No Time to Say Goodbye

Suicide would appear to be the last taboo. Even incest is now discussed freely in the popular media, but the suicide of a loved one is still an act most people are unable to talk about--or even admit to their closest family and friends. This is just one of the many painful and paralyzing truths author Carla Fine discovered when her husband, a successful young physician, took his own life in December 1989. And being unable to speak openly and honestly about the cause of her pain made it all the more difficult for her to survive.

With No Time to Say Goodbye, she brings suicide survival from the darkness into the light, speaking frankly and with compassion about the overwhelming feelings of confusion, guilt, shame, anger and loneliness that are shared by all survivors. Drawing on her own experience and on conversations with many other survivors--as well as on the knowledge of counselors and mental health professionals--Carla Fine offers a strong helping hand and invaluable guidance to the thousands of husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, friends and lovers who are left behind each year, struggling to make sense of an act that seems to them senseless, and to pick up the pieces of their own shattered lives. And, perhaps most important, she allows them to see that they are not alone in their feelings of grief and despair.

Her resource section, listing organizations and survivor groups throughout the United States and Canada, as well as her bibliography of further reading, will, in themselves, provide invaluable information and support.

Carla Fine is the author of two earlier books, Married to Medicine: An Intimate Portrait of Doctors' Wives and Barron's Guide to Foreign Medical Schools. She has written articles for Cosmopolitan, Woman's Day, and Omni, and has appeared on national television programs, as well as on many local TV and radio shows around the country. She lives in New York City.