Editor’s Note: This post substantially rewrites and replaces the earlier version of “Father’s Day and Suicide Loss,” originally published June 11, 2025. The core themes and personal reflections belong to Jack Klingert, co-facilitator of SOS Madison and father of John, who died by suicide in April 2009.
The card aisle fills up weeks before the day arrives. Ties, grilling tools, “#1 Dad” mugs. The whole display assumes something about the world: that every father is reachable, that every child still has one, that the relationship is intact and uncomplicated.
Father’s Day after suicide loss does not fit inside any of those assumptions.
I have been sitting with this day for seventeen years now, since we lost our seventeen year old son John in April 2009. I have also been co-facilitating SOS Madison, our peer-led suicide loss support group in New Jersey, long enough to have heard this day described in almost every way imaginable. As someone who has lived this and spent fifteen-plus years as an AFSP-trained facilitator, I can tell you that Father’s Day feels different depending on which relationship you lost.
You might be grieving your father. A stepfather or grandfather who raised you. The father of your children, who is no longer here. Or you might be a father yourself, carrying the loss of a child you cannot hold this Sunday in June. Or the father left raising children alone after losing his spouse. Or an adult child grieving a father the relationship with whom was never resolved. Each of those is a different grief, and each one deserves to be mentioned.
This post is for all of you.
Why Father’s Day After Suicide Loss Is Different
Father’s Day is one of what I call the family-oriented holidays. It is not like Thanksgiving, where the grief is about the empty chair at a large table. It is aimed directly at a specific relationship. The holiday calls the relationship by name and asks you to celebrate it. Whether you are able to or not. When suicide has severed or forever altered that relationship, the holiday does not give you anywhere neutral to stand. The cards assume your father is alive. They assume fatherhood is something happening in the present tense. After a suicide loss, it becomes something you carry rather than something you celebrate.
And the world around you does not pause to acknowledge that distinction. The stores are full. The social media feeds fill up on Sunday morning. You see families who still have what you have lost, and grief researcher Dr. John Jordan has documented what that comparison does to survivors: it can intensify isolation and complicate grief in ways that ordinary bereavement does not.
That reaction is not weakness. It is not jealousy in the petty sense. But it sure can feel like jealousy in a painful way. It is grief doing what grief does when it runs into a holiday built for someone else’s reality.
When You Lost Your Father to Suicide
There is a particular disorientation in losing a father to suicide. The grief is layered. There is the ordinary grief of losing a parent, which is deep enough on its own. And then there is the specific weight that suicide adds: the unanswered questions, the search for meaning in a death that resists explanation, and the complicated mix of love and anger that many survivors describe.
Many survivors who lost their father describe what one person in our group once put simply: “I lost the person who was supposed to be there.” Fathers occupy a particular role in the architecture of a family.
When a father dies by suicide, something more than a person is lost.
A sense of security, a point of reference, a version of your own identity can all come into question.
For many survivors, a father was also the first role model they had for how to be a person in the world. How to handle hard things. How to show up. How to carry pain. When that father dies by suicide, it can shake something foundational, not just the grief of losing him, but a quiet questioning of the model itself.
What does it mean that the person who was supposed to show me how to get through hard things could not find a way through his own? That question is not a condemnation. It is an honest account of what his death asks of the people who looked to him. And it deserves to be said out loud without shame, because many survivors are carrying it alone.
If you are carrying anger alongside the grief, that is not wrong. Understanding anger and conflicted emotions in suicide loss is one of the dimensions of this specific kind of loss that general grief content rarely addresses.
The anger is not a sign that you loved him less.
It is often a sign that you loved him deeply and you did not get the goodbye you deserved.
Father’s Day can also surface hindsight bias with particular force. The looping replay of last conversations. The things you said, the things you did not say. The calls you made or did not make. That particular loop tends to run harder on days the world designates as important. It is a recognized part of suicide loss grief. It is not your mind telling you the truth about what happened. It is your mind trying to find control in a loss that felt completely out of control.
The Alliance of Hope for Suicide Loss Survivors has a Father’s Day reflection by Rev. Charles Rubey, founder of the LOSS program through Catholic Charities of Chicago, that speaks specifically to honoring loved ones on Father’s Day. It is worth reading today if you lost your father.
When You Are the Father Who Lost a Child
I am in this group. Unfortunately I understand all too well what this day asks of a father who has outlived his child to suicide.
