I scan the newspaper every day for stories about suicide because I like to think it reminds me of her, but it doesn’t. I do it for me. I like ideas. I try to get them from anywhere. I read about another man stepping in front of the Caltrain in Palo Alto or Mountain View and I try to fill in the blanks about the things that must have been going through his mind when he did it, and just before then.
“Bob was going to lose his job, so rather than give his boss the satisfaction of firing him, rather than give his brother yet another opportunity to call him a failure, Bob took one step off the platform and fell in front of the train as it pulled into the station. He was crushed and died instantly, but his last thought was a satisfied HA.”
“Samantha thought moving to San Francisco would make it easier for her to let go of her past and meet new people, but she found most of her nights were spent holed up in her apartment, eating cook-in-bag salisbury steaks in the cold glow of the television screen. Then one night she decided to go out, but instead of going to a club or calling up a coworker to go see a movie, she went to the Golden Gate Bridge and threw herself off of it, wondering if the boy who had taken her virginity in high school ever thought about her.”
I don’t have a very good imagination, but it gives me some kind of relief to make up stories for these people that don’t involve me, where I am not the reason they’re sticking their head in an oven or wrapping a crude noose around their neck. It’s more satisfying to wonder about the people we don’t know than the people we do, because the answers aren’t as pressing when we aren’t attached to them. A stranger’s suicide leaves a hole in the world, the same as anybody else, but no one who doesn’t know the person will perceive it as clearly or urgently; even if we the strangers know the hole is there, we can’t fill it up with our own anger or anxiety over trying to understand it. A hole in life is just a hole when it wasn’t occupied by a person you loved.
Yes, it’s true I loved her, but she didn’t leave any questions unanswered; all she left was a very neatly-defined hole.
