Shadows and ghosts

I was listening to NPR's Saturday Weekend Edition with Scott Simon's interview of Patrick Hemingway. Scott asked Patrick about the "shadow of suicide." I forgot Patrick's answer but it wasn't about suicide, but it got me to thinking about the incidence of suicide in people and families.

And the thought?

Well, in short, the shadow of suicide runs in families, wired in the brain, and pased on to each generation, wired in descendent to awake when the circumstances arise or the situation occurs. We, in such families, all have the reality of suicide that runs in our mind, and most of the time quietly resides where shadows dwell, out of the light of the day, but it walks through the past, present and future of the family and engulfs some to act.

The ghost of suicide sits in our mind, often throughout their life and sometimes absorbing our soul and spirit to fall into the depths, and maybe the solution many think is wrong or worse. Yet, those who know not the mind of those afflicted never feel or begin to grasp our ghost, and know not the depths of our affliction to seek solace in the darkness for answers and solutions. It is our ghost.

The ghost always lives in the shadow, the shadow of the family, to appear when genetics and experience are right, and the individual experiences the ghost as their own, to fall into the deepest cavern of depression where some succomb and succeed, and the rest are never the same. It prevades our mind and our life, throughout it all.

As some people stand in the sun and find happiness, we stand in the sun for the warmth from the darkness and respites from the ghost. And we fear it won't last before the shadow blocks it and the ghost appears. And we struggle through the darkness for the next light and warmth from the sun, hoping, knowing the consequences if it doesn't. We sometimes fear our own mind, where and when it falls under the shadow under the spell of the ghost.

So, we live in the shadow and with our ghost, for we know in the end, death will win, by our own hand or by life itself. And we will find relief from our existence, an escape our history, and freedom from our ghost.