Buster

Four decades have passed since my maternal grandfather, B.L. Hinnant, used his favorite target pistol on himself. That was a couple of years after my maternal grandmother. Ruth Hinnant, was killed in a car/train accident.

I have often wished for a worthwhile support newsletter. Or someone who could gracefully endure hearing the truth about how it all occurred, and keep their peace afterward.

Unable to find a newsletter which meets my needs, I have accumulated a short list of potentially useful links.

Resources offered by the Women and Children's Hospital of Buffalo (NY) struck me as useful and a constructive place to start. Two from their collection are:

• Surviving the First Year
• What Others Can Do is a part of that collection addresses some of my concerns.

Newsgroups are an often-overlooked resource in the era of email newsletters and blogs. The ones concerned with grief and recovery still tend to be active and generally on-topic.

Like all things Internet and Web and most services accessed by the vulnerable, they must be approached with care. Even so, they can be useful. You may wish to visit these few:

• alt.support.grief.suicide (by way of Google Groups)
• alt.support.grief (by way of Google Groups)
• alt.support.depression (by way of Google Groups)

Web sites which offer what seemed to me to be useful resources, are rare. A Google search turns up an impressive list, most of which are paid placements by enterprises marketing their recovery wares. Sites I have looked at which seemed to be worth a second glance are:

• Suicide Survivor's Guide
• British Support Group: Shadow of Suicude
• After Suicide
• Healthy Place.com: Suicide and Children
• KidsHealth: About Teen Suicide
• Homestead.com's Child Suicide page.

My training and expertise in this realm are nonexistent.

I am just Buster.

I am one man who in his late teens lost his Grandaddy Hinnant to suicide and his Grandmother Hinnant to a car/train accident during this season, and who must struggle with those memories every year.