1. “To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles”
-Hamlet, (3.1.57-60)
Sometimes I imagine these were the last thoughts to go through my aunt’s mind before she put a bullet in the back of her brain. But realistically, I know they weren’t. I’d like to think the thoughts in one’s mind before one pulls the trigger on himself are this peaceful; I know they aren’t, though. I know that suicide isn’t something that is decided in the seconds before a bullet breaks the skin, before the foot drops from the ledge, before the pills slide down the throat. I know that suicide is a slower death than any, because it’s not only a physical death but an emotional, mental death as well. Suicide is decided in the years leading up to one’s successful attempt—in the moments that person spends alone, praying, hoping, begging that the pain will come to an end.
I know my Aunt Marianne was in pain, but I didn’t know until it took her life from her, and from me. Some people say the hardest thing about losing someone to suicide is how sudden and unexpected it is. When I was younger I would have agreed with this. One day she was at my basketball game and the next she was gone forever. But perhaps this is not the case. After years of contemplation I cannot think it is, for how does one decide in a single moment that she doesn’t want to be in the world anymore? Perhaps it is something that occurs over the span of years but goes undetected. We never look at someone and wonder when his last moment of weakness was. We never look at someone and ask ourselves, when was the last time she sat by herself and cried in agony? Maybe we don’t ask because we don’t like to acknowledge the pain that lurks in our world; we would rather let someone put on a happy face and fake it. Sometimes it works. People live every day. But people die every day too—people die at their owns hands because of the pain that goes unnoticed.
2. “Thou know’st ’tis common. All that live must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.”
-Hamlet (1.2.72-73)
Death is a guarantee of life. We know that no matter what path we walk or what turns we take, eventually we reach the same end. Yet when someone we love dies, we feel a void in our lives that is so strong it is often described as a hole in our actual heart. When someone dies by suicide this hole can feel even bigger because a survivor needs to come to terms with an unnecessary death. There is an air of grief that is different when it comes to suicide as opposed to any other death. Some people die of natural causes; that’s innate. Some people die in freak accidents; that’s someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some people die of illness and disease; that’s an unfortunate battle we as a human race have yet to conquer. But some people die by suicide, and there is no rationality to be found within that. You can’t look at yourself in the mirror of the funeral home bathroom when your tears are falling and say to yourself, it was her time, or it was the wicked way of the world, or maybe this is what God wanted. Because in the end she was the one who loaded the gun and pulled the trigger. She was the one who made the choice to exit the world. Don’t get me wrong; the wicked way of the world has something to do with every suicide. But that’s a whole different topic in itself.
Grieving the death of someone who died by suicide is heavier. It weighs on you like responsibility, telling you there had to have been something you could have done, something you could have changed. There’s more to discover with a suicide—more that’s lurking around every corner you never thought to turn before. These secrets are hidden in journals, in the tears that fall from a face to the floor of the shower and down the drain, in the ‘jokes’ made about how one would rather be dead, in the lies that aren’t anything but truth. And behind many of these unexplored corners we find guilt. We ask ourselves how we didn’t see it coming. We blame ourselves for not recognizing a pain that wasn’t our own. Where were you? That was the first thing I asked myself when I found out about my aunt. I was in school, at lunch, taking stupid selfies with my friends. Miles away in simultaneity with the shutter of my iphone came the unheard shot of a gun that killed my aunt, and was fired by her too.
I knew she would die, but not this way.
3. “We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
-Hamlet (4.5.43-44)
But what if we don’t know who we are? What if we lose ourselves? In 2013, the year my aunt committed suicide, suicide rates were the highest they had been in 25 years and it is estimated that at least sixty percent of suicides were committed by a person with major depression. My aunt was one person who made up that statistic; and to some people, that’s all she will ever be—not even a memory. Just a statistic.
Depression is a dark topic that cannot be described to someone who has never experienced it firsthand. Even if one can say he has experienced it, depression, much like grief, can appear in different forms for everyone. Of course the two things are different entities, but they share many common characteristics and have similar effects on people. The most notable, in my opinion, is how grief and depression both take a part of someone. Sometimes it’s the heart and one becomes angry at the world. Sometimes it’s the head and one loses her ability to make sense of anything. And in some cases, both depression and grief can drown someone and throw him back to the surface as someone unrecognizable—someone who isn’t sure of who he is anymore.
Perhaps in order to understand that we know not what we may be, we must first understand what were are—or what we aren’t. I wonder how my Aunt Marianne’s identity was ripped from her—how an infection in her brain told her she had nowhere left to go. I wonder if it was slow and tedious and painstaking. When depression turned her into a walking shadow, where did she go from there? What happened to her dreams and ambitions and desires? I find it most comfortable for me to believe that perhaps when she lost sight of who she was, she also lost sight of the fact that there was even a possibility for the someone she might have been. Perhaps she stopped looking forward, and she didn’t want to go back, so she started digging until she was six feet under, and by then, the only way out was surely to kill herself.
