The prison where I work just had their first suicide since the last one five years ago.
Death by hanging. Don't even ask...
My supervisor was describing the scene and for the first time ever, it hit me.
Death is irrevocable.
Once the heart stops beating, no pulse, no life.
Death does not strike me as tragedy and if it were, the more tragic, the more I would be fascinated.
But listening to the progress of death in the last second of the person hanging, who is still conscious while suffocating, that image told me something.
Unfix-able.
Cannot be undone.
Maybe it's time I rethink my theories on suicide....
Sorry, I'm sure you've said it before, but what are your theories on suicide?
ReplyDeleteActually I might never have written about it, but I always liked to believe that suicide is not a tragedy. I wonder a lot about why do we have an ethical obligation to prevent suicide even if it means breaching confidentiality (for therapists)...
ReplyDeletethat's the crazy thing about death. its irrevocable. that is why suicide is so sad. the person feels so helpless that they feel the only way for things to get better is to end their life.
ReplyDeleteperhaps this has always been my opinion on death, but since my dad died two years ago i experienced loss. you are speaking to someone one minute and then a couple hours later they are dead and you can never speak to them again. it is surreal and it makes you feel as though someone has kicked you in the stomach. death is a part of life but when one is face to face with it it becomes a little too real.
oh.. im so sorry about your loss. yes you're a hundred percent right. irrevocable i a scary word. In a weird way it reminds me of how I always wanted to get a tattoo because you cant undo it. (i didnt and wont because of halacha) but now I also think that because you cant undo it, i should not do it.
DeleteIt makes you wonder what could have been so bad that the person felt it was better to end life altogether than to live with that difficulty?
ReplyDeleteI woke up one day and I had an epiphany that I was going to die. One day. It was quite a bit frightening. Though we know it, we don't often really think about it. If we did...if we thought that it could happen at any point...perhaps we would live differently....
Read this: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/marina-keegan-yale-writer-died-car-crash-leaves/story?id=16463344#.T8e6pWCCI4Q
this may be weird but I always imagine life if i died or if anyone i know died, c'vs. Im glad you're still around
Deleteoh wow, i had never heard of her. incredible and so scary.