On Christmas day 2008 a blogger took her life.
She wasn't someone I knew, but she was someone whose bright witty comments I'd seen on several blogs I read myself. Her loss has hit all those who loved her deeply and everywhere I go online I find more echoes and ripples of that love and grief. Not knowing her I have no idea why she made the choice she did, but I do know, looking around Blogger at the loving tributes others have written for her, that her being here made a positive difference in many lives and that can never be taken away; will never die.
When things like this happen the biggest question on everyone's minds is, "Why?" I don't think there are any simple answers to that, because I suspect there are a million answers, unique and different for every person who makes such a choice. I think some never intend to die, they just want someone to help them find a way to truly live. I think some people are running away from the unbearable, but others are running to something - running back to where we all came from; back to Home.
Ever since I read this terrible sad news a poem I love has been wandering through my mind. I'm not sure if it will make any sense to anyone, but I can't shut the poem out of my head. Sometimes that's just my brain being annoying, but other times that means it's something important - something I'm getting from somewhere else or for someone else. I am going to put it here for Suzanne, of Liquid Illuzion.
Prayer before Birth ~ by Louis MacNeice
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.
I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.
I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.
I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.
I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.
I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.
I found Suzanne to be a very loving person. But she couldn't show herself the love she showed others. Her fingerprints are all over many blogs.
ReplyDeleteSuzanne, like most of us, live our life in a constant state of chaos ... She had the unique ability to uplift others --- it took me a minute, but I discovered that she used her gift of bringing joy to others, to mask her own dark thoughts. I so loved this one, as she was a dear sister to my soul --- and yes, this poem helps me a lot Michelle, I thank you for posting this special tribute.
ReplyDeleteYou are a very special person --- and I so admire the work you do in connecting soul to soul.
I have read about her sad demise in other blogs even though I don't know her at all. I do know how she touches others and leave an impression in many's life. May she rest in peace.
ReplyDeleteVery, very sad. I just read through a bit of her blog and have been sitting here ever since, a million thoughts in my head, each without an answer, and inside a cold, hollow felling. I wonder how often it is that one can seem ok, but be full of loneliness and hurt, yet mask it so no one can see? I know I've stared into that abyss twice in my life. It's full of lies, but it doesn't look like it from the inside...poor woman.
ReplyDeleteI'm so sad for her kids and family.
That's quite a poem, M. I feel the anguish already even before being born...maybe that's why babies cry when they are born???
ReplyDeleteI didn't know Suzanne very well, but she visited my blog and I visited hers. She impressed me as a very kind person with a wonderful sense of humor. She also was very creative and did beautiful photography work. She will be missed. It is difficult to understand the desperation she must have felt, but we can never really experience life the way another does.
ReplyDeleteI think this is the perfect poem to post here now.
ReplyDeleteThanks
I'm really going to miss her.
I knew her, though not well. Not as well as some who have commented here at least.
ReplyDeleteNot nearly well enough.
I hear my own words echoed in yours here. I said shortly after Suzanne's death that some people genuinely want to die. For those, there's nothing you can do. They will find a way.
But I think that most don't really want to die, they just don't see a reason not to. Perhaps the one we knew as Liquid was one of these. Though to assume that puts us in the unenviable position of wondering if we might have been able to show her a reason not to put the gun to her head.
It saddens me to live in a world without her. Because that world is a poorer place than the one before it. But my real anguish comes from wondering what her thoughts were in those final moments. My tears fall knowing that someone who was only just becoming a friend sat alone on a Christmas Eve, so very desperate and lonely and sad that she saw no reason to go on.
And I think to myself, if only... if only I could have been there, if only I could have seen, if only I'd paused long enough to say the right thing.
But that kind of thinking is fruitless. Pointless even. It doesn't assuage the guilt or the loss.
But no life no matter how brief is ever in vain as long as those who are left behind remember.
And we do.
And we will.