Is That All They Had to Say?

What is it about authors and suicide? Do they finally reach the point where they have nothing else to say and figure they can drum up additional book sales with one last publicity blitz? Hunter S. Thompson, who hasn't been particularly relevant since his drug-addled days of the 60's kills himself. He follows in the shadow of such luminaries as Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, and Virginia Woolf. I know the legacy of their writing. I do not know the depths of which their minds were tortured. I have experienced the death of a loved one by suicide and I can say without hesitation that I still don't understand it. Most days it is still difficult to reconcile that it ever happened. And yet, you take extremely talented people like these writers and they shoot themselves or walk into a river with stones in their pockets. Recently, a podiatrist, who was an acquaintance and one of the most respected in the profession murdered his wife and then took his own life. To date no one knows why Dr. Douglas Sowell killed his wife, Linda, and then turned the gun on himself. He was the past president of the American Podiatric Medical Association and was highly regarded in the profession and among his medical colleagues. Who's to say what the prompting factor(s) is (are) in these situations. Some people find out they have inoperable cancer and essentially euthanize themselves. Others have suffered from mental illness for years and feel or decide that they can no longer live that way. Still others feel like there is no hope or nothing to live for or feel like they are in a quandary that they cannot escape whatever situation they are in. Having worked in a psychiatric hospital for 3 years I experienced a gamut of reasons, but still it is never so simple to figure out why. As for journalists and writers, perhaps they shouldn't take themselves so seriously.