(no subject)
Once a suicide occurs, the unanswered and shattering questions - how essential we are to another human being and yet, at times, damaging in spite of our best efforts - are raised. We think we understand the people who are close to us. But do we? In defining the difference between characters in life and in fiction, E.M. Forster writes perceptively about the unknowable self:
For human intercourse, as soon as we look at it for its own sake and not as a social adjunct, is seen to be haunted by a spectre. We cannot understand each other, except in a rough and ready way; we cannot reveal ourselves, even when we want to; what we call intimacy is only a makeshift; perfect knowledge is an illusion.
-- History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky, at p175.
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People who end their lives are often tortured by their inability to free themselves of inner demons and by the pain they feel they are causing others. Virginia Woolf, who suffered repeated breakdowns, wrote about her worry of being a burden in her last note to her husband before she put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, then walked into the Rive Ouse near her home and drowned herself:
I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.
Nathan Kline, a noted scholar on affective disorders and suicide, believes that a person who is depressed is often quite consciously guilty, and what he feels guilty about is being depressed. "He has failed in his own eyes the test of will and spirit. He blames himself for his weakness and assumes that others blame him, too." In her journal, Kim wrote: My plan now is to turn mean. Blow-off my friends and family and make everyone hate me. If nobody cared then it would be easy to leave. I'm so trapped.
-- History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky, at p193-94.
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[The rabbi] asked us questions about Kim, as if with our answers he could piece together what had happened. Was she in college? Where did she work? Where was her father? Was she depressed? Had she been getting any help? After he heard each answer he looked down and shook his head, seeming to register in that small gesture how we had failed her.
I remember thinking he had nothing to offer us, and wondered if anyone had any wisdom or comfort to give. ...[O]nly we, her family, held the answers to her fragility. And in this came an ominous sense of responsibility, and we were quiet in the face of it.
-- History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky, at p219.
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A suicide is an assault on the very structure of a family; a family is supposed to protect its own. The sense of failure each survivor feels is blinding[.]
-- History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky, at p220.
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"What should you do if you fear someone is suicidal?" I said.
"Dare to ask," he said.
-- History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky, at p232.
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The next month's suicide group meeting was dominated by a couple who recently lost their seventeen year old son to suicide. He was a student at a high school for the gifted, had tons of friends; everyone said how special he was. "He shot himself outside on the pavement of a building that looked into our apartment," his mother said, weeping. "It was like he was looking out at us. I keep going to that place where he stood on the pavement, trying to see what he was seeing," she said. "You feel responsible. You feel you should protect your child," his father said, anguish like a map of sorrow engraved on his face. When group ended I turned to the couple and looked them both in the eyes, took their hands, and without looking away or being afraid of their pain I said I was sorry. Sometimes it is all we can do. But it is something. It is not nothing.
-- History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky, at p.233-34.
For human intercourse, as soon as we look at it for its own sake and not as a social adjunct, is seen to be haunted by a spectre. We cannot understand each other, except in a rough and ready way; we cannot reveal ourselves, even when we want to; what we call intimacy is only a makeshift; perfect knowledge is an illusion.
-- History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky, at p175.
///////
People who end their lives are often tortured by their inability to free themselves of inner demons and by the pain they feel they are causing others. Virginia Woolf, who suffered repeated breakdowns, wrote about her worry of being a burden in her last note to her husband before she put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, then walked into the Rive Ouse near her home and drowned herself:
I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.
Nathan Kline, a noted scholar on affective disorders and suicide, believes that a person who is depressed is often quite consciously guilty, and what he feels guilty about is being depressed. "He has failed in his own eyes the test of will and spirit. He blames himself for his weakness and assumes that others blame him, too." In her journal, Kim wrote: My plan now is to turn mean. Blow-off my friends and family and make everyone hate me. If nobody cared then it would be easy to leave. I'm so trapped.
-- History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky, at p193-94.
//////
[The rabbi] asked us questions about Kim, as if with our answers he could piece together what had happened. Was she in college? Where did she work? Where was her father? Was she depressed? Had she been getting any help? After he heard each answer he looked down and shook his head, seeming to register in that small gesture how we had failed her.
I remember thinking he had nothing to offer us, and wondered if anyone had any wisdom or comfort to give. ...[O]nly we, her family, held the answers to her fragility. And in this came an ominous sense of responsibility, and we were quiet in the face of it.
-- History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky, at p219.
///////
A suicide is an assault on the very structure of a family; a family is supposed to protect its own. The sense of failure each survivor feels is blinding[.]
-- History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky, at p220.
///////
"What should you do if you fear someone is suicidal?" I said.
"Dare to ask," he said.
-- History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky, at p232.
///////
The next month's suicide group meeting was dominated by a couple who recently lost their seventeen year old son to suicide. He was a student at a high school for the gifted, had tons of friends; everyone said how special he was. "He shot himself outside on the pavement of a building that looked into our apartment," his mother said, weeping. "It was like he was looking out at us. I keep going to that place where he stood on the pavement, trying to see what he was seeing," she said. "You feel responsible. You feel you should protect your child," his father said, anguish like a map of sorrow engraved on his face. When group ended I turned to the couple and looked them both in the eyes, took their hands, and without looking away or being afraid of their pain I said I was sorry. Sometimes it is all we can do. But it is something. It is not nothing.
-- History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky, at p.233-34.