David as a Survivor

 

David as a Survivor

David Lester

          I have worked with two survivors for scholarly papers, Donna Barnes and Denise Pazur, and I should like to thank them sincerely for working with me.

          I have had a colleague at the university died by suicide, but he and I were not close. Then, one day, out of the blue, an e-mail arrived from a woman who had read my book Fixin’ to Die. She was a chronic suicide attempter and was planning to die by suicide. She thought I’d understand. I e-mailed back, but I was cautious. Perhaps this was a prank, and the writer was not whom she seemed to be. Eventually, however, I knew that she was authentic. She lived near Canterbury, England, and was a 22-year-old woman.

          I decided that I would try to “save her.” I purchased Tom Ellis’s book Choosing to Live and sent it to her. (That is how I learned her address.) I also sent her articles on irrational thinking, and she responded that she did not think irrationally! One day, after a few months, her e-mails stopped. Two weeks later, I received an e-mail asking whether I was angry. She had attempted suicide again. (Of course, I was not angry, I assured her.) We exchanged many more e-mails, some humorous. And then they stopped for good.

          I was visiting England a few months later, and I stopped by the town where she lived. I had trouble finding her address initially, went to the local police station, and asked if they knew of her suicide. They had not. When I finally located her apartment, I write a note and dropped it through the mail slot.

          A few weeks later, I got an e-mail from her sister who asked who I was. I explained, and I gave her enough details about her sister to convince her that we had e-mailed a great deal and grown close. Her sister then told me that she had attempted suicide again. The local health agency was checking on her every day, and so they saved her and placed her in a psychiatric hospital. The hospital took her off suicide watch after a week, whereupon she hung herself in the ward. That hurt. She was afraid of hanging herself, but she knew that she would have to, she told me, because they kept saving her after overdoses.

          I wrote to Tom feeling incompetent, and he replied with reassurance. My trying to save her was like trying to save an alcoholic with a birthday card, he said.

          Why am I writing this? Because I have never analyzed her or written a scholarly article about her. I had kept all of the e-mails and information I had about her, and I destroyed them. It was too personal for me to be analytical about her.

          I’m old now. I had forgotten her name. I found three photographs that she had sent me and that I had kept, and they had her name: Vicki.

          This is why I am immensely grateful to Denise and Donna for letting me work with them. I know how hard that must have been.

References

Barnes, D. H., Lawal-Solarin, F. W., & Lester, D. Letters from a suicide. Death Studies, 2007, 31, 671-678.

Barnes, D. H., Pazur, D., & Lester, D. Parents’ views of their child’s death by suicide. Illness, Crisis & Loss, 2014, 22, 181-193.

Ellis, T. E., & Newman, C. Choosing to live. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 1996.

Lester, D. Fixin’ to die: a compassionate guide ot committing suicide or staying alive. Amityville, NY: Baywood, 2003.

Lester, D., & Barnes, D. H. Survivors and researchers collaborate. Surviving Suicide, 2007, 19(2), 10-11.