Loss of the parent

There is nothing more ridiculously tragic than a mother of beautiful children taking her own life. A friend's mother did this, all those years ago, two years before my own father died. Way back in the 1960s, she in Switzerland and he in London. She died due to unbearable depression it was eventually revealed. He died due to heart failure. And another death in the family, maybe suicide. They all died due to drugs, mainly medical.

We are not allowed to talk about suicide. It is too harsh to remind ourselves how fragile a fabric life really is - because our minds have evolved a failsafe - so long as we keep our wits about us, life is full of possibility. Fear of the other side and fate helps hold us back from the edge, from that potentially empty void of nothing.

As tragic as suicide is, it is more than just a moment of decision. It more likely follows much intellectual processing and when the instrument of thinking is not functional, either damaged so much there is no future without pain (P addiction and severe speed addiction cause brain damage) or shut down (addiction to barbiturates is a slippery slides into an increased risk of heart failure) there seems no solution.

The death of a parent has many side-effects. It is something that people misunderstand, and overlay their own supposed grief saying things like "you have to be so angry about that, it sucks!". You do not have to be angry. You just have to live anyway.

After many years, I have learned that Humans are indeed fragile in many ways. They survive due to an inner belief in the happy place to which the mind returns. (And good food and exercise).

It is not due to any ability to worry or be concerned. If you drop everything to be with your children, and this should normally apply to fathers too, then so be it. The world can turn without you a couple of times.

Our social order should change so it does not work against our wise evolutionary need - it is not rational to expect a parent to put others before their children. It is ugly and insane. Mental and physical health are both far more important than income and investment.

NZ Herald - Deborah Hill Cone article