Tag: suicide

I can never drive my car over a bridge without thinking of suicide.
I can never look at a lake or an ocean without thinking of suicide.

Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship

The mass suicide of Heaven’s Gate
Heaven’s Gate was a UFO religious Millenarian group. It was founded by Marshall Applewhite in the early 1970s. He believed that the planet earth would be “recycled” (wiped clean, renewed, refurbished and rejuvenated), and that the only chance to survive was to leave it immediately. On the 26th of March the Comet Hale–Bopp could be seen in the sky and was at its brightest. Applewhite claimed that a spacecraft was trailing the comet and convinced 38 followers to commit suicide so that their souls could board the supposed craft. They believed that after their deaths a UFO would take their souls to another “level of existence above human.”

The members took phenobarbital mixed with pineapple, washed down with vodka. Additionally, they secured plastic bags around their heads after ingesting the mix to induce asphyxiation. Authorities found the dead lying neatly in their own bunk beds, faces and torsos covered by a square, purple cloth. Each member carried a five-dollar bill and three quarters in their pockets- said to be for interplanetary toll. All 39 were dressed in identical black shirts and sweat pants, brand new black-and-white Nike Decades athletic shoes, and armband patches reading “Heaven’s Gate Away Team.” The adherents, between the ages of 26 and 72, are believed to have died in three groups over three successive days, with remaining participants cleaning up after each prior group’s deaths.

The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.

David Foster Wallace

Suicide Notes
These suicide notes were gathered at the coroners’ offices by a suicidologist/psychiatrist who asked to be anonymous. He edited identifying details out of the compiled manuscript, and he changed the names. But the text of each letter plus the age and sex given are real. All these people did kill themselves.
The notes:

– Single female, age 21
My dearest Andrew,
It seems as if I have been spending all my life apologizing to you for things that happened whether they were my fault or not. I am enclosing your pin because I want you to think of what you took from me every time you see it. I don’t want you to think I would kill myself over you because you’re not worth any emotion at all. It is what you cost me that hurts and nothing can replace it.

– Single male, age 51
Sunday 4:45 PM. Here goes
To who it may concern
Though I am about to kick the bucket I am as happy as ever. I am tired of this life so am going over to see the other side.
Good luck to all.
Benjamin P.

– Married male, age 45
My darling,
May her guts rot in hell — I loved her so much.
Henry.

– Divorced female, age 61
You cops will want to know why I did it, well, just let us say that I lived 61 years too many.
People have always put obstacles in my way. One of the great ones is leaving this world when you want to and have nothing to live for.
I am not insane. My mind was never more clear. It has been a long day. The motor got so hot it would not run so I just had to sit here and wait. The breaks were against me to the last.
The sun is leaving the hill now so hope nothing else happens.

– Married male, age 74
What is a few short years to live in hell. That is all I get around here. No more I will pay the bills. No more I will drive the car. No more I will wash, iron & mend any clothes. No more I will have to eat the leftover articles that was cooked the day before. This is no way to live. Either is it any way to die. Her grub I can not eat. At night I can not sleep. I married the wrong nag-nag-nag and I lost my life.
W.S.
to the undertaker
We have got plenty money to give me a decent burial. Don’t let my wife kid you by saying she has not got any money.
Give this note to the cops.
Give me liberty or give me death.
W.S.

– Married male, age 45
Dear Claudia,
You win, I can’t take it any longer, I know you have been waiting for this to happen. I hope it makes you very happy, this is not an easy thing to do, but I’ve got to the point where there is nothing to live for, a little bit of kindness from you would of made everything so different, but all that ever interested you was the dollar. It is pretty hard for me to do anything when you are so greedy even with this house you couldn’t even be fair with that, well it’s all yours now and you won’t have to see the Lawyer anymore. I wish you would you give my personal things to Danny, you couldn’t get much from selling them anyway, you still have my insurance, it isn’t much but it will be enough to take care of my debts and still have a few bucks left.
You always told me that I was the one that made Sharon take her life, in fact you said I killed her, but you know down deep in your heart it was you that made her do what she did, and now you have two deaths to your credit, it should make you feel very proud.
Good Bye Kid
P.S. Disregard all the mean things I’ve said in this letter, I have said a lot of things to you I didn’t really mean and I hope you get well and wish you the best of everything.
Cathy — don’t come in.
Call your mother, she will know what to do.
Love
Daddy
Cathy don’t go in the bedroom.