When John died, the world offered me no map for what Father’s Day becomes after something like that. Father’s Day is theoretically my day. And yet it arrives every June as a reminder of what I am a father of now: a living daughter who I am grateful for every single day, and a son who died at seventeen. Both truths are real. Both are present every Father’s Day. And both touch your soul.
What I have seen in our support group meetings, year after year, is that fathers who have lost children to suicide tend to grieve quietly. Research published in Frontiers in Public Health in 2024 and 2025, from systematic reviews of suicide-bereaved men, found that men bereaved by suicide tend to grieve in private, bottle up their feelings, and feel uncomfortable expressing grief publicly.
The same research found that bereaved fathers often describe feeling unacknowledged and invisible as grieving people. They keep strong to hold space for a spouse or for surviving children, and in doing so, their own grief gets delayed and goes unwitnessed.
After all, we were told that big boys don’t cry when we were growing up.
The marriage and relationship strain after losing a child is real and documented. The research on bereaved fathers has found that many describe a significant toll on their partnership. Grief that is unexpressed does not disappear. It surfaces in other ways.
If you are a father who has lost a child to suicide, this day belongs to your grief too. Not just to the grief others see you carrying. Your own.
A question I have heard fathers ask, quietly, sometimes years into the loss: am I still a father?
The answer is yes.
The fathering you did was real. The relationship was real. A death does not erase what was built. But the question deserves to be spoken out loud, because too many fathers are sitting with it alone.
The most meaningful thing someone can offer a father who has lost a child is the child’s name.
Spoken out loud.
With care.
Not a card, not an activity, not a distraction.
The name of their child is a gift to them that is worth more than gold.
The Alliance of Hope offers support groups specifically for grieving dads called Surviving and Beyond. These are structured groups specifically for fathers who have lost children to suicide, facilitated over several months. If you have not found your peers yet, that is a real place to start.
When You Lost a Spouse or Partner Who Was a Father
This is a grief that often goes unnoticed on Father’s Day.
You lost your partner.
Your children lost their father.
And Father’s Day arrives asking you to hold both your own grief and the grief of your children at the same time, without a manual for how to do that.
Your children may want to mark the day in some form, or they may go quiet in a way that tells you they are carrying more than they are saying. Either way, you are navigating it largely alone.
What do you do with the card your child made at school?
The Samaritans grief support team, which works extensively with people bereaved by suicide, notes that setting your own limits on what you share and with whom is an important part of navigating these days. You do not owe anyone an explanation of what your family is doing, or not doing, this Father’s Day. You are the expert on your own grief and on what your children need.
One thing the research is clear about: children who lose a parent to suicide carry a heavier risk than children who lose a parent to other causes. That weight belongs in a professional’s hands, not just in yours. If your children are struggling, finding a grief counselor with suicide loss experience is one of the most concrete things you can do.
When the Father Was Estranged or the Relationship Was Complicated
Not every survivor is grieving a close, uncomplicated bond.
Some people lost a father they barely knew. A father who left when they were young, who struggled with addiction, who was absent or harmful. And then he died by suicide, and the world expects grief that does not quite match what they are actually feeling.
The grief that follows an estranged or complicated relationship is its own particular kind of weight. There is ordinary grief, but layered over it is the grief of what never was. The reconciliation that never happened. The conversation that kept getting postponed.
The version of the relationship you had quietly hoped might still be possible someday.
Suicide closes that door permanently.
That is a loss inside a loss, and it deserves to be discussed.
If the relationship was painful or even abusive, you may find anger sitting alongside the grief. You may feel relief mixed with guilt about feeling relieved. There is no standard-issue grief for a father’s suicide, and no requirement to grieve a man who hurt you the same way you would grieve one who did not.
Understanding the quest for meaning after a suicide loss can be especially complicated when the relationship itself had unresolved damage. The “why” question carries extra weight when you were also still working out who this person was to you.
When the Father Figure Was Not a Biological Father
Father’s Day reaches people who are grieving stepfathers, grandfathers who raised them, uncles, family friends, or mentors who functioned as a father in every way that mattered except the legal or biological one.
That grief is real. And it is often invisible.
The concept of disenfranchised grief describes what happens when a loss is not publicly recognized or socially acknowledged.
People grieving a stepfather or a grandfather who was their primary father figure sometimes find that the world minimizes their loss. “He wasn’t your real dad.”
The greeting cards don’t mention them. The condolences are lighter. And on Father’s Day, the holiday does not seem to be written for them at all.
If the person you are grieving this Father’s Day held the role of a father in your life, regardless of what biology or paperwork said, this day belongs to your grief. The relationship was real. The loss is real. You do not need a label the world validates in order to grieve someone who mattered to you that much.
