Suicide is rarely painless

Before I forget, I want to thank Andrea Blythe, Carl Anderson, Ben Garrison and DarkMoon for posting links to the site. This is how we grow.
And to remind you that you're always invited to add your thoughts to mine. We're in this together, and not for very long at that.

Orion is watching a Cibo Matto video and singing along. Sugar water. His toddler life is different enough from mine that I almost believe mine actually was black and white.

Earlier I got a phone message from Draven who was sitting in the rain somewhere in Illinois and fairly incohesive. There was another message from him after that one, even more jumbled, apologizing for the first one. I emailed him and reminded him about that all-important no drinking and dialing thing. And that he's my friend and I love him anyway. He lost a brother, who lost himself and ended it. His pain lives on, right there in Draven. TaDa.

My father was forty three when I was born. By the time I was ten, he seemed like an old man to me, as did everyone else over twenty. Did you know that most of us have the same number of heartbeats per lifetime? Elephants, finches, mice, people. I didn't know that, back then, but I went through a phase where I believed that every step I saved my dad would prolong his life a little. I was terrified of losing him. I was always jumping up to get things for him. I never told him why. He lived to seventy six. My mother died young, before she got her first wrinkle. She didn't kill herself, but she thought about it, a lot. She practically carried Death in her handbag, always checking to make sure he was still in there, with her lipstick and tissues.

I never met my father's mother, but I was told she was pretty, that people called her 'Pet' and that she sketched lovely pictures. I was told that one Monday she did the washing as usual and took it outside and hung it all up in the sunshine. It was a beautiful breezy day and she put the basket and pins neatly on the steps and, still in her apron, walked the length of the yard and stepped into the river and breathed it right in. My dad was five when that happened. He told me that she was wearing a yellow dress with little daisies on it. He must've been about three and a half feet tall. He would have known those little daisies pretty well. They looked a lot darker, wet.

I'm not convinced that people who suicide want to. Possibly, when someone is labeled as having failed an attempt a suicide, what they actually did was succeed in stopping themselves from committing an act they were drawn to by illness. Or they were rescued. Either way. Good on them.

Orion wants to dance. It sounds like a good idea to me.

G'night