I don’t mean to say it was inevitable. Or that it makes sense to me. Or that I have it all figured out. I don’t. When it comes down to it, the truth is that there is only one person who knows what happened, and sometimes not even that. Whenever I would talk about my Aunt Marianne, the bravest of souls would muster up the courage to ask, “why did she do it?” And I would preface my surface level answer with the same thing every time: “I’m not her, so I can’t say for sure, but…” And maybe she couldn’t even say. After all, she didn’t even leave a note. All she left was her chocolate lab cowering in the corner of the room, and that was the closest thing to an answer I ever got.
I myself have an understanding of how pain can be so blistering that it leaves you confused, even when it’s your own pain. But I only know because of all the times I lied in my bed at night and thought about my Aunt Marianne—thought about how she lost herself battling an entity that never showed its face: the coward more commonly known as depression.
4. “Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.”
-Hamlet (2.2.116-119)
It has been said that love is the most powerful force on the planet. This may be true. It has also been said that love can cure all things. This, I know, cannot be true; for if it was, suicide would not take our loved ones away. If love could heal a person, if love could save a person, if love could take a wounded human and return her to her original state, no one would ever lose herself anymore. No one would turn to the gun or the rope or the bottle. But they do. They do these things even when they are loved beyond belief.
This is not to say that love is useless; it’s not. Love is the most powerful force on the planet. Just because love alone cannot save someone, doesn’t mean that love is not oftentimes the difference between life and death. I found myself in a position of guilt when my Aunt Marianne took her life. I kept telling myself I could have done more, I could’ve saved her. But the truth is, I couldn’t have. I did love her. More than I’ve loved many things in my lifetime. And I know that she reciprocated this love, and I know that this is what kept her alive for as long as she was. I have found trouble, in the many years that have passed since I lost her, finding another soul that grapples to mine with the same love that hers did. I know almost certainly that I could search for the rest of my life and find nothing of the like.
It helps to know that when someone dies, the space she has occupied in your heart does not die with her. Whatever she gave you stays with you, and in this case it’s ok to not give it back. Death doesn’t ever end the love that filters between two people. While love may not be able to surmount some things, it is true that nothing can come between love. I still love my Aunt Marianne, and I know that wherever she could be found, she’s still loving me too.
When a person commits suicide, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you enough to stay. It simply means there is a world of infinite release waiting on the other side, and that is something not even love can give.
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles”
-Hamlet, (3.1.57-60)
Sometimes I imagine these were the last thoughts to go through my aunt’s mind before she put a bullet in the back of her brain. But realistically, I know they weren’t. I’d like to think the thoughts in one’s mind before one pulls the trigger on himself are this peaceful; I know they aren’t, though. I know that suicide isn’t something that is decided in the seconds before a bullet breaks the skin, before the foot drops from the ledge, before the pills slide down the throat. I know that suicide is a slower death than any, because it’s not only a physical death but an emotional, mental death as well. Suicide is decided in the years leading up to one’s successful attempt—in the moments that person spends alone, praying, hoping, begging that the pain will come to an end.
I know my Aunt Marianne was in pain, but I didn’t know until it took her life from her, and from me. Some people say the hardest thing about losing someone to suicide is how sudden and unexpected it is. When I was younger I would have agreed with this. One day she was at my basketball game and the next she was gone forever. But perhaps this is not the case. After years of contemplation I cannot think it is, for how does one decide in a single moment that she doesn’t want to be in the world anymore? Perhaps it is something that occurs over the span of years but goes undetected. We never look at someone and wonder when his last moment of weakness was. We never look at someone and ask ourselves, when was the last time she sat by herself and cried in agony? Maybe we don’t ask because we don’t like to acknowledge the pain that lurks in our world; we would rather let someone put on a happy face and fake it. Sometimes it works. People live every day. But people die every day too—people die at their owns hands because of the pain that goes unnoticed.
2. “Thou know’st ’tis common. All that live must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.”
-Hamlet (1.2.72-73)
Death is a guarantee of life. We know that no matter what path we walk or what turns we take, eventually we reach the same end. Yet when someone we love dies, we feel a void in our lives that is so strong it is often described as a hole in our actual heart. When someone dies by suicide this hole can feel even bigger because a survivor needs to come to terms with an unnecessary death. There is an air of grief that is different when it comes to suicide as opposed to any other death. Some people die of natural causes; that’s innate. Some people die in freak accidents; that’s someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some people die of illness and disease; that’s an unfortunate battle we as a human race have yet to conquer. But some people die by suicide, and there is no rationality to be found within that. You can’t look at yourself in the mirror of the funeral home bathroom when your tears are falling and say to yourself, it was her time, or it was the wicked way of the world, or maybe this is what God wanted. Because in the end she was the one who loaded the gun and pulled the trigger. She was the one who made the choice to exit the world. Don’t get me wrong; the wicked way of the world has something to do with every suicide. But that’s a whole different topic in itself.
