Please Stay

In early 2014, I received (perhaps by accident) two lovely hardback copies of Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It by Jennifer Michael Hecht. I was meant to consider the book for review. Since I was a fan of Hecht’s blog and of her previous book, Doubt: A History, I tore into it eagerly.

In the author’s Preface, Hecht describes a 2009 suicide cluster of poets whom she knew, and the confusion and upset the suicides caused her. Working through the experience, she talks about a blog entry she wrote for The Best American Poetry. She quotes it at length, describing the purpose and thoughts behind the entry:

Then I addressed the reader with a bold imperative: “So I want to say this, and forgive me the strangeness of it. Don’t kill yourself. Life has always been almost too hard to bear, for a lot of the people, a lot of the time. It’s awful. But it isn’t too hard to bear, it’s only almost too hard to bear.” In the West, I wrote, the dominant religions had told people suicide was against the rules, they must not do it; if they did they would be punished in the afterlife. “People killed themselves anyway, of course, but the strict injunction must have helped keep a billion moments of anguish from turning into calamity. These days we encourage people to stay alive and not kill themselves, but we say it for the person’s own sake. It’s illegal, sure, but no one actually insists that suicide is wrong.” I announced, “I’m issuing a rule. You are not allowed to kill yourself. When a person kills himself, he does wrenching damage to the community. One of the best predictors of suicide is knowing a suicide. That means that suicide is also delayed homicide. You have to stay.”

Enraged, I put the book away, likely throwing it dramatically, though I do not recall. It is March of 2025, and I think I’m finally ready to pick it up again.