When a Father Is Raising Children Alone After His Spouse Died by Suicide
This is a position that rarely gets discussed: the father who is now the only parent in the house.
His partner died by suicide.
He is still here, grieving a spouse while parenting children who are also grieving a parent.
Every day involves holding his own loss while being present for his children’s loss.
Father’s Day lands on a man who is exhausted in ways that are hard to explain to anyone who has not been there.
The research on surviving suicide loss as a family is clear that grief moves differently through different family members, and that the surviving parent is often the person least able to get support because they are the one everyone else is leaning on. The first year after a suicide loss is particularly demanding for anyone in this position.
If you are in this position, your grief matters too. Not only your children’s grief. Yours.
Finding support that is specifically for you, not only resources for helping your children, is not a luxury. It is part of how you stay present for them over the long run.
Finding a grief counselor with suicide loss experience is a practical starting point.
AFSP’s Healing Conversations program pairs loss survivors with trained volunteers who have lived through a similar loss.
What the Numbers Cannot Tell Us About Fathers and Suicide
Here is something worth knowing, and worth discussing: there is no published statistic on what percentage of the nearly 39,000 men who die by suicide each year in the United States were fathers.
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention publishes detailed breakdowns by age, sex, and method. But parental status of the person who died is not tracked in any publicly reported federal dataset. We know that men make up close to 80 percent of suicide deaths. We know the rates are highest in middle age and among men over 65, precisely the years when fatherhood is most prevalent. We can make reasonable inferences. But we cannot put a number on it, because no one is counting.
Fathers who die by suicide are not invisible because they are rare.
They are invisible because the systems designed to study suicide deaths do not ask about this particular role.
What the research does tell us is that the bond between a father and his children is a protective factor. Studies, including a large Swedish cohort study, have found that fathers with children have meaningfully lower suicide rates than men without children. Fatherhood matters. The connection matters. And when suicide happens anyway, it means the pain that person was carrying had grown beyond what even that connection could hold. Their brain betrayed them. That is not a failure of love. It is a statement about the depth of suffering that went unseen.
The Weight Children Carry When a Father Dies by Suicide
This section is for the fathers, the mothers, and the surviving partners who are raising children in the aftermath of a father’s suicide.
Research has found that children who lose a parent to suicide face a significantly elevated risk of dying by suicide themselves, compared to children who lose a parent to other causes or who have two living parents.
The risk is not inevitable.
It is not destiny.
But it is real, and it belongs in the hands of a professional who understands suicide loss specifically.
This does not mean living in fear of what might happen. It means staying connected and staying honest. It means creating a space where a child can ask hard questions and hear honest answers that do not assign blame. One answer that many parents have found helpful: their parent’s brain betrayed them. They were in pain that their mind could not find a way through. That is not a choice. It is not something you caused or could have stopped.
For children who are struggling, finding a grief counselor with suicide loss experience is not an overreaction. The AFSP’s I’ve Lost Someone resource page has specific guidance for families navigating this with children.
The National Alliance for Grieving Children maintains a searchable directory of grief support programs specifically for children and teens, including programs that serve families after a suicide loss.
Peer support groups for loss survivors, including those run for younger people, can also make a real difference in helping a child or teenager feel less alone in a loss that their peers almost certainly cannot understand.
The second year after a suicide loss is often harder for children than the first, when the world has stopped paying attention and the milestones keep arriving. Father’s Day is one of those milestones, year after year.
The Social Pressure of a Hallmark Holiday
One thing survivors describe year after year, about Father’s Day and about other family-oriented holidays, is the social pressure to perform something.
You cannot avoid it entirely. Father’s Day cards appear in every pharmacy and grocery store for weeks before the day. Your inbox fills with promotional emails assuming your father is alive or that your children are planning something for you. When you go out that Sunday, you see other families intact in ways yours is not.
It is not uncommon for survivors to feel a surge of anger or grief when they see this. “Why my family?” is something I have heard at nearly every group meeting I have facilitated. That response is one of the documented features of suicide loss grief specifically: the sense of being singled out by something random and devastating while the world around you stays untouched.
Social media on Father’s Day can be particularly difficult. A feed full of tributes, barbecue photos, and father-child pictures before you have had a chance to prepare for the day.
Stepping away from social media on Father’s Day weekend is a reasonable act of self-care.
There is no rule that says you have to watch.
Navigating the social connections after suicide loss is something many survivors find they need real, deliberate strategy for on days like this one. The grief ambushes that catch you off-guard are more common around these family-oriented holidays precisely because the day is aimed at the relationship that was lost.