Grieving the death of someone who died by suicide is heavier. It weighs on you like responsibility, telling you there had to have been something you could have done, something you could have changed. There’s more to discover with a suicide—more that’s lurking around every corner you never thought to turn before. These secrets are hidden in journals, in the tears that fall from a face to the floor of the shower and down the drain, in the ‘jokes’ made about how one would rather be dead, in the lies that aren’t anything but truth. And behind many of these unexplored corners we find guilt. We ask ourselves how we didn’t see it coming. We blame ourselves for not recognizing a pain that wasn’t our own. Where were you? That was the first thing I asked myself when I found out about my aunt. I was in school, at lunch, taking stupid selfies with my friends. Miles away in simultaneity with the shutter of my iphone came the unheard shot of a gun that killed my aunt, and was fired by her too.
I knew she would die, but not this way.
3. “We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
-Hamlet (4.5.43-44)
But what if we don’t know who we are? What if we lose ourselves? In 2013, the year my aunt committed suicide, suicide rates were the highest they had been in 25 years and it is estimated that at least sixty percent of suicides were committed by a person with major depression. My aunt was one person who made up that statistic; and to some people, that’s all she will ever be—not even a memory. Just a statistic.
Depression is a dark topic that cannot be described to someone who has never experienced it firsthand. Even if one can say he has experienced it, depression, much like grief, can appear in different forms for everyone. Of course the two things are different entities, but they share many common characteristics and have similar effects on people. The most notable, in my opinion, is how grief and depression both take a part of someone. Sometimes it’s the heart and one becomes angry at the world. Sometimes it’s the head and one loses her ability to make sense of anything. And in some cases, both depression and grief can drown someone and throw him back to the surface as someone unrecognizable—someone who isn’t sure of who he is anymore.
Perhaps in order to understand that we know not what we may be, we must first understand what were are—or what we aren’t. I wonder how my Aunt Marianne’s identity was ripped from her—how an infection in her brain told her she had nowhere left to go. I wonder if it was slow and tedious and painstaking. When depression turned her into a walking shadow, where did she go from there? What happened to her dreams and ambitions and desires? I find it most comfortable for me to believe that perhaps when she lost sight of who she was, she also lost sight of the fact that there was even a possibility for the someone she might have been. Perhaps she stopped looking forward, and she didn’t want to go back, so she started digging until she was six feet under, and by then, the only way out was surely to kill herself.
I don’t mean to say it was inevitable. Or that it makes sense to me. Or that I have it all figured out. I don’t. When it comes down to it, the truth is that there is only one person who knows what happened, and sometimes not even that. Whenever I would talk about my Aunt Marianne, the bravest of souls would muster up the courage to ask, “why did she do it?” And I would preface my surface level answer with the same thing every time: “I’m not her, so I can’t say for sure, but…” And maybe she couldn’t even say. After all, she didn’t even leave a note. All she left was her chocolate lab cowering in the corner of the room, and that was the closest thing to an answer I ever got.
I myself have an understanding of how pain can be so blistering that it leaves you confused, even when it’s your own pain. But I only know because of all the times I lied in my bed at night and thought about my Aunt Marianne—thought about how she lost herself battling an entity that never showed its face: the coward more commonly known as depression.
4. “Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.”
-Hamlet (2.2.116-119)
It has been said that love is the most powerful force on the planet. This may be true. It has also been said that love can cure all things. This, I know, cannot be true; for if it was, suicide would not take our loved ones away. If love could heal a person, if love could save a person, if love could take a wounded human and return her to her original state, no one would ever lose herself anymore. No one would turn to the gun or the rope or the bottle. But they do. They do these things even when they are loved beyond belief.
This is not to say that love is useless; it’s not. Love is the most powerful force on the planet. Just because love alone cannot save someone, doesn’t mean that love is not oftentimes the difference between life and death. I found myself in a position of guilt when my Aunt Marianne took her life. I kept telling myself I could have done more, I could’ve saved her. But the truth is, I couldn’t have. I did love her. More than I’ve loved many things in my lifetime. And I know that she reciprocated this love, and I know that this is what kept her alive for as long as she was. I have found trouble, in the many years that have passed since I lost her, finding another soul that grapples to mine with the same love that hers did. I know almost certainly that I could search for the rest of my life and find nothing of the like.
It helps to know that when someone dies, the space she has occupied in your heart does not die with her. Whatever she gave you stays with you, and in this case it’s ok to not give it back. Death doesn’t ever end the love that filters between two people. While love may not be able to surmount some things, it is true that nothing can come between love. I still love my Aunt Marianne, and I know that wherever she could be found, she’s still loving me too.
When a person commits suicide, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you enough to stay. It simply means there is a world of infinite release waiting on the other side, and that is something not even love can give.