Reflection stimulated by the suicide of Isabella

I have been set thinking about the end of it all. A number of things set it off. In a recent conversation, I talked about many things: personal things, things sometimes not shared easily, or at all. But, all the time, I wanted to talk about death: my puzzlement at it, the mystery of non-being, the ridiculousness of thinking about no longer being present, the permanence of it, the irrevocability of it. My companion said that death did not trouble him. It troubles me, although I can see how he is not troubled. For me, this created a gulf between us — I felt I did not know him — and I wanted to bridge it.

As we sat together, two things come into my mind — both stories from the past. I imagined that re-telling them would help me, would somehow bring something out which would help me with this burden, for it is indeed that — a heavy, dark burden under the weight of which I continually struggle. The first is a story about a boy whose name, in death, is forgotten. The second is about a terrible thing I did when telling of the death of another. Neither of them create a shape. They are simply two things which inhabit my mind — two things connected to death.

But I said nothing of these things.

Now, several weeks after our meeting, I hear from my companion of the suicide of Isabella. Someone from the past, someone’s first true love, a beautiful girl with a beautiful name, and intelligent — perhaps too intelligent — and now, lost in the past, and dead, and worse than that, only recently, and by the hand of Isabella herself. And like all those that die, there is something left undone with her: differences never made good, things that went wrong excluded, time spent otherwise and in her absence, promises for the future foundered on mistrust and suspicion, the very closeness that creates separateness mistaken for true difference. And, on the face of it, correcting these things would have made no difference to her terrible death. But, in truth, correcting those things would have made such a difference. Correcting those things would have changed the world, the shape of things, the way my companion thought, the way that Isabella would have thought before her death — the universe. What a terrible thing. To know that she could have thought differently. Tears well in my eyes at the idea of it. And now, she is beyond reclaim, she can learn no more, she cannot tell more, or be made to feel better. There is no sweetness that will make her smile. She is in the state of what is irrevocable. Nothing can be corrected for her. Poor Isabella. It is so sad. Heartbreakingly sad. It is what sadness is.

And I think of another lost one, someone lost in my own life. A relationship as distant to me now as Isabella will become. Her name was Chrissy. She is dead now. Consumed by a cancer — slowly over several years. We had been lovers. She was so good to look at — she cheered my eyes — she had a broad smile, long blonde hair, she was filled with sexuality, brimming with life, she did not hold back on laughter or the joy of life. She did not love me exclusively. That did not matter. But she loved me and I loved her, and that did matter. And she, like Isabella, is dead. Lost. Beyond reclaim. And we did not see each other for twenty years, or more. We came apart. We did not fall out. We did not hate each other. But we let our love go. Let it run through our fingers. Dribble away. And I did not know she was dying, that she was ill with an incurable disease. And she knew she was. I was not available to see her in those last months, to touch her, to allow her to remember what we had been together. To assure her that I would continue to think of her. I let her down, and I did not even know I had. Recently, I spoke to her husband about her death. He talked about it all. He allowed me into what had happened to her. And I saw her in my mind — wasted and dying — and I was streaming with tears. My lover had gone. That bright, sexual vibrance had been eradicated, forever.

And I know that, in some part, I understand what my companion is telling me about Isabella. And I am gratified that I know of it. Not because it has some similarity, so that I do not feel so lonely in it — not that at all. It is that, in some way, I feel knowing of Isabella makes her feel less lonely. That my knowledge of her adds to what she has been, makes her life a little more, her death a little more tragic, her reason for taking it a little less sound. And in thinking this, I feel as if I have touched Chrissy’s hand, not long before she died.

And the stories I had wanted to tell my companion, come flooding back into my mind, each filling me with sadness about these two terrible deaths. Terrible because they are deaths, terrible because they were lovers, terrible because now they are known by one more.

