I don't think there's ever been a living soul who wasn't touched by the act of someone in their family, circle of friends, co-worker, church or club member, school friend, who has taken their life.
And of course you're absolutely correct - once you discover the mortal remains of the act, the scene stays forever; the grief is completely different than death from old age; which is a different grief than the death of an accident or murder; which is a different grief from death through an illness.
What powerful stories, beautifully told. I'm glad you think about and write about such things as death. Everyone I know wants everything happy, happy, happy 100% of the time. They live in LaLa land. I learned about death shortly after I turned 17 and my beloved father died from a heart attack — here today, gone tomorrow, indeed. That every cheery poet, Dylan Thomas, said "After the first death, there is no other."
One of the great things about you, Joan, is that you're not afraid to take a dip into the dark side either. I'm so terribly sorry about your father. It freaks me out that good men like him are the ones who die, and flaming a-holes like Trump are still breathing. I'll never understand that.
Thanks for your comment, Stacey. He really was a good man and gone way too young. I also think that way about horrible people who just keep hanging in there, getting to enjoy their kids, grandkids, etc. My sister and I say something like: "And that guy still roams the Earth?"
I do believe it is righteous to feel anger toward someone who has committed suicide. Studies have shown that people who attempt but fail -- and then receive counseling! -- seldom try again. But other studies also show that when someone does commit suicide, persons in their immediate circle are significantly more prone to doing so themselves.
Some, well, decades now, ago I stumbled into an Oprah show (something I don't ordinarily do) and one of her guests was a fellow who'd survived jumping off the Golden Gate bridge. (Most people break their back upon impact with the water. Crippled and paralyzed by pain, they drown before the cold gets them.) What stood out most for me, though, was the guy's statement, "the worst part of it all was that, the instant I let go I realized I'd just made the biggest mistake in my life."
WOW. That's just ... WOW. I would not have wanted that thought flashing across my mind at such a moment. I can't believe he survived. That's insane. My over-active imagination (to say nothing of my fear of heights) keeps replaying an image of him tumbling off that bridge.
In his case, more like dropping like a stone; that's why he survived. He hit the water straight, legs first (the impact literally ripped his pants off from his ankles to his waist). The people who tumble it the water cocked out of alignment, break their backs, and drown.
I'm very late in commenting on this one. I'm not sure you will see it, but it has been on my mind as I go about my days. American pop culture likes bright and shiny things. Very true. We are the worlds loudest magpies exalting the wonders of the new. I guess it's easier to look to media and avoiding ones own thoughts and feelings. It's amazing that this is such a widespread problem the that gets attention in the media that the reality of the average person's life gets lost. I'm not talking about a right wing populism extolling the virtues of bigotry hidden behind a message of personal freedom. I'm talking about the reality of life that is so much more that media, politics, and entertainment can ever imagine.
A lot of Americans know the impermanence of life all too well. My ancestors worked farms, mined coal and hunted. My own grandfather di this in rural Virginia as recently as the 1940's. My fathers generation was the first one that never did any of that for survival. Mine is the first where most of us have college degrees. My family lived in small houses or houses that needed constant upkeep . They saw neighbors lose fathers to the mines or children to illness. My generation has been touched the least by death, but it has been enough.
Constant work and its acceptance as a part of life brings with tithe knowledge that nothing lasts and that fortunes will change at the drop of a hat. All we have is now. We can try to plan - but the future is extremely uncertain. After so any generations of it, it has become a part of my family's DNA.
I work in the medical field and see dead almost weekly. The pandemic helped in that grim achievement. I see people now not with Covid, but the debilitating effects of long term isolation on the body and the mind. My story is very far from unique. There are thousands of them in the hills and farms of the Appalachians alone. I'm sure its the same for others of the same class.
You are right in that American culture loves a bright and shiny winner. One who is your, beautiful and knows to simply disappear - not die - when the time is right. Then we can move on to the next. There are so many, though that live lives that are more real than any hollywood director has the courage to tell. At least - no director these days.
Maybe you should write a movie? :)
Hope allis well and i'm jealous of your Italian spring.
I love reading your thoughts, Patricia. Please know there is a café table here in Amelia with your name on it. A glass of wine is awaiting you there. And we could talk all day and night about the topics you've broached here.
Thank you for sharing this heartbreaking news and conversing on life herself as you do so wonderfully. Asking why wearing these bodies and minds can be so difficult at times has actually helped me to heal from much loss. God/dess in my heart is now absolutely certain that what is REAL Never Ceases to Be. xxx
I hate that you've experienced so much loss. I'll admit that I don't handle it well. But you seem (if it's possible to tell via cyberspace) accepting and serene about it. And that is no small thing.
I've wrestled with depression my entire life. Even planned to kill myself on my 21st birthday until I ended up in bed with two women that night and somehow got distracted. I've not had any suicidal ideations for many years, but I understand how someone gets there. You enter a place where you're so wrapped up in your pain that it becomes all-consuming. You lose sight of the fact that there are many people who love you and would be traumatized by your suicide.