What Can Help on Father’s Day After Suicide Loss
There is no formula for this day. But after seventeen-plus years of sitting in support group meetings and hearing how people get through these difficult days, some things come up consistently.
- Take control of the day before it takes control of you. This is advice I heard early in our own grief, and it has stayed with me. Dread is worst in the days leading up to a difficult day. Making even a simple plan, one you can adjust or abandon, reduces some of that anticipatory weight. You do not have to commit to anything big. But having something in mind gives the day a shape.
- Build in a Plan B. If your plans for the day prove too much, what is the simpler, quieter thing you can do instead? A walk somewhere meaningful. A meal at a favorite place. Something that helps you find a moment of peace without requiring you to hold it together for anyone else. Sometimes the best-laid plans are just too heavy, and having a backup means you are not left without an anchor when that happens. I wrote about this approach in our guide to finding your way through the holidays.
- Do something intentional. Rather than letting the day arrive and reacting, some survivors plan a small act of remembrance. A visit to a grave. A meal the person who died would have appreciated. Time with photographs or with something that belonged to them. Our post on rituals of remembrance has ideas that many survivors have found grounding on difficult days.
- Say something to another survivor. If you know someone else for whom this day is hard, reach out. Say the name of the person they lost. That single act matters more than almost anything else. Most survivors are waiting for someone to open that door, not to avoid it. Saying the name, simply and directly, is an act of recognition that can carry a person through a difficult day.
- Tell the people around you what you actually need. Not what they expect you to need, and not what you think you are supposed to want. If you are not sure, that is an honest answer too. “I do not know what I need today” is something the people around you can work with. It is better than performing fine when you are not.
- Give yourself permission to leave. Family gatherings on difficult holidays can shift from bearable to overwhelming without warning. Telling one trusted person in advance that you may need to step out gives you an exit that does not require explanation in the moment. You do not owe anyone a full day.
- Consider stepping back from the day’s expectations entirely. Not every Father’s Day has to look like something. For some survivors, especially in the early years, the goal is simply to get through the day without requiring more of themselves than they can give. That is enough. Getting through is enough. You can go to Wendy’s takeout for dinner. Maybe even get a Frosty.
Father’s Day After Suicide Loss: You Are Not Alone
For everyone facing this day with a loss in it, whether you lost your father, a stepfather or grandfather who raised you, the father of your children, or a child of your own, I hope the day is gentler with you than the days leading up to it sometimes suggest it will be. Anticipation can get many of us spinning before the day.
You do not need to be okay.
You do not need to hold together any version of this day that does not serve you.
To every father reading this who has outlived a child: your grief on this day is real, and it belongs to you. Not just the grief that shows. Your own. The loss you carry is not diminished by the years that have passed or by the way the world expects you to have moved on by now. You have not moved on. You have moved forward, which is a different thing entirely, and it has cost you more than most people around you know.
To everyone grieving a father today: your loss is real. The relationship that ended in the worst possible way was still a real relationship. You are not imagining how hard this day is. You are not alone in it.
If this day is hitting you very hard and you need someone to talk to, please reach out to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Call or text 988. It is available around the clock.
Grief survivors reach out, not only people in crisis, and you will be heard.
Support groups for suicide loss survivors meet in person and online year-round. The AFSP support group finder can help you locate a group near you. There is a place for you whenever you are ready. There is no deadline on readiness.
See beyond the suicide, if you can, to the moments you once shared.
The memories are still yours.
No one can take those.
Posts You May Also Like
- Mother’s Day After Suicide Loss: When the Holiday Hurts – The companion post for Mother’s Day, covering the same family-oriented grief from that holiday’s angle, including the question “Am I still a mother?”
- Losing a Child to Suicide: The Grief No One Prepares You For – A full post for parents carrying the unique and disorienting grief of outliving a child to suicide.
- Losing a Parent to Suicide: When the Grief Gets Minimized – For adult children who lost a father or mother to suicide and find that grief underrecognized by the people around them.
- Finding Your Way Through the Holidays: A Guide for Survivors of Suicide Loss – Practical strategies for any difficult holiday, including the Plan B approach and how to manage the days before a hard date.
- Surviving Suicide Loss as a Family: A Guide for Grieving Families – What happens to a family system after a suicide loss, and how different family members grieve the same loss in different ways.
PRINTABLE GUIDE PDF
A two-page PDF guide has been generated for survivors to print, save, or share.
Leave a Reply