Suicide, the prevention of it, the reasons for it, are being discussed widely. As you know I have direct experience of the consequences of this act.
Once it was regarded as a sin against God, which in the kindly Christian parishioners’ eyes meant the body couldn’t be buried in sanctified ground. No Minister or Vicar or Priest would read the service over such a body. They had to be buried in ‘unhallowed’ ground. Or anywhere I suppose that her/his relatives could find.
Sometimes, deep at night, a little group would sneak to the graveyard and dig a hole on the edge and quietly bury the body thinking that even if it was on the edge at least it might now rest in peace.
After I wrote Wednesday To Come and it began appearing on stages, the subject of suicide always came up at any gathering, author’s talk, whatever, afterwards. It was like a stopper had been taken off a bottle and here at last was someone who would listen, who understood, who would actually say the word.
Most of the heartache and hardshipthey told me of was caused by the act, of course, but a lot of unnecessary anguish was added by people who always seemed to blame those who were left, as though if they’d just been better people, the one who killed him or her self might not have done it. No criticism appeared to ever be attached to the dead person, the one who’d actually committed what I regard as a supremely selfish act.
Last year someone famous killed himself and among all the eulogies and kind words only one mentioned his wife and two children. No-one mentioned that here were two kids who’d grow up thinking their father would rather kill himself than live to see them grow up, would rather be dead than help look after them as they moved on the rocky road from child to adult.
No-one talks about the shadow that falls on the ones who are left, on the rest of their lives, their hopes, their dreams. In fact the ones who are left to deal with the consequences of the act are rarely mentioned at all and if they are its often to blame.
It’s all very well to say that people are not in their right mind when they do this but the ones who go public with their sorrow and their disbelief that this paragon (always supremely loving, kind, unselfish,talented, brave) is dead by their own hand should remember those who are left and at the very least remember to mention them. Kindly.
