New topic, new thoughts, old questions

Someone died yesterday.

A lot of someones died yesterday, but this one was someone I knew. Not someone I knew well – hardly at all, actually – but she was the daughter of my friend, a beloved of others close to me, a member of my religious community. She was very young, not yet 30.

And she chose to die.

A death that touches ones own life is always hard to handle emotionally. A friend’s or acquaintance’s suicide is hardest of all. As one friend said, you are left wondering if you could or should have done something that might have helped. Made one more phone call, offered one more prayer, written an encouraging email, listened better, insisted more, found a more effective way to counsel. Or in my case, just taken a minute to meet her and talk to her the few times over the last several years that we were in the same room.

She had a history of deep, debilitating, clinical depression, along with a painful chronic illness, and had attempted suicide before, so her family and close friends know that there is probably nothing they could have done to change her chosen destiny, and no way she could ever have what most of us consider a normal life – marriage, children, career. And for many of them, and for me, there is a strong belief – a certainty – that she is not gone at all, has simply abandoned her physical body and chosen to go on to the next part of her life now rather than later. A part of life that does not include the continual pain her body caused.

So regrets and sadness and disbelief and anger and relief and love and hope are all mixed up together in our minds and hearts as we awake to face another day in this first part of our lives, the part we live in our own bodies.

She was someone I hardly knew. But I know her mother, and was honored to be given the opportunity to listen to her in a late night phone conversation.

I know her step-father, the only one in the family who saw the body – because the police insisted that someone had to do it – and now carries that image in a special place of pain all his own.

I know her one-time baby sitter, who watched her grow up and thought of her as “my baby,” and was fortunate to be able to visit that friend in the hospital to tell her what had happened in person and sit with her while she talked out her feelings and prayed.

I know her grandmother, a woman I greatly admire for her fortitude in dealing with tests and for her loving spirit and diligent work ethic.

I know her grandfather, a man confined to a wheelchair due to his own debilitating disease which started when he was much younger, who always offers jokes and smiles to the rest of us able-bodied types who take ease of movement and independence for granted.

I know her best friend, who is pregnant with a first child, and know the friend's mother and father, whose grief for the death must be mingled with concern for their own daughter’s health during this emotional time.

I know my daughter, who called me crying to tell me the news, and later sat in my kitchen and talked with me about the thin veils, as our religious writings call them, that come between those of us who still inhabit bodies and those who don’t. And about the times when some of us see or hear or feel, however quickly, through those veils and become aware of our loved ones on the other side, and of their happiness in that world.

And I know that many of us, upon hearing of this death, and the manner of this death, will be concerned about the condition of her soul. We are Bahá'ís, and Bahá'u'lláh called death a “messenger of joy.” But what of suicide? Is that a different case?

Bahá'ís don’t have ministers, we have elected governing bodies. I’m one of the secretaries of Urbana’s Spiritual Assembly, and so in another late night phone call with the other secretary, we consulted on what we could and should be doing. And we found a statement made by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá'u'lláh’s son and designated Interpreter, about another’s suicide. “…rest assured.” He said. “[The deceased] will be immersed in the ocean of pardon and forgiveness and will become the recipient of bounty and favor.”

Someone died yesterday.

I went to bed thinking about her death, and woke up thinking about it. And now I know what blogs are for.

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