…the dead—and the living who live in the wake and churn of the world and words around them—deserve compassion, not condemnation. The least I can do—the least we can do—is honor them with the small gift of our words most carefully chosen.
Suicide—like all of death’s many shades—defies language. I find the impulse to self-erasure, in myself or in others, largely beyond explanation: too deep, too wide, too much for my meager words. The act of suicide exerts a kind of gravitational pull toward the permanent silence at its center.
This is to acknowledge that there is ultimately something unknown and unknowable at the heart of suicide. As David Foster Wallace wrote:
~~The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise.~~ Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
But while speechless communion has its place, alone and with others, it is not enough. Silence becomes indistinguishable from loneliness…and that’s a territory altogether too close to a desolate void whose depths cannot be sounded and from which our cries cannot be heard.
And so we come back to words, with all their weaknesses, and how we employ them in the face of the ineffable and in defiance of the pressure that inexplicability brings to bear toward euphemism in describing both the act and those most affected by it.
Consider the common phrase “commit suicide.” While not the only, or even the first, meaning, the word “commit” has a negative connotation for many people, invoking the image of a transgression, of crime or a sin. I feel many things about those we’ve lost and I too often wish for one of those supposedly untranslatable terms that could encompass all the feelings that come with that losing: the grief, anger, nostalgia, envy and hopeless, illogical appeals to divinities I don’t even believe in. But what I don’t feel—what I never feel—is the shame or blame that comes with sin or crime.
Better, and more accurate to say than “committed suicide,” I’ve decided, is that someone “died by suicide.” I’m not judging those who don’t feel the same, but choosing a small act of generosity that at worst won’t be noticed is one way of keeping to, or continuing to try to find, the most productive path. And this little linguistic kindness also pushes back at the encroaching blandness and blindness of euphemism. As poet, novelist and philosopher Jennifer Hecht put it in a discussion that included writing about losing her brother:
[committed suicide] is a calcified phrase, that is, I don’t think people quite hear its components any more. And whenever that happens I’m in favor of changing it up. Lately I avoid using “commit suicide” because I know that some people have said they don’t like it, and I’m not interested in distressing anyone over the issue. I think “dying by suicide” is better for a different reason too: because it’s more blunt and doesn’t let death hide behind other words.
Another opportunity for clarity, a way to crack the unconsciously layered veneer of routine language and let some light in, is found in how we refer to those closest to the act.
I’m a suicide survivor in both confusing senses of the phrase: I’ve survived, surprised, my own attempts and surprisingly find myself still here when too many friends, acquaintances and heroes are not. But for those who find themselves members of just one of these groups of the left-behind, this jumbling of terms can lead to confusing, occasionally hurtful situations.
So, as others have, including the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, I am instead choosing to use the term “survivor of suicide loss” when referring to the friends and family of those who have died by suicide.
Even more important—and if this is selfish, so be it—limiting the term survivor to those who have survived a suicidal crisis and found their way to a light in that particular darkness gives them, and in some sense allows them to reclaim, a simple, honorable term of identity for themselves.
Despite my all-too-extensive experience with suicide, this kind of deliberate language change isn’t easy. I struggle with the unfamiliarity of the “singular they” and forget preferred pronouns sometimes too, despite my best intentions.
But the dead—and the living who live in the wake and churn of the world and words around them—deserve compassion, not condemnation. The least I can do—the least we can do—is honor them with the small gift of our words most carefully chosen.
This is a show devoted to language but, in this case, I couldn’t find the words—my own or others—that felt complete. Instead I’d like to carve out a few moments of silence for those whose loss I live with every day, and for you, in a spirit very much the opposite of “dead air,” to consider your own. For Tim, John, David, Frank, Chuck, Chris, Landis, Lew, Elliott, Kirk, Mark…and Sarah:
{{silence long enough to be uncomfortable or to settle into as a salve– 15 seconds?}}
{{outro}}
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