated peace with leaving them open-ended.

It’s a Wonderful Life presents an alternate ending to a more tragic result of someone experiencing a suicidal crisis. We watch George Bailey descend into despair as he experiences a financial catastrophe. This experience adds misery to his already crushed dreams of someday getting out of the little town in which he has grown up, Bedford Falls. Research shows that an individual’s thinking is affected when seriously considering suicide. It can affect a person’s problem-solving abilities so they can’t see any way out of a problem other than taking their own life.

In George’s view, suicide seemed like the only answer to his financial crisis, because his only real financial asset was his life insurance policy. (In reality, life insurance companies very strongly protect themselves from this situation.) Thankfully, George doesn’t follow through with his plan to take his own life: God intervenes by sending an angel (Clarence) who shows George what the world would be like if he had not been born: that through his network of relationships George really had “a wonderful life.” George regains the desire to live and the story has a happy, triumphant ending.

One reaction I have to the film as a suicide loss survivor is how much I wish there had been an angel sent to intervene in my dad’s life. In one sense, Clarence represents what suicide loss survivors often tell themselves: “If someone had been there to talk our loved one out of his suicide, if someone could have gotten through and shown him/her the value of life, the suicide would not have happened.” Of course, while it’s good for people to gain confidence in knowing how to have a #RealConvo about mental health and suicide, we don’t know that would have been the case – we only surmise it – and the thought adds to our pain and grief. Would an angel have made a difference in my dad’s situation? I don’t know. And I never will. Still, I find joy in seeing George pulled back from the brink, and in rooting for Clarence to “get his wings” by saving George.

The film also provides the “reason” George plans to kill himself. It is so his family can get the insurance money. In a sense, his suicide can be seen as altruistic. Looked at more deeply, though, the picture is more complicated. One thing we know from research into suicide prevention is that despite how it may appear – and our natural inclination to find a simple cause behind a suicide death – no one takes their life for a single reason. In reality, it’s generally a perfect storm of risk factors that overwhelm an individual’s coping abilities.

When did George’s descent into a suicidal mindset really begin? The film shows us a series of losses George experiences in terms of his personal dreams for a career outside of Bedford Falls. He is constantly called on to postpone his aspirations so he can meet responsibilities that have been foisted upon him. George is stuck in the small town of Bedford Fall which feels suffocating to him. The one bright spot is his marriage and family. However, George loses all perspective when the financial crisis occurs. He goes home to his family as they prepare for Christmas, and lashes out at his wife and children. Mary, his wife, asks him to leave them alone. So George does. He stops at a bar, gets in a fight, and heads off to take his own life.

Suicide loss survivors want to find the reason our loved ones took their lives. Part of healing is to give up that search to a great extent. The picture is much more complicated than we can fathom, and we will most likely never know. On one level, George Bailey’s reason seems to be very straightforward, but I don’t believe it is. His decision to die by suicide is more like a volcano which has finally erupted, fed by many years of pent-up disappointment and frustration, without accessing help.

If It’s a Wonderful Life had ended tragically, George would have taken his own life. The insurance money would probably not have been collected because the company would have had a suicide exclusion. Mary and the children may likely have spent years struggling from the trauma of George’s suicide: potentially blaming themselves and others for not seeing his struggles more clearly; for not intervening earlier; for sending him away when his behavior was over the line. No angel, no intervention, no answers. As Clarence says to George in the film, “Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he? “

Yes, he does, Clarence. Any survivor of suicide loss will tell you that.

Still, I find comfort in the film. For two hours, I get to see a story come out right. I get to see redemption. Restoration. A family re-united. Trauma averted.  As George would say, “What do you know about that!!!”