There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.
Sitting in the finally finished home office this morning. Peg is a miracle worker. If you'd seen this place when we spent our first night at Tara in this very space nine months ago, you'd know what I mean. It was simply hideous, all custard yellow and girlie-girl.
That's the view from where I'm sitting right now, but taken late yesterday afternoon. Now Slane is curled up in front of the radiator, because it's fifteen degrees outside and warmth is a premium product this morning.
I took this shot from over by the radiator, looking back at this desk. P admires her handiwork.
Well, it's not quite finished as I think of it. That chair next to P will be replaced in a few weeks by a more formal, appropriate piece of furniture. Oh, and drapes. There must be drapes. And sometime during the painting of this office the glass face of one of our antique prints was shattered and now needs to be replaced. Let's face it--the project that is Tara will never quite be finished, but it's a labor of love for both of us.
And yes, that's the 1619 Project on Amo Houghton's old trunk. I'm sure he'd be okay with it, but please don't tell any of our firebreathing MAGA neighbors down in the panhandle you saw it, or if the subject does come up just tell them we were building our pile for the next book-burning. It's all the rage in the South these days.
Glib attempts at humor aside, my heart feel heavy with the news that one of my students took her own life over the weekend. Does one name names at a moment like this? Her name will be beyond living memory soon enough, the same as the rest of us. But hers too soon.
I remember her as one of those souls who took both of my classes at Charleston. The school handed me responsibility for both ends of the intellectual spectrum: on the one hand I taught Commercial Law, the broccoli of the law school curriculum, a deontological trudge through the Uniform Commercial Code meant to prepare students for the bar exam. On the other extreme was Alternative Dispute Resolution, ADR, a holistic trip through the psychology of negotiation and ethics of mediation, with a sprinkling of law when we talked about the Federal Arbitration Act. If you'd taken my class, you might know today how the effects of mirror neurons make it easier to lie to someone who's had botox shots (feel free to look it up).
The law school mandated Commercial Law, so I got the chance to meet every student who passed through the doors, at one point managing two massive sections of 70+ students each, taught back-to-back. She was one of the first subjected to my uneven attempts to develop a pedagogical style, aping the best of my professors back at Georgia. How'd she do? I don't really remember, except to say she passed.
And apparently had a sufficiently positive experience that she and a posse of young ladies signed up for ADR later. I do remember her there, one of four or five who arrived in class together, sat together, worked on group projects together. They were funny, inquisitive, and endlessly positive. That was the energy of the time, and the gift law students give back to their faculty---an unflinching optimism that carries them through debt and doubt, until one day you're hugging their neck in their weird, poofy graduation caps and gowns, watching them and their loved ones stride into life with the sun high and their whole wonderful, painful future stretched in front of them.
One of the blessings of the age is that an old prof can follow his kids as they make their professional way, through the miracle of social media. I count probably thirty or so of my old students as "friends" on Facebook, and she was one of them. Her trajectory did not surprise me, because so many trod the same path. Marriage, kids, the excitement and terror of opening an office with one's name on both the sign and the line--of-credit. Buying a first home. Building a professional reputation.
Her narrative seemed better than most. Maybe it was having an autistic son that led her to become an advocate for children, and not six months ago I was reading in her local paper an account of her work protecting the rights of abused children. The article contained a clue to today, however, revealing that she was abused herself as a child. I didn't realize that when she was in my classes; I just remember a funny, brassy (is that word even okay anymore?), Yankee with a quick wit and an occasional wry grin.
Throughout the pandemic she became extremely active on social media, creating little video shorts making fun of life as a family lawyer, one of the toughest ways to make I living I can imagine. There were flashes of anger in some of the humor; another hint I guess.
Then about a month ago, silence. Maybe that will become of those "warning signs" we're all told to watch for and heed--when a daily Facebook poster suddenly goes absent, send that person a message and make sure they know someone cares, someone has noticed their absence.
Because the alternative may be the post I read yesterday, when another of my favorite students and a part of her circle, the wife of an orthodox rabbi in NYC, posted without naming names about the pain of losing a classmate and friend to suicide. I hate even writing the word. It feels profane.
I panicked a little, but chose not to message the poster and poke at that fresh wound. Instead I messaged a good friend with whom I'd served on the faculty, who is still there and has stayed close to his former students as have I.
At 3:30 this morning I rolled over, picked up my phone from the nightstand to check the time, and read his response with shock. Her? The funny, outgoing one with the beautiful family? That can't be right.
But it was. A beautiful soul is gone this morning. Our world, yours and mine, is diminished. I cannot even imagine.
And yet I can. I've had my epic lows over the years, valleys of depression and nihilistic resignation in the face of life's setbacks that put me right up against that place. I can't feel it now, can't touch it. I wish I could go back to my younger self and tell that person all things pass, the painful and the joyous. It's all just life, and sometimes life is damned hard.
If I'd been paying attention, perhaps I could've told her the same thing, even five days ago. She's beyond my hard-won wisdom now. With a little less solipsism, I may find the chance to help someone else before it's too late. We all should at least make the effort, and be there for each other. As I write this there's a brand new widower and two confused kids suffering unimaginable emotional pain because someone who popped up on my Facebook feed every day for months is no longer at the table, never heard whatever she needed to hear to hang in there one more day.
Her name was Theresa. She helped a lot of people by the looks of it, even if she couldn't help herself.
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