by Myles Mc Corry

Created on: May 22, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

Each time I saw her; the eyes became a little more dull, the pallor more translucent as if her very life was dripping away, and time dissolving the soul.
Her hair became grey overnight after his death. Not because of the trauma, but because her own vanity seemed pointless, the dyeing stopping along with living. His life and its absence became so central that we imagined her own became irrelevant. That was my first witness of the effect' of suicide without being overly sure of the cause. The aftermath was sorrow and decay.

Nearly twenty years have passed since he hung himself. I gather she still has the note, a reminder of a rash move to a seemingly insurmountable state of affairs. And for these last 20 years, my opinion has been that suicide is a complex cowards way out. A brash notion that I have always been reluctant to vocalise, but nevertheless held behind an outrage of silence, which is very rare for me. I remained quiet because the coward' stream of thought was polluted by the bravery needed to successfully complete the deed. Confronting the pain to achieve the goal is indeed valiant; yet the repercussion of endless guilt, blame, grief and the disregard for the loved ones left behind, makes it craven. And so through adult hood this conviction continued. If I heard of a suicide my brain conjured a weak dead, mess; running from the hardships our planet unfairly deals to each, very mortal individual.
But my opinion has very nearly changed. Being in direct long-term contact with a depressive and onward towards that person's spiralling melancholy and subsequent suicide: I very nearly now don't think it of a cowardly act. More a consequence of an illness. I very nearly now view suicide as a cause of death akin to any other. If an individual has a cancer they are treated and cured, or not. Cause of death: cancer. Anti cancer methods of radiotherapy and chemotherapy are both medicinal methods to stop the cancer killing the patient. And if we recognise depression as an illness, which it is, we treat the illness of the brain with Fluoxetine (over-marketed under the name Prozac) or Lithium carbonate, to prevent the illness killing the patient. It is the act of death that is in question and the point that I very nearly understand: That is death is the end result to the illness or the final effect of the disorder. Therefore as cancer, HIV or MS: -depression can be a disease that if not treated correctly may lead to the death of the individual.
In 2003, scientists announced

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