
Last week my son walked into my room and woke me up. He'd been on FacePlant, and seen something that put him in shock. I'd never seen such an expression on his face.
He had just read that a good friend of ours had chosen to end her own life.
I hugged him hard until he was ready to let go, and told him to come talk to me when he was ready. That is another story, not to be told here.
Other friends called or messaged, asking if I was okay. "What a shock" wrote one. "Such a horrible surprise" said another. But it wasn't. Not to me. The only shock was that it was that day, and no surprise at all.
The friend in question had been my housemate in college. Many such friendships drift apart over the years after, but we didn't. I knew what was going on in her life. I knew how bleak her perception of the world had become.
She had tried to suicide in July or August 2019, posting her farewell note on FacePlant; no fewer than 8 of her friends called the local P.D. to check on her; a couple called her husband to let him know. One friend, who was local, drove over when no one answered the phone. We remembered her as she had been, and thought - hoped - that if we could hold that mirror up for her long enough, she might be able to see herself again. It wasn't that I didn't think she had every right to make that choice; she did. (That was not a popular position to take.) But I, at least, hoped that with time and support, she might find herself again.
A bunch of us went to OVFF (filk con) in October, and another friend cornered me, worried about her. I told her that we were going to lose N.; that what she had taken from the experience of being stopped wasn't that we cared, but that she had made mistakes in executing her plan. N was at the con, but didn't sing - didn't even bring her guitar along. One of her songs was up for an award; she insisted that the only reason anyone would have voted for it was pity. I sat and talked to her for several hours, as did other people, but it wasn't enough. Nothing anyone else could give her was enough. To me, at least it was horrifyingly obvious.
Her funeral was yesterday. I went; it was a four hour drive and required a night in a hotel, which I hadn't done since Covid hit. I've been insanely cautious since this first started, but this trip was necessary. My almost Daughter-in-Law took care of my mom so that I could go. The funeral was outside, but social distance didn't really happen; we were masked, but needed the comfort of each other. N, who thought she had few friends, had 100 people come to her funeral, some from as far away as California. She had thought her husband was ashamed of her; the first thing he said, trying to talk about her, was that it was easy to be proud of her. She was an author, a musician, a baking instructor - the list goes on. Before depression took hold of her, she was full of joy and a wicked sense of humor.
I had been concerned because I knew what the Orthodox attitude toward suicide had been in 1930. My grandfather's oldest sister had killed herself at age 19. She was not buried in the Jewish cemetery; she was buried outside the fence, to one side of the gate. Because she had taken her own life, she was not buried in consecrated ground. There was and is no marker for her. I never saw my grandfather say kaddish for her. I had to push to get anyone to tell me her name; essentially, she was erased. I didn't want that for N.
But the rabbi addressed the issue squarely, saying that a person who commits a sin under coercion is automatically forgiven, and that coercion can be internal in the form of intolerable pain. As far as he was concerned, N had been driven to that point, not that she had chosen to go there. So she was buried with full ritual, inside the cemetery. I was grateful. He did a good job with the whole funeral, but that in particular was well done.
The friend I'd spoken to at OVFF came up to me as soon as I arrived, burying her (masked) face in my shoulder. "You were right" she said. "It sucks that you were right." And it does.