Biden Suicide Admission; Vice President Reflects on Death of Wife and Daughter
Vice President Joe Biden has offered an insight into the grief he felt when his wife and daughter were killed in a car accident almost 40 years ago. Biden was addressing survivors of slain U.S. military service members on Friday, when he explained how he contemplated suicide as he came to terms with their deaths.
"For the first time in my life, I understood how someone could consciously decide to commit suicide," Biden told those gathered in Washington to commemorate Memorial Day. "Not because they were deranged, not because they were nuts, because they'd been to the top of the mountain and they just knew in their heart they'd never get there again, that it was … never going to be that way ever again. That's how an awful lot of you feel."
Just weeks prior to the deaths Biden had been elected to the U.S. Senate from Delaware. He was in Washington on Dec. 18, 1972 when he heard the tragic news that his wife and one-year-old daughter had been killed after their car had been hit by a tractor-trailer. His sons, Beau and Hunter, survived the accident.
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Biden said, "And just like you guys know by the tone of a phone call — you just knew, didn't you? You knew when they walked up the path. You knew when the call came. You knew. You just felt it in your bones something bad happened. And I knew. I don't know how I knew. But the call said my wife was dead, my daughter was dead, and I wasn't sure how my sons were going to make it."
He described how he understood the "black hole you feel in your chest, like you're being sucked back into it."
Although that feeling never goes away it does get "controllable" he reassured them.
"Just remember two things; keep thinking what your husband or wife would want you to do. Keep thinking what it is, and keep remembering those kids of yours, or him or her the rest of their life, blood of my blood, bone of my bone, because, folks, it can and will get better," he said.
"There will come a day, I promise you, and your parents, as well, when the thought of your son or daughter or your husband or wife brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye. It will happen. My prayer for you is that day will come sooner or later. But the only thing I have more experience than you in is this: I'm telling you it will come."
