Having had two members of my family commit suicide (an uncle on my mom's side and an aunt on my dad's side), I have been exposed to two separate types of suicide and the impact that each had on my family. While both were painful events for my family, the emotions surrounding us after each were very different. For the sake of simplicity, we will call my uncle's death a way to end the pain he had felt throughout his entire life, whereas my aunt's death was more of a sudden reaction to events in her life. I'll go into detail for both.

We'll start with my uncle, as his death was the first chronologically. My uncle struggled his entire life with depression. I was too young to know the exact extent of his condition, but I knew that he required a lot of medicine in order to maintain any level of a normal lifestyle. While he had his medicines, things would go fairly well for him and he would lead a normal life, holding down a job and visiting family often. However, his medicine was provided by a state program of some sort (again, I was young at the time and don't know the details very well). Due to some stupid policies that were enforced, the program would stop providing his medicines after a set period of time when things appeared to be going well. I guess the best way to put it is that he "tested out" of the program thanks to his very positive reaction to the medicine. As anyone with any level of common sense could see, he would then spiral into the dark depths of depression soon after his medicine would be cut. It would become very much impossible for him to hold down a job, and he would become very reclusive towards the family. Naturally after a period of time, he would become eligible for the program again, and would be able to once again live a normal life. With a pattern of being unable to hold down jobs for extended periods of time, he would end up having to take odd jobs like being a janitor instead of in a field that fit his strengths. After years of this cycle, he decided that he could no longer handle it and decided to end his life. My family always feared this moment, but it still came as a shock to us. My grandmother took it the worst, but we all moved to the conclusion that my uncle was not suffering any longer. Personally, I respect my uncle for living so long in the vicious cycle and for making the best that he could with his life. The pain he felt when he would be at his lowest is unimaginable to me, and I respect that he had the courage to make it through so many times. I hate that my family had to experience the pain of losing him, but we all could take comfort knowing that there was only peace for him now.

Then there is my aunt. To make a very long story somewhat shorter, my aunt was in a very long (10+ years) relationship with a man. For whatever reason, they chose not to get married but it didn't really matter. When they bought their house together, they purchased it in my aunt's name, for reasons never fully explained to me. For such a long time, things appeared to be going well for them. Then my great-grandmother died. My father could not attend the funeral for work-related reasons, which made my aunt extremely angry, to a point where they virtually never talked after that (outside of visits to my grandmother's house). My aunt even began pulling away from their mother (my grandmother) because she was understanding of my dad's inability to go to the funeral. For whatever reason, my aunt believed that my grandmother was biased towards my father. Fast forward a few years, and suddenly we find out that my aunt's boyfriend (or whatever you would like to call him) is in the hospital with some heart condition. This brings the family together some, until it is revealed that he has gone into this mad state where he is blaming her for everything that is happening to him. While my aunt stood by his side during is recovery, he essentially throws her under the bus. To add a final blow, he announces he is leaving. Good riddance was our first reaction, until prodding around through my aunt's financial records. The boyfriend was earning all of the money, while my aunt had everything in her name! So when he left her, she was essentially fucked. To top it off, there were still payments being made on the house and the housing market had just collapsed. Long story short, she was forced to move in with my grandparents as a result of this. During the process of moving from her house to my grandparents' house, she also began going back to school. So as to avoid disturbing my grandparents with her studies, she would stay in her house and my grandparents would drive her to the community college (or wherever she was taking her classes). Obviously, with the house going into foreclosure, this arrangement would eventually end, but living with my grandparents would just be a temporary thing while she got back to her feet. Unfortunately, due to the living situation for my grandparents, my aunt would have to give up her pets (some cats and a dog), which upset her greatly. Ultimately, she rounded up her pets in the garage and turned the car on, dying alongside her closest friends. My grandparents found her in the morning when they went to the foreclosed house to drive her to classes. Long story short, my aunt left a note that took a couple of shots at my grandparents, described the abusive relationship that she had with her boyfriend (which had appeared normal to us), and indicated that she'd essentially left the entire family out of her will. This led to a lot of despair and questioning throughout the family. My father questioned why he had not made up with my aunt after the funeral debacle. My grandmother blamed herself for attempting to separate my aunt from her pets. My grandfather sought an understanding of how he could have made things easier for her. Ultimately, her death brought the family together again, but we all were left wishing that she would have spoken to anyone in the family about her situations. She was blind to the love that she was surrounded by and refused to give herself a chance. While I also respect her for going through such miserable times so stoically, I do find it very difficult to understand why she did not so much as speak to the family about her problems. It saddens me to think that her death could possibly have been avoided by simply expressing what she felt. We would have helped her had we known her boyfriend was so abusive, dad would have gone to the funeral had he known it would mean so much to her, my grandmother would have allowed for her pets to have joined her while she found her feet again. Rather than seeking resolutions, my aunt simply reacted to the events in her life, and that made her death hurt us, both because she was gone and because we all feel like we could have done something to stop her from ever being in her situation.

Tldr: I respect those that have gone through a lifetime of pain, but when a suicide seems like it is a reaction to a set of events that seem avoidable/recoverable from, it is a lot harder to understand.