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.

Suicide in NPs

I was reading an article on suicides in National Parks. It's interesting. Not because someone wouldn't commit suicide in a National Park, but because people forget suicide is about time and place. Everyone who commits suicide has to determine, when, where and how to die. And everyone who commits suicide wants to die in a place they love and find comfort.

What's so hard to understand? A National Park is a beautiful place to be and people find a person connection to be there. Some for a visit and some, like me, for a lifetime to keep going back. And some would like to die there. I plan to have my ashes spread in my favorite spot, if I can arrange and the National Park Service is accommodating, which I understand they are, and if they're aren't, people do it anyway to the departed.

So why the inerest in the article?

Well, I once thought about what I would do if faced with emmient death, meaning know the short time I have left alive due to some calamity, illness or accident. I doubt anyone would be able to find me, at least well into the future and I've essentially disappeared from this life. Harsh and cruel? Not really. Facing certain immediate death, we all should have the right to choose when, where and maybe how. That's just being humane and human.

And as I've written, I've seriouslythought about suicide twice, and once planned and nearly executed it, stopping just a handfull of seconds before fulfilling it. I'm not always sure what changed my mind, but something did and It haunts me still why I did and why I didn't. It's the reality of living with Dysthymia, suicide isn't always far from the surface of your consciousness, sometimes to pester you with hints about life and death.

It's no longer a serious thought with me anymore, or at least it hasn't been since the early 1990's between my brother's death and my Dad's death. But I still have to be conscious of it to make sure it's not just hiding. So I can understand what the article is saying, but I don't understand why it's a concern. How many people jump off the Golden Gate Bridge every year? Too many but they know it's a reality of the bridge and its attraction.

I'm also curious what training the rangers get for suicide prevention. Enough to stop it and get them to help? I can't see where they would get more because talking with someone on the edge about to commit suicide is risky and touchy, and I doubt that many rangers have the perspective and experience to save but a few lives. And do they get a standard method of persuasion? While I know rangers have a lot to do, with only two dozen or so suicides every year at all the the most common spots, I can't see where it makes them sufficiently qualified to be a suicide counselor.

The article didn't say how many they prevented, so it's hard to say if their efforts works, except I expect it does in some places and at some times. But if a person were convinced to commit suicide, only luck would make a ranger save that person. National Parks are too big and public to stop everyone, and you don't know if some deaths are accidents or suicides, and we know there at least one or more orders of magnitude more accidents in National Parks, so the rangers have more important things to learn and do with visitors than worry about the rare person who wants to die.

Anyway, I don't have an answer, just an observation. I don't have a problem with rangers helping the obvious ones, but the rest? They shouldn't worry about them, the rangers didn't walk in their shoes to understand, and if they did, who knows what they would do then. The best you can do is know they died in a place they loved.