These are the questions that Jill Bialosky asks in her new memoir, History of a Suicide. The suicide at the heart of the book is that of her younger sister Kim, who took her life two decades ago at the age of 21. Bialosky, a poet and writer, embarks on a quest to investigate what led her sister to kill herself, and to understand how Kim, as she puts it “had arrived at the moment of resignation.” Jill also wants to alleviate some of her own guilt about not having been able to prevent it. It’s a very moving story.
The sisters, who grew up in the prosperous Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, had a painful childhood. Jill’s father died when she was three years old, leaving her mother, who herself suffered chronic depression, to raise her three daughters alone. Remarrying some years later, Jill’s mother gave birth to Kim when Jill was 10. But Kim’s father soon abandoned the family, leaving his wife for another woman.
Over the following years, the girls’ mother struggled to support the family through a series of low-paying jobs. Kim’s father reappeared only sporadically in his daughter’s life. And when he did, he could be cruel to Kim, telling her that she would never amount to anything in life.
In hindsight, Jill sees several points where it was clear that Kim was suffering deeply. One was when Kim, desperately unhappy and homesick at sleepaway camp one summer, ran away from camp and found a house where she called her mother and begged her to pick her up. Another pivotal moment when Kim, during her senior year in high school, had an abortion and soon afterward left school to get a GED. It’s hard not to read about these events without wondering about missed opportunities to help her.
Through her research about her sister’s life, through participating in a group for suicide survivors, and with the help of Edwin Schneidman, a psychologist who specializes in the study of suicide, Jill comes to accept that there was little she could have done to save Kim, who the family knew was depressed, but had no indication was suicidal. Her father’s abandonment, Schneidman says, left a wound and fragility in Kim that neither Jill nor others could heal.
That conclusion shouldn’t be interpreted as saying there is nothing one can do if, unlike the case with Kim, one is aware that a person is suicidal. As Bialosky points out in her book, people who feel like killing themselves may feel that way for only a short period of time. In her book, she questions Dr. Schneidman:
“Do you think she could have gotten through it had she gotten past that moment when she wanted to die and had felt hopeless? If she had maybe found a passion, finished school? If she had gone into therapy?” Those were the questions that had been eating away at me. “A lot of things had to happen,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be doing the work I do if I didn’t think it were possible.”“What should you do if you fear someone is suicidal?” I said.
“Dare to ask,”he said.
That, perhaps, is the book’s most important lesson.
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