April may not be the cruellest month, but today was the cruellest day

Of all the pieces I have ever written this is the one I don't want to write. Over the weekend my father got sick. He was rushed to the hospital early this morning, and after some tests, a CAT scan and some other tests, he is resting comfortably and will be in hospital for a few days. For a little while, we thought it was touch and go.

On a younger person, they would have had tests, been hydrated and sent home. On an elderly person, they stay in to make sure all systems are go. He is in some discomfort but he will be ok.

Not so for one of my favorite readers, Jenn. I won't use her last name, suffice to say she lived on the West coast, and was always astute in her comments, and wrote the most marvelous emails to me on the side. She was a suicide survivor, and like me, was physically hurt from one of her attempt and took some time to heal. My last email from her was on April 1, when she was worried about my own struggles with the proverbial black dog, and how I was doing everything in my own personal power not to go into that good night.

About an hour ago I got a phone call and an email from two separate people telling me that Jenn gave into the Black Dog this weekend and left this sphere. I don't know any thing more than that, and won't until I get a promised letter from her. I do know this, she was so depressed that a friend of hers came up from the Mid-West to visit so she wouldn't be alone, and she had her cats, and had just gotten back together with her boyfriend.

I don't condemn her. I understand what it was it's like to be at that point and want to jump. Maybe she wanted to succeed or maybe she didn't. A. Alvarez in his seminal work " The Savage God" makes a salient point that the Sylvia Plath he knew didn't want to suicide when she did, it was a cry for help to Ted Hughes she wanted him back and she was homesick and over-whelmed with two small children. Alvarez is convinced Plath misjudged the gas by comparing UK gas to US gas and makes a convincing argument that Plath simply miscalculated the gas equation.

Maybe that is what happened to my friend. I just hope that where ever she is now she is at peace.

Shantih, Shantih, Shantih.

A Call To Poets: Stay Alive

So Carolyn Kellogg writes in the Los Angeles Times Books section. She reminds of of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, John Berryman, and Rachel Wetzsteon, who recently suicided at the age of 42.

Writer Jennifer Michael Hecht, who teaches at the New School, knew Wetzsteon; her death got her thinking about artists grappling with suicide. "I’m issuing a rule," she writes. "You are not allowed to kill yourself.

Some part of you doesn’t want to end it all, and I’m talking to her or him, to that part of you. I’m throwing you a rope, you don’t have to explain it to the monster in you, just tell the monster it can do whatever it wants, but not that. Later we’ll get rid of the monster, for now just hang on to the rope. I know that this means a struggle from one second to the next, let alone one day at a time. Know that the rest of us know that among the faces we have met there are some right now who can barely take another minute of the pain and uncertainty. And we are in the room with you, going from one moment to the next, in whatever condition you manage to do it. Sobbing and useless is great! Sobbing and useless is a million times better than dead. A billion times. Thank you for choosing sobbing and useless over dead... Don’t kill yourself. Suffer here with us instead. We need you with us, we have not forgotten you, you are our hero. Stay.

Hat tip to Flawedplan- of WritheSafely Blog.... thank you.

Picture is of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. I don't know if the baby is Frieda or Nicholas, who suicided last year....