I was barely more than a child myself — in my last teenage year. And in this year, I came across a boy with no name. He arrived in an ambulance, dead. The shaking head of a doctor, his stethoscope swinging at his neck, announced this child’s departure from life. I carry this boy from the ambulance. His face is smashed — hit by a speeding car as he had run excitedly into the road to open a gate for his father. He is still warm, his blood still shines, it still dribbles wet on his body. I lay him down on a cold slab, his first place after death. What a place for a child to be? I look at him, broken, wounded, unlike how he had been, unlike how any of us should be — and dead. We are alone — two violated children. I push my hand into his trouser pocket. His limp form gives under the strain of my invading hand. He could almost wake and sit up. I take out the contents: a piece of string, a single copper coin, a small penknife — perhaps a gift from his father — a handkerchief. I lay the objects by his blood-soaked hand, on the cold slab. All the time, his ruined face stares upwards, looking at the white ceiling. Perhaps he is suspecting me if stealing his belongings — all he had? I can bear his company no longer. Should I pat his head? Should I let him know that someone has sympathy for his death? I leave him, knowing that I am the last person to feel his warmth, the last one to see the natural colour on the backs of his hands. I leave him alone, isolated, quiet, cooling, bloodied, staring. And I feel some of his image, the picture of him in my mind, stays there, in that cold, white room. Poor comfort though, for the younger child — a trickle of anonymous consciousness hovering there in lieu of life.

Back in the light, in a room, trying to disguise some of the boy’s blood on my hand. I ask an innocent question. ‘What is his name?’ But there is no answer, he is not known. Even his parents cannot locate him in their minds. They cannot think of the name they had given him as a baby. They cannot think of the name they had called to him, addressed him by — sometimes severely — admonished him, told him that they loved him, that they would always treasure him. He is a boy with no name.

And less than a year has passed, and I am hardly any older. And the boy with no name is an icon of perfection for his lonely parents.

And there is a disaster, a fire. More than twenty patients trapped in a locked ward in a psychiatric hospital are burned to death. Screaming at the door, they choke and shriek with pain. Confused by the world, unable to cope, they die in the place they have been shut away for their safety — terror has beget terror.

And I travel to tell the husband of one of these screaming deaths. A young woman, only kept in for the night because it was too far to travel home that day. Only shut in because there was no appropriate room elsewhere. And now she is dead. And I know it.

And I find the husband. He is the bailiff of a farm, and lives in a caravan, away from things, in open countryside. It is four in the morning, just getting light. Yellow flickers shine dully from the windows of his caravan — a humble dwelling place. I hear voices inside. I knock on the door. He has the radio on. He welcomes me in with a smile — a tired, early morning smile, a rustic smile, a friendly smile. I go in. He claps his hand on my shoulder — as though I need his sympathy. He tells me he knows all about it — the fire. He has heard it on the radio. It is terrible, he says, terrible. What makes me assume that he knows? Do I simply want to assume that he knows? Am I trying to avoid the responsibility of having to tell him? Or is it a genuine mistake? Do I see in his eyes, in his brightness, something which does not speak of death, something that speaks instead of life and relief, of future? I do not know. He makes me a cup of tea. I nod and say thanks, and I say nothing of the death of his wife. He has heard it already. I am saved. I do not have to break the most awful of news.

We drink our tea. Mist rises across the fields. It is a glorious morning. I look at this man — big built, tanned, unshaved, strong — and I can see that there is something missing in him. He is not touched by death. He is relieved. He is happy. He is in safety. His world has been protected. I have protected it for him because I have said nothing. And I realise he is wrong, and I am wrong. The moment of realisation sweeps over me. I shiver. Everything seems dark. I am filled with anticipation, almost excitement. Then a moment of dread, and the moment stretches out — it will not go away. The world goes still. The birds go quiet. The sun hangs, red and billowing, low in the morning sky. There is nothing I can do. I am frozen. Then I say. I do it. I speak the news. I blurt it out. And everything is wrong. Everything is out of place — completely out of place: out of place in time, out of place in perspective, out of place in the way that relief should not precede devastation.

And in that stillness — that darkness, that moment of quiet terror, that perversion — there is something else. Like death itself, there is something which pervades everything. It has a strange quality: scented, heavy, oily. It is the reality of realisation, of knowing. Thrown into contrast against the existence of relief, it is the vivid brightness of realisation. The relief that went before it, accentuates it so much. It makes it shine brighter than the sun which again is continuing to rise. It brightens the world. It makes it cower with an overpowering flash. It makes everything so clear. It overshadows the sun. My heart is filled with tears, as I watch the tears before me.

And not longer after, like Isabella, this poor soul killed himself. Blew his head off with a shotgun.

And more time has passed. And I am much older, and these stories are deep within me. And I sit again with my companion, and this time I tell him the stories. There is silence. I ask him a question. He listens. ‘Do I know you?’, I enquire, as if I am someone passing a familiar face in the street. ‘Do I know you?’ He smiles at me. ‘Yes, you do.’ he replies. ‘You know me through Isabella.’