8. The Funny Thing About Suicide.

I was listening to the radio this morning and there was a piece about a short story competition. I don't know what the story ("How to Get Away With Suicide" by Jackie Kay) is like, but it set in motion a train of thought that started as I was listening to the interview.
Mention was made of how suicide is a taboo subject, which I have found to be true, and even censor myself regularly on it (just not here, which is a relief). As I was getting ready for work I found myself making my mental check list of ticks and crosses, agreement and disagreement, against what was being said. Often, when suicide is mentioned - especially on radio phone-ins and on TV talk shows - there are more crosses than ticks in my mind's eye and the irritation and anger wells. But in this case author seemed sensitive towards her subject and interested in confronting the more difficult aspects of human life and relationships.
Only a short section of the story was read out . It's about a man who has just left his family - so far so believeable - and is looking for the perfect way to kill himself yet make it look like an accident - and here we enter the realm of fiction. In order to approach a subject as "difficult" and taboo as suicide the author talked about using black humour. It's not a new thing of course. In fact, in film suicide is either a tragic (yet somehow romantic) end to a life - or a way of eliciting a guilt-ridden laugh. The recent film "Little Miss Sunshine" springs to mind, in which one of the main characters (a gay, Proust-reading, scholar snubbed by lover for another) fails at his suicide attempt and (ironically) is the character who the viewer most identifies with as the rest of his road-tripping family are completely bonkers. He is depressed, but he is amusing and self-aware in his depression - something most truly depressed people are not.

I felt a little let down when the humour side was mentioned - listening to the radio article I had started to hope for something that might resonate with me, that might show that someone understood and was explaining to others a little of what it means for someone to end their own life and why it might be that some people do this, what state they might be in. Certainly not lucid enough to cunningly choose a way of doing it that would look like an accident (thus sparing their family and friends somehow?).

I can understand. I think that this suicide-for-laughs approach allows writers and artists access to a subject that would otherwise be out of their reach. The seriousness of suicide is what makes it so * . The complete and utter misery of it and the misery it inflicts would not make easy reading or viewing for most people - authors must sweeten the pill somehow in order to use it in their stories, otherwise it would simply be too much. Most stories and films require both conflict and resolution, but suicide can never give us any resolution. It is a story that must remain open ended, without even a full stop, simply space and ?
The rest we must make up ourselves.