Saturday, February 21, 2009

the thousand natural shocks


John D.'s picture
Originally uploaded by lauren.rabbit
Fewer than 20% of suicides leave a note.
...
Contained in this volume are 31 case studies -
1. brief case history
2. snapshot
3. photographic documentation of items from the pockets, found clutched in the hands, or arranged to be the last thing the deceased would see on this earth.

Of individuals who, feeling their lives had failed, ended them; and finding that words had failed, abandoned them.


Lauren Simonutti in her introduction to Drowning, Not Waving: 31 visual attempts at a justification for suicide.

Some of the spreads from the book are online at Flickr »

For the first time just now I counted the times that an individual's suicide or suicide attempt has touched my life. People dear to me; people dear to those who are dear to me.

Eight.

I doubt my proximity is anomalous. I suspect many of us have encountered suicide in one shape or another. But I can't recall a conversation I've had in the aftermath of a suicide or attempt that wasn't soaked with a burrowed kind of grief and a terrible loneliness.

via sidereal

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't help but wonder if it's because the "note" is often left long before the cataclysmic event. Many times the cry for help is long and echoing, but sadly falls on deaf ears. (Hence the burrowing grief and loneliness that wraps, like a cloak, around those left behind.)

Everyone's experience is different, of course, but that was mine.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, that was me. Wasn't actually trying to hide...

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