When I was young, just 12, my sister, Sheila, who was 14 years older than me, killed herself। I was told various versions of events at the time।
It goes like this - she had given birth to my niece early in 7 December and my mum had been down to stay with them to help out. A few days before Christmas my mum came back home and, on Christmas Day, after several desperate 'phone calls, Sheila took an overdose and a few days later she died.
My family, steeped in an odd mixture of spirituality, liberalism and communism, did what I guess few would expect. They tried to act normally - they did not have a funeral of any sort, somehow that seemed, to them, to be the way to react. I suspect they were simply faced with so much pain that they could not face a funeral.
Death, then, and in the event of other deaths, is too much for them. They are not hard and niether are they cowards. But I feel that they are sorely misguided - I think we should go out with a bang, a celebration of the life lived, the hope and light brought into the world.
Very little has even been spoken about the sadness of Sheila's death and although her life has not been a taboo subject it was not something that, as I child, I felt I could discuss. We did not do discussions. In fact, looking back, I think the effects of the change that her death brought were greater than I realised to be apparent at the time.
I was pretty much left alone as a teenager - I was be no means a tearaway, perhaps that is because I had nothing to rebel against. No one seemed to be particularly interested in where I was, so being out late or coming home drunk at 13 and throughout my teenage years was not an issue - barely even noticed.
This year, my niece and I both found that we needed to talk to each other about Sheila - me as the brother who had had so little to do with her (she had moved away when I was much younger) and her, Sheila's daughter. She felt left, abandoned - how else could she feel. I think she feels less of that now - but its not for me to speak for her.
Both of us feeling there were parts of the picture missing I wrote off for a copy of the inquest into Sheila's death. And, in the meantime, I wondered about whether she had really intended, wanted, to die. Had it been a cry for help that had gone wrong - the desperate low of a person with post natal depression and, like me, I suspect, probably prone to depression (and slight manic highs) at times.
I did some research into the drug that I remembered she had overdosed on and found to my amazement that it had been withdrawn from use because of a dangerously high rate of fatal, accidental, overdoses. This tended to fix in my mind that it had been a cry for help that had gone tragically wrong.
Then the report arrived. Most of what I had been told checked out - more or less. What struck me was the use of English - so dry, so clinical, so dispassionate, about the death of such a young woman who had only just had a baby. What burned a different image into my mind was when I read the account of how she had been found - the pills had been her second attempt, with alcohol, following her first attempt, to slash her wrists with a chisel... she had not managed to cut herself deeply enough.
Sheila was always in my mind as full of laughter and fun and that is the person that has been described to me as I grew up. Her photographs - tiny, only 4 foot 10 inches tall - all curls and smiles and floppy hippy hat.
And, you'll know if you have read any of the other things that I have written here, that I understand depression from the inside. I learnt as a child that the pain that the deliberate, death of a child causes within a family - and so much greater that pain when one knows how acute Sheila's pain was when death was the best and to her, the only, rational, option.
I resented at times that that knowledge held me back when my depression made me feel that death was the best and most rational option for changing my situation. Knowing, and caring, about the outcome of suicide on others made me know that I would not even have it as an option to allow me to escape my personal pain. Trapped in a life, hated.
I have no questions with suicide. It is so, so, horrendous that when genuinely sought I know that it is, for that individual, what they believe to be the only remaining option for them. The healing comes through guiding that person - taking their hand, allowing them to see the love and the value of life - not letting them take the choice they believe they need to make without showing them that there is, all around them, value, hope and a reason for life. If they still cannot see that then I understand if they make the choice - but it must be a choice.... and with choice it is hard to choose the worst option.
So, no, the mistake is not the sad suicide of my sister. The mistake is my family's failure to understand the value of deep and true grief and the value of deep and true joy. Death and life are inextricable; yes the party is over and theres a load of crap to clear up, but didn't we have a damn good time?!
Perhaps for my family the very circumstances of Sheila's death - the ultimate tragic death, a death so clearly only caused by sadness - prevented them from seeing the need to have a funeral. The need to draw a line - to say thanks, thanks - just thank you for having been alive - that is all we need of you, you gave us everything you had to give, thank you.
Death brings confusion; death and life are all one. Always, always, go with the confusion - dive into life, swim in the waves of passion, sing with the very joy of being and when death comes, allow it to heal and feed the seeds of new life.
Much love, P
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