Enigma

This piece was written in frustration at the ways in which many people, including significantly, those in my workplace, treat suicide and grief.

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Suicide. So many words are said. So many tears are shed. Relentless rumours beat their dark wings – an unkindness of ravens. Speculation, stage-whispered behind closed doors and thin office walls is painful. Platitudes stick in the throat. They peck at the bereaved. Workplace groups batten down in reproach. The grieving are unfriended, deleted. Work becomes a battleground; a fight to be heard; to still do one’s job with the squeeze of grief shaping a new reality.

Questions hang, nooses in the air. How did he do it? Who found him? Were there any warning signs? And the worst question of all: Were there claw marks at his neck? Weighed down and hollow, the bereaved are saturated with the sudden surfacing sorrows of others: a baby born still, an abortion, a sister’s murder and the suicide of an elderly father.

Still cloaked as a sin, suicide is both stigma and enigma. Those around the bereaved stop to stare; to rubber-neck at their anguish. People debate whether to discuss it. They don’t want to glorify that final decision: the tipping of the mind, of a solitary chair in a suburban garage. Nothing to be seen here- just the door barred and the music turned up loud. They fear the copy-cats. A cat, though, has nine lives. My son, only 24 years when he died, had only one and nothing but everything to live for.

By Lynda Scott Araya

From: New Zealand