– Married female, age 50
When a “man” doesn’t know where to take his wife — then she isn’t a wife any more —
I hope you will be “free” to take anyone any place and I’m sure you will not have any trouble as to places —
Please don’t tell my mother the truth — your whole tribe is partly responsible for this — from your mother on down — hope they are satisfied.

– Single male, age 13
I know what I am doing. Annette found out. Ask Cara. I love you all.
Bill.

– Widowed female, age 52 (Her husband died three months before.)
Please tell Ron’s folks I love them very much but my heart breaks when I see or hear from them. Also all our friends especially Irene and Charles and Ella I love them also. Forgive me for not seeing them.
Everyone seems so happy and I am so alone. Amy. I wanted to visit you but I am going around in a dream. Alice I wanted to help you paint but how could I with a broken heart. And my head aches so much any more my nerves are ready to break and what would happen if they did.
You will say I am crazy and I can’t go on this way just half living.
I loved this house once but now it is so full of memories I can’t stay here. I have tried to think of some way to go on but can’t. Am so nervous all the time — I loved Ron too much but is that a sin, with him gone I have nothing. Oh I have the girls and family but they don’t fill the vacant spot left in my heart …
Xmas is coming I can’t go on I’m afraid I would break down. I’ve thought of this so many times. I love every one but I can’t be one of you any more. Please think kindly of me and forgive me. I only hope this is fatal then I can rest and no more trouble to any one. Do with Lisa whats best I know she has been a lot of worry to mama and I’m sorry. I tried to keep the yard up that seemed to be the only comfort I had. I loved it but that wasn’t anything. I’ve lost every thing so why go on. I worshipped Ron and when he went I lost my whole world and everything.
I’m so tired and lonely.
There goes a siren. Oh how can I stand being left. I need to go to a Dr. but I am afraid. I’m so cold.
Mother Love, Louise.

– Married male, age 40
Jimmy!
Remember what I told you and always respect, protect and obey your mother and always remember that I love you so much. I am going to leave you forever because I am too sick to go on. God bless you my Son and when your time comes to go to Heaven you will find your ole Pappy waiting for you.
Daddy.

– Single female, age 16
Dear Mother & Dad,
Please forgive me. I have tried to be good to you both. I love you both very much and wanted to get along with you both. I have tried.
I have wanted to go out with you and Dad but I was always afraid to ask for I always felt that the answer would be no.
And about Bud, I want to dismiss every idea about him. I don’t like him any more than a companion, for a while I thought I did but no more, in fact, I am quite tired of him, as you know, I get tired of everyone after a while.
And mother, I wish that you hadn’t called me a liar, and said I was just like Hap. As I’m not. It is just that I am afraid of you both at times, but I love you both very much.
So Long
Your loving daughter
that will always
love you
Mary
P.S. Please forgive me. I want you to, and don’t think for one minute that I haven’t appreciate everything you’ve done.

On May 1, 1947  Evelyn McHale leapt to her death from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. She had landed supine on a parked limousine and came to rest in an attitude that suggested peaceful sleep. The photo is often referred to as “The most beautiful suicide.” 

In the late 1880s, the body of a 16-year-old girl was pulled from the Seine. She was apparently a suicide, as her body showed no marks of violence, but her beauty and her enigmatic smile led a Paris pathologist to order a plaster death mask of her face.

In the romantic atmosphere of fin de siècle Europe, the girl’s face became an ideal of feminine beauty. The protagonist of Rainer Maria Rilke’s 1910 novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge writes, “The mouleur, whose shop I pass every day, has hung two plaster masks beside his door. [One is] the face of the young drowned woman, which they took a cast of in the morgue, because it was beautiful, because it smiled, because it smiled so deceptively, as if it knew.”

Ironically, in 1958 the anonymous girl’s features were used to model the first-aid mannequin Rescue Annie, on which thousands of students have practiced CPR. Though the girl’s identity remains a mystery, her face, it’s said, has become “the most kissed face of all time.”