Suicide is a tremendously selfish solution to a problem, but it's a very final solution. You don't think of the trauma and heartbreak you'll be leaving behind. All you want is for it to end.
I know these things now after a few people I knew killed themselves. There's always that question: "Why?" And there's rarely an answer. For some people, it's just an easy way out, a way to end the pain only they know.
I know I've said it before to you, but I'll say it again. I think it is the bright ones, the sensitive and aware ones, who flirt with suicide. There ARE some people who are too gentle to live among wolves. I get it. I do. But we owe something to those who love us, something that is lost on those who are in such a dark place, they just don't care.
Thanks, Stacey. I'm glad you're here, as well. There aren't a lot of people who understand it in the way you do. For most people, there's a line between madness and creativity. For some, that line is smudged, often to the point of being indiscernible. I've learned to live with it, but it's taken awhile to recognize my wolves.
His dog. I was heartbroken that he'd killed himself, but was most concerned about the dog. I'm sure that's a flaw in my personality, but these creatures depend on us to take care of them.
My father had bad luck with suicide. He was the one who found his best friend from law school hanging when I was a little girl. Many years later, he was the one who found a dear friend of the family, someone who had left her husband after tragedy struck their family, and found that she could not recover from that tragedy. He did indeed never get beyond those sights.
I cry every morning when I read the newspaper first thing. If we are not weeping when we read about massacres of children waiting for a train at Bucha, we've lost some of our humanity.
Wishing sincere condolences and comfort to the bereaved people mentioned in this essay. I hope someone can take care of the man's dog, that is very sad.
Stacey already knows this: I am a visionary mystic. No way is Death an ending of anything very permanent. I intend to approach Death with a merry heart once it is inevitable, and meanwhile, do my best to cheat Death as long as possible.
There is Much Chocolate to eat on this planet, and an endless supply of Good Trouble to make.
You are so brave, Caroline. This genocide in Ukraine upsets me so deeply, I find myself avoiding those headlines altogether until I feel as though I'm equal to reading them. I hate being helpless to save people who are suffering. But I am down for the Chocolate ;-)
Read this line in a book from a character who committed suicide. "it's my time to die, and it's your time to live. Don't mess it up" If you're alive, live it well.
Such an interesting line. I wonder if we get hung up on the "living it well" part. What we think we're supposed to want is tainted by ads, peers, American "values." How much of what we want is genuinely us? How much of it is nurture?
I don't think there's ever been a living soul who wasn't touched by the act of someone in their family, circle of friends, co-worker, church or club member, school friend, who has taken their life.
And of course you're absolutely correct - once you discover the mortal remains of the act, the scene stays forever; the grief is completely different than death from old age; which is a different grief than the death of an accident or murder; which is a different grief from death through an illness.
Our culture fears death and loathes old age.
You're a smart, funny, wise and insightful human. I'm here for all of what you wrote.
Thank you!!! That's just what I needed to hear today!
What powerful stories, beautifully told. I'm glad you think about and write about such things as death. Everyone I know wants everything happy, happy, happy 100% of the time. They live in LaLa land. I learned about death shortly after I turned 17 and my beloved father died from a heart attack — here today, gone tomorrow, indeed. That every cheery poet, Dylan Thomas, said "After the first death, there is no other."
One of the great things about you, Joan, is that you're not afraid to take a dip into the dark side either. I'm so terribly sorry about your father. It freaks me out that good men like him are the ones who die, and flaming a-holes like Trump are still breathing. I'll never understand that.
Thanks for your comment, Stacey. He really was a good man and gone way too young. I also think that way about horrible people who just keep hanging in there, getting to enjoy their kids, grandkids, etc. My sister and I say something like: "And that guy still roams the Earth?"
I do believe it is righteous to feel anger toward someone who has committed suicide. Studies have shown that people who attempt but fail -- and then receive counseling! -- seldom try again. But other studies also show that when someone does commit suicide, persons in their immediate circle are significantly more prone to doing so themselves.
Some, well, decades now, ago I stumbled into an Oprah show (something I don't ordinarily do) and one of her guests was a fellow who'd survived jumping off the Golden Gate bridge. (Most people break their back upon impact with the water. Crippled and paralyzed by pain, they drown before the cold gets them.) What stood out most for me, though, was the guy's statement, "the worst part of it all was that, the instant I let go I realized I'd just made the biggest mistake in my life."
WOW. That's just ... WOW. I would not have wanted that thought flashing across my mind at such a moment. I can't believe he survived. That's insane. My over-active imagination (to say nothing of my fear of heights) keeps replaying an image of him tumbling off that bridge.
In his case, more like dropping like a stone; that's why he survived. He hit the water straight, legs first (the impact literally ripped his pants off from his ankles to his waist). The people who tumble it the water cocked out of alignment, break their backs, and drown.
Wow...
