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Antisuji comments on Ethics and rationality of suicide - Less Wrong
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It is the emotion of shame that others are spared. (As you note, the grief is going to come anyway.)
Consider hyperbolic discounting: grief now is far worse than grief later.
Also, in addition to shame there is anger and a sense of betrayal. See Jonathan Franzen's recent essay in the New Yorker on, among other things, David Foster Wallace's suicide.
I don't know whether DFW is different to the people I know who attempted or commited suicide, or if I'm different to Franzen, but I didn't feel those sorts of emotions when a friend killed herself or my dad was in hospital on a pill overdose. I've got depression and have occasional suicidal urges, so maybe I assume they're like me and were just suffering from anhedonia and pessimism about their future enjoyment of life rather than anything to do with people they know. I feel bad that I didn't realise and couldn't have tried to help in some way, but more in that I would rather it not have happened rather than feeling ashamed and betrayed.