“Students and faculty

I have an important

Announcement.

 

One of our juniors

Has passed away unexpectedly.”

 

Which is another way to say

Suicide.

 

“She was very active in the band…”

 

Our principal said more, but this is all I remember.

 

(By then I was stumbling to the door,

Pushing instead of pulling, sobbing.)

 

And it probably amounts to what most people remember about her.

She was very active in the band.

That is all.

Go on with your day.

 

For most people, that is what she is now.

A Student.

Very active in the band.

A Suicide.

That is all.

Go on with your life.

 

At the memorial, I cannot speak

About her.

It is the time to remember her

But it is in front of everyone, and I cannot speak.

 

In my head, I provide the memories

They did not have, doing the math:

She lived for scarcely Sixteen years.

There are a finite number of memories of her.

She is only in so many pictures.

Her childhood is such a large fraction of her life,

And I remember a lot of it, but never all.

 

At her memorial, I cannot speak

To her parents, either.

I have nothing at all to say about her that will even come close to approaching anything.

 

My father says

“So sorry for your loss.

She was a lovely girl.”

 

They’re always So Sorry.

She’s always a lovely girl.

 

I am speech-less for the entire memorial,

Watching her memory being altered one speaker at a time.

They say things that are wrong,

They all get her very wrong,

Even the people she actually cared about.

 

But of course they had her wrong…

 

Right now I’m skating around the S-word.

Not saying it doesn’t make it go away.

Not saying it doesn’t make it hurt less.

In fact, not saying it makes it worse.

 

When you don’t say Suicide,

It’s because you don’t want to hurt people.

But what would hurt them?

They know far better than you do how she died.

All I know is they found her in a Shed.

A single sentence with an S-word that haunts me, compared to what must be uncountable.

 

The reason why people avoid using the word Suicide

Is that they think it implies something wrong.

About her, about her parents, about her school, maybe.

But when you try to spare people from it,

You only attach that blame, unspoken.

 

Now that she has made her decision,

There should be nothing skated over.

In the end, it was all up to her, and she decided.

Saying she died unexpectedly means people wonder what there is to hide.

 

Her life has tragically ended.

She has died.

She committed suicide.

No matter how you say it, it’s an awful thing, but that is not the end of it.

That is not all.

Don’t just move on.

It is time to hug your loved ones close, yes, and go on with life,

But this is not enough.

 

It is time to hug your loved ones close,

And explain to them that sometimes people hurt so badly,

They want to kill themselves.

This is called suicide,

And it is permanent.

 

Some people say Suicide is never okay.

But this is exactly why Suicide becomes synonymous with Shame.

Why people don’t Speak.

Why they can’t Speak.

 

Perhaps the statement “Suicide is always wrong” is true.

Regardless, it’s bad advice.

It doesn’t help.

If anything, it hurts people.

 

It certainly sickens me to think that despite all her pain,

She might have died feeling guilty,

Precisely because of statements like that.

 

My advice is this:

If you are going to make such a decision,

You cannot leave it up to yourself alone.

Some problems,

Pain of such enormity,

Cannot be left to be dealt with by a single person.

Once a decision like suicide is made,

There is no going back.

 

Suicide is a decision that hurts a great many people,

No matter how much you ask them not to hurt.

 

If you feel like you want to kill yourself,

It is not your fault.

It is not something to hide.

 

If you are going to commit suicide,

At least be sure it is what you want.

The only way to be sure is to talk with someone,

Because if you are hurting so much,

You aren’t making decisions at your full capacity.

 

If you are going to make such a permanent choice,

You deserve to make it when you are sure you want it.

 

I’m tired of people saying things that don’t help.

We can’t just be So Sorry.

So Sad.

We shouldn’t make Suicide an S-word,

And we shouldn’t think of suicides as S-words,

Reducing human beings to their last act,

And then sweeping them under the rug.

We shouldn’t try to help people by simply telling them it’s bad to commit suicide.

We shouldn’t shelter our children and the people we love from suicide so that one day,

When they are hurting, they don’t Speak,

And they feel alone,

Because maybe that’s how you’ll end up finding them.

 

All alone in a Shed.

Or what’s left of them, anyway.