I'm very late in commenting on this one. I'm not sure you will see it, but it has been on my mind as I go about my days. American pop culture likes bright and shiny things. Very true. We are the worlds loudest magpies exalting the wonders of the new. I guess it's easier to look to media and avoiding ones own thoughts and feelings. It's amazing that this is such a widespread problem the that gets attention in the media that the reality of the average person's life gets lost. I'm not talking about a right wing populism extolling the virtues of bigotry hidden behind a message of personal freedom. I'm talking about the reality of life that is so much more that media, politics, and entertainment can ever imagine.
A lot of Americans know the impermanence of life all too well. My ancestors worked farms, mined coal and hunted. My own grandfather di this in rural Virginia as recently as the 1940's. My fathers generation was the first one that never did any of that for survival. Mine is the first where most of us have college degrees. My family lived in small houses or houses that needed constant upkeep . They saw neighbors lose fathers to the mines or children to illness. My generation has been touched the least by death, but it has been enough.
Constant work and its acceptance as a part of life brings with tithe knowledge that nothing lasts and that fortunes will change at the drop of a hat. All we have is now. We can try to plan - but the future is extremely uncertain. After so any generations of it, it has become a part of my family's DNA.
I work in the medical field and see dead almost weekly. The pandemic helped in that grim achievement. I see people now not with Covid, but the debilitating effects of long term isolation on the body and the mind. My story is very far from unique. There are thousands of them in the hills and farms of the Appalachians alone. I'm sure its the same for others of the same class.
You are right in that American culture loves a bright and shiny winner. One who is your, beautiful and knows to simply disappear - not die - when the time is right. Then we can move on to the next. There are so many, though that live lives that are more real than any hollywood director has the courage to tell. At least - no director these days.
Maybe you should write a movie? :)
Hope allis well and i'm jealous of your Italian spring.
I love reading your thoughts, Patricia. Please know there is a café table here in Amelia with your name on it. A glass of wine is awaiting you there. And we could talk all day and night about the topics you've broached here.
Thank you for sharing this heartbreaking news and conversing on life herself as you do so wonderfully. Asking why wearing these bodies and minds can be so difficult at times has actually helped me to heal from much loss. God/dess in my heart is now absolutely certain that what is REAL Never Ceases to Be. xxx
I hate that you've experienced so much loss. I'll admit that I don't handle it well. But you seem (if it's possible to tell via cyberspace) accepting and serene about it. And that is no small thing.
I've wrestled with depression my entire life. Even planned to kill myself on my 21st birthday until I ended up in bed with two women that night and somehow got distracted. I've not had any suicidal ideations for many years, but I understand how someone gets there. You enter a place where you're so wrapped up in your pain that it becomes all-consuming. You lose sight of the fact that there are many people who love you and would be traumatized by your suicide.
Suicide is a tremendously selfish solution to a problem, but it's a very final solution. You don't think of the trauma and heartbreak you'll be leaving behind. All you want is for it to end.
I know these things now after a few people I knew killed themselves. There's always that question: "Why?" And there's rarely an answer. For some people, it's just an easy way out, a way to end the pain only they know.
I know I've said it before to you, but I'll say it again. I think it is the bright ones, the sensitive and aware ones, who flirt with suicide. There ARE some people who are too gentle to live among wolves. I get it. I do. But we owe something to those who love us, something that is lost on those who are in such a dark place, they just don't care.
I'm so glad you're here, Jack.
Thanks, Stacey. I'm glad you're here, as well. There aren't a lot of people who understand it in the way you do. For most people, there's a line between madness and creativity. For some, that line is smudged, often to the point of being indiscernible. I've learned to live with it, but it's taken awhile to recognize my wolves.
I have no words. But my heart hurts.
His dog. I was heartbroken that he'd killed himself, but was most concerned about the dog. I'm sure that's a flaw in my personality, but these creatures depend on us to take care of them.
My father had bad luck with suicide. He was the one who found his best friend from law school hanging when I was a little girl. Many years later, he was the one who found a dear friend of the family, someone who had left her husband after tragedy struck their family, and found that she could not recover from that tragedy. He did indeed never get beyond those sights.
I cry every morning when I read the newspaper first thing. If we are not weeping when we read about massacres of children waiting for a train at Bucha, we've lost some of our humanity.
Wishing sincere condolences and comfort to the bereaved people mentioned in this essay. I hope someone can take care of the man's dog, that is very sad.
Stacey already knows this: I am a visionary mystic. No way is Death an ending of anything very permanent. I intend to approach Death with a merry heart once it is inevitable, and meanwhile, do my best to cheat Death as long as possible.
There is Much Chocolate to eat on this planet, and an endless supply of Good Trouble to make.
You are so brave, Caroline. This genocide in Ukraine upsets me so deeply, I find myself avoiding those headlines altogether until I feel as though I'm equal to reading them. I hate being helpless to save people who are suffering. But I am down for the Chocolate ;-)
Read this line in a book from a character who committed suicide. "it's my time to die, and it's your time to live. Don't mess it up" If you're alive, live it well.
Such an interesting line. I wonder if we get hung up on the "living it well" part. What we think we're supposed to want is tainted by ads, peers, American "values." How much of what we want is genuinely us? How much of it is nurture?