h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A close friend of mine at work killed herself last week. I'm only posting this here because it's one of the few places on the 'net that I am still anonymous. Is suicide a 'permanent solution to a temporary problem'? Or do some people really have problems that are so fundamental that taking one's own life is the only rational response?

And does anybody around here really engage with this kind of issue, or are they too busy talking about nonsense? We'll see, won't we?

Cool old Guy with some issues
"First of all, sorry for your loss.

Permanent Solution to Temporary Problem

I doubt if suicide is a _solution_ in any case.

And if the _temporary_ is recurring enough it can be seen/ felt/ experienced as permanent. "

It's no solution at all for those that are left, but (I read) the person who does it really believes that everyone else will be better off for their leaving.

Or that nobody will mourn their loss. This was a woman in her forties who had been through a lot recently: she'd not long buried her own brother who died from a brain tumour. But she will no doubt leave a huge hole in the lives of her remaining family.

I'm still not sure how I've reacted to it all. The most galling aspect about it is that I can't really remember our last conversation. Not thinking of course that it was our last, just another in the occasional ones we had when for the most part, she talked about her issues and I listened.

Every incident is a potential last one, but that doesn't give every incident special significance.

As Jorge Luis Borges out it

There is a line of Verlaine that I will not be able to remember.
There is a street nearby that is widowed of my footsteps,
There is a mirror that has seen me for the last time,
There is a door that I have closed until the end of the world.
Among the books of my library (I am looking at them)
There is one that I will never open now.
This summer I will be fifty years old;
Death is wearing me away, relentless.