“This is not about you.” So said her daughter Lydia’s therapist to Eileen. I approached this collection of essays by Eileen Vorbach Collins with that in mind. Her stories would not be about me.
And yet they were.
Eileen’s daughter Lydia–artist, writer, supernova–died by suicide in 1999. Ever since then, Eileen has been writing through and into her grief, trying to make sense of her fifteen-year-old daughter’s decision to end her life. I’ve known people who have committed suicide–a cousin, a friend–but they were adults in their 30s and 50s. Their deaths were tragic nonetheless and while I can understand a terminally ill person wanting to “leave” while they still have some quality of life, the suicide of otherwise healthy people leaves the living with too many questions, too much guilt, too much of everything but what we want most: that person back with us.
All daugthers are special, but Lydia seemed to have a gift to zero in on the essence of things, whether it be her uncanny ability to find four-leafed clovers where no one else could see them, or her acute horror at the loss of an innocent’s life, whether that innocent be a spider or a goldfish, or her fascination with odd objects: broken tiles, Pez dispensers, plastic rosary beads. She was an artist, a writer, a supernova. And, I guess, it all just became too much for her.
By the time you reached your teens, you could not see a silver lining through your darkness. (p. 71)
And yet, even if we could understand the why of suicide, would that lessen the pain? I think about my own contemplations of suicide, starting when I was in my teens and continuing periodically through adulthood, occurring often enough that I thought it was normal to consider suicide, to feel so low and with such despair that taking one’s own life seemed rational. That I’ve never attempted suicide is a testament to my fear of the unknown. There might be Purgatory.
Eventually I learned that suicide ideation is not a healthy activity, my first hint being the shock on my husband’s face when I told him about my thoughts.
So I read about Lydia with great interest, finding myself identifying with her in that we both experienced “Weltschmerz, literally, world pain” (p. 21), although it was far more acute for her than it ever was for me, and, for me, sometimes world pain was simply unbearable.
Although most of the essays are about Lydia and Eileen’s grief over her loss, she also writes about other losses: the loss of a beloved pooch, the lost opportunity to be a better daugther.
I didn’t know when I was ten and the center of my own universe that mothers have feelings. (p. 64)
Her essay, “Hold You Closer, Tiny Dancer,” left me feeling seen and heard. Eileen’s relationship with her mother, a woman who had suffered from depression, then strokes and suicide attempts, mirrored my own relationship with my father, who also had mental health problems. I don’t think he ever tried to kill himself which is surprising since he blamed himself for the Vietnam War and all the boys that were killed. I was ten when I first witnessed one of his nervous breakdowns. My father had feelings, but I was embarrassed by him. I didn’t have friends over when he was in-between stays at the state hospital, and I avoided him when I was home. I was “ten and the center of my own universe.” What kind of relationship would we have had if I’d only been kinder?
Eileen’s essays are not about me and yet they are. They are because she gives voice to my own grief, all the griefs I hold in my heart, whether it’s grief from euthanizing an old sick cat, grief from losing both my sisters, grief for not being a better daugther to my dad, or grief for my dying mother.
Eileen’s humor and honesty, her economy of words carried me through this collection. I’m grateful for the opportunity to get to know Lydia. I share Eileen’s grief that such a beautiful (body and soul) person is no longer with us, no longer sharing her gifts with the world. I’m also grateful to Eileen for letting me know that I’m not alone in when and how I grieve.
We’ve lost the filter that kept us behaving like normal people.
[…]
We might howl at the moon, tear our clothing, throw ourselves on their graves, starve ourselves, or use food as an opiate to soothe ourselves into obesity.
[…]
Or, if we find our way there, we might gather in communion. Feed one another, hold each other up, become the trusses to bear the unfathomable weight of this collective sorrow. (pp. 171-172)
Thank you so much, Marie, for sharing my book on your Substack. And especially for adding the list of resources.
Marie, what a beautiful tribute to this gorgeous book. Thanks so much for sharing it with your readers.