Snapshots, 4th March 2025
It was the first time my world collided with suicide. Of course I had encountered the concept before, some a little too familiarly; a colleague of my parents, her brother had put himself in the canal or maybe the river. His Dad turned his back for a minute and he took the car keys and left never to come home. My mother explained that scenario to me, she didn’t keep secrets like that. My aunt’s brother had done similar, he wasn’t found for 6 weeks. I was glad after I didn’t remember that detail until it came up in conversation years later. There are snap shots in my mind of that awful empty day, the cheery daffodils, my happy baby, the stones in the car park, the orange of the search and rescue boat, the bald head of my friend’s friend who I knew was a diver, the silence, there are no words on a day like that. I can’t remember how I found out that morning, who told me? Of course it wasn’t the first time, it was the fourth, it wasn’t a shock in the same way that it was...