Suicide.

[RYL]

Someone I know committed suicide. So I have every right to talk about this subject. Statistics show that your chance of committing suicide increases when you personally know someone who committed suicide. My father said my mother died because of a disease, a disease called "manic depression". I love my mother. I still miss my mother everyday. I think about her everyday. As I got older, I realized she didn't die because of "manic depression", she died because she had no hope. This is what "I" believe. And then I saw this quote and I hang it up my wall and I want to share it to you guys. Hope it helps.

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
---

Ralph Waldo Emerson

[bernie]

[ QUOTE ]
Someone I know committed suicide. So I have every right to talk about this subject.

[/ QUOTE ]

You have every right to talk about it even if you don't know someone who committed suicide.

b

[Popinjay]

I don't know if this is appropiate here and it might offend some people but I recently read this and thought it was a great quote:

"It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night." - Friedrich Nietzsche

[Akinamehete]

[ QUOTE ]
As I got older, I realized she didn't die because of "manic depression", she died because she had no hope.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are absolutely right. During the process of bereavement, especially after a traumatic death (like suicide) people often have a tendency to search for a reason behind the act itself. What provoked it? This is where the quest for meaning and understanding comes in. Your own process brought you to verbalize that there wasn't "a reason" or an incident per se behind your mother's suicide. No. It was simply, as you mention, the lack of hope. The possibility of not seeing any other choices other than suicide to best stop the suffering.

Your poem evokes Beauty and Love. I hope it does so for others who are suffering through a similar loss, or for those who are contemplating suicide.

There is always a choice. No matter how hidden it may appear to be.

Thanks for sharing.

Akinamehete*

[PairTheBoard]

RYL -
" "To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded. " "

I lost my best friend of many many years to suicide about 3 months ago. I wish he could have realized the wisdom in your poem, known what a success his life was and seen hope past the difficulties he was in. I lost my brother and father a few years ago and my mother many years ago. Missing them will always be a part of my life. I like to think that though we are seperated now, somehow in eternity we will all be together again.

PairTheBoard

[LINES]

Great quote. I love Nietzsche

[smithaliscious]

Reading Emerson's Self Reliance is fantastic when life's gettin' ya down. Just a little FYI.

[Aytumious]

[ QUOTE ]
Reading Emerson's Self Reliance is fantastic when life's gettin' ya down. Just a little FYI.

[/ QUOTE ]

Quite true.

[whiskeytown]

I will say this, having been in that spot...

it's hard to explain but think of it like this - one time I fell asleep in trig, and the professor was talking how a square peg couldn't fit in a round hole of the same width, but in my sleep induced delerium, I believed that it could despite common sense and physics 101.

Likewise, a person in that state in many ways is being overwhelmed - their coping mechanism for pain is being overcome - and even if they don't really want to die, you put someone in that spot long enough, and suicide actually becomes a tolerable option, and a little longer, and the mind actually believes accustomed to the idea just out of sheer sorrow -

I remember thinking I was gonna do it with sleeping pills, and actually went to the drug store and bought a couple boxes - and for the first time in months, I actually felt almost overjoyed - like I was finally doing something to end that depression I was in - and when I almost did it, my mind was in such a state I truly believed friends/family would be better off - like I was helping them - that's where the mind goes after a while.

Now I don't seriously entertain the thought of suicide anymore, but if I found myself in a position with only a few months to live, I wouldn't curse God or anything over it - hell, for a year there all I did was pray to die.

RB

[jason_t]

[ QUOTE ]
RYL -
" "To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded. " "

I lost my best friend of many many years to suicide about 3 months ago. I wish he could have realized the wisdom in your poem, known what a success his life was and seen hope past the difficulties he was in. I lost my brother and father a few years ago and my mother many years ago. Missing them will always be a part of my life. I like to think that though we are seperated now, somehow in eternity we will all be together again.

PairTheBoard

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm shamelessly going to quote part of your post here. I lost my best friend to suicide 9 months ago the day after he finished his incredibly brilliant PhD thesis. He was on his way to visit his parents who had come down from Canada to congratulate him on finishing his thesis and he jumped in front of a train. I wish he could have realized the wisdom in the OP's poem, known what a success his life was and seen hope past the difficulties he was in. A few months ago I was seriously suicidal and honestly one thing that helped me was thinking about how sad I was, and still am, over the loss of him and the thought that I might make someone that sad. I think I'm just going to go cry now.

Jason.