Here is another revised version of this poem. It is much shorter.

When I heard that my cousin committed suicide…

It was some time last year,
I forget when,
that I heard that my cousin
had committed suicide.

I don’t know what made me think of this
now,
other than those words
I heard today;
someone was explaining about death
just being all natural -
neither good nor bad.

People deal with death in different ways.

The Gnostics believed that this world
this existence here,
was evil and ruled by an evil god.

In their thinking
heaven was the only place
where God held dominion,
the only place where anything good
could exist.

I don't know about that;
I've never known anything
besides this reality,
this world.

Death is the great enigma,
hidden in complete secrecy,
shrouded in mystery,
the place where no one,
no one in existence now,
has ever gone.

Having not gone there,
having never seen death personally,
it always has seemed to me,
to be like
an illusion…
something not real or possible.

Perhaps this way of thinking,
denying the reality and existence of death,
is just a coping mechanism that I use,
for dealing with the unspeakable.

I’ve turned to horror stories
not because of some curiosity about death
but because in doing so,
I could keep it in the realm of the fictional.

I certainly never held that view
that death was natural
or normal -
neither good nor bad.
Death is completely and totally
alien to any experience I’ve ever had -

the enemy of everything I've ever known
of everything I've ever loved
or of everything that's ever mattered.

Yet for some,
there must be something
seductive about Death,
perhaps hypnotically seductive…
some people clearly see Death
in ways that I cannot.

I believe that
were it not for death,
the Devil would be nothing…
nothing more than a silly
taunter or tempter,
like a disobedient little brat.

When I heard that my cousin
had committed suicide,
last year,
I had to know how she did it,
what method she used,
because that would be the only way
I could make sense of what I was being told.

When my sister told me what happened,
I wanted to say “No!”
or ask my sister,
if she was sure.

But I didn’t say anything.

I don’t think my cousin really was thinking
about how permanent were her actions
or where she was going,
metaphorically speaking.

I think she must have wanted
to go away,
in her mind,
to escape, or retreat,
to some place of her creation.

But where did she get the idea
that suicide would get her there?

Bruce Whealton February, 2009
Revised on March 22nd
Revised June 14, 2009