Kate: And how often are we speaking about suicide in a sophisticated way?
Dese’Rae: Not often. One example of when it was handled really well was the movie Skeleton Twins. It’s funny and it’s sad, and there’s a part in it that’s scary: a graphic depiction of a suicide attempt. But these characters feel relatable and three-dimensional. The thing for me about suicide is all about relatability: if we can relate to the people who have been through it, then maybe we’re going to care. But if we’re constantly jabbering in a distant way, as if these aren’t real people—your friends, your neighbors, your family members—how are we going to get anywhere?
Kate: Sometimes, I think, a lot of people don’t want to talk about suicide in a real, sophisticated way because it’s just too scary.
Dese’Rae: Oh, absolutely, I get that. I think that’s why some professionals didn’t want to hear from people like me, from living survivors, for so long. Because then it was like, “Oh, now I’m being faced with this thing—literally in my face. This human is in front of me and they tried to kill themselves and what does that mean?” That is scary on so many levels. What I try to do in my work is show the depth and breadth of people who experience this—and it’s scary, but denying its existence isn’t helping anybody. So how can we talk about it in a safe way? I think letting people who have been through it talk openly and matter-of-factly is helpful. There is research that proves that exposure to people with mental health issues is hugely impactful on the attitudes of everyone around them. This might be common sense, but everyday people sharing their stories is even more important than celebrities using their platforms.
Kate: How do we satisfy the need to talk about suicide openly, but to not encourage clusters, or copycat suicides?
Dese’Rae: I would like to imagine that the silence, or the inability to talk about it in healthy ways, directly relates to more suicides. I’m concerned when I see a kid kill themselves, and in the aftermath, we say, “Oh, if we plant a tree, that romanticizes the fact they died, so let’s not talk about it at all, ’cause why did they do that?” It doesn’t have to be that way. People die by suicide, and they were people and we loved them, so honor them. There is a line between honoring and romanticizing what happened.
Kate: When it comes to suicide, why do we become so preoccupied with finding a “why”?
Dese’Rae: If it’s cancer, it’s scary, but we can deal with it and there is usually a game plan. If it’s suicide, it could be any number of things, or a mixture of things, or years of traumas—all kinds of stuff. You can’t pinpoint it, and I think that’s what’s scary. So looking for the “why?” is about answering the question “How do I avoid this thing happening to me? How can I avoid it?” But the truth is, you can’t. If you do, it’s simply because you’re lucky.
Kate: How can we be more responsible when talking about suicide?
Dese’Rae: The question is: Is the act the climax? I don’t think it is. Say, my story: I experienced an acutely bad two years and I made a decision one day based on a catalyst and I took some pills and I drank some stuff, and I tried to cut myself. Now, is that the interesting part?
Kate: No. Now, right now, I want to know the acutely bad things.
Dese’Rae: Right. It’s an abusive relationship; it’s trauma; it’s years of depression. It’s a breakup with someone who is manipulative, someone who I could not get away from and didn’t really want to. So that’s the interesting part to me, because I want to dig into why people make decisions. That’s the interesting part—it’s about reframing the suicide story to be about the person’s life, not just about their death.
CHAPTER 11
Shattered II
Jim and Stacy could not believe what they’d been told on the phone. Maddy was not, could not be, gone. “Part of me was simply convinced: I don’t think this is real; I don’t think this happened,” Jim says.
No logic existed to explain how Maddy’s buoyancy, her spirit—eighteen years in the making—could be extinguished in one moment. Think of all the life that had been breathed into her: the hugs, the laughter, the birthday parties with friends, the Saturday morning car rides to soccer practice, the juice boxes and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts cut off, the tears, the stern words, the I love yous, the endless list of things done for every loved child. So much energy poured into one being: their daughter.
This love, in bodily form, could not be erased from the world so quickly, could it?
Early the next morning, while Ashley was flying home from Alabama, Jim sat in the car, stunned. His good friends drove him to the medical examiner’s office in Philadelphia. The head of security for Penn was there, too. And so were two Philly police officers. There, he was shown a photo of his daughter’s body, confirming that no mistake had been made, though really the photo felt like proof that a million mistakes had been made. He was also given the toxicology report. Madison had been sober, not a drop of alcohol in her blood—a fact that seems reassuring at first, but quickly becomes soul-crushing.
Maddy did not look dead. She looked like she was sleeping. And this felt like a small kindness, though such kindnesses often shatter a cracked heart.
At the examiner’s office Jim received Maddy’s offering, the bag of gifts she had left for her family. The small tokens of love and explanation summoned a dangerous cocktail of emotions. Jim found the picture of Maddy as a kid. He pulled it out of the book, held it. “She had shown me that picture over break, while she was home, and she goes, ‘I want this picture,’ and I was like, ‘Why?’ It’s just this cute picture of her holding a tennis racquet when she’s six years old, and she’s like, ‘I want to put it in my room in my collage.’ So maybe it was little things like that that made me think she had been planning this. We had no idea, it was just seeing that picture, and it being there among everything, that made me wonder.”
“I’m still confused about that bag of gifts,” Jim said later. “I mean, the time and the effort that it appears she put into it, that maybe she planned this and to go ahead and, in her greatest time of need, still be thinking of others. It’s just, it’s unbelievable.”