We never met, but I think of Ellen all the time.
At 26, she lost her leg to bone cancer. In pictures I hardly notice the cane and missing limb. She was beatific, always elbow-deep in a project or adventure. In one home video she digs for abalone on Bodega Bay. In another she shows the camera an enormous amanita muscaria, silently gesturing a slice across the throat. Don’t eat it! The fucker will kill you, she warns. She taught my father, her grandson, pottery, cloisonné, and metalsmithing. She instilled in him a reverence for the forest, for conservation before the word had become a marketing gimmick. I am enchanted by her and the way her life took its shape through grit and fanatical creativity.
I had to dig for these details, of course. Because when you kill yourself, one moment of your life tends to sharpen and the rest become filler.
She asphyxiated herself in the garage. It’s not the violence that has always struck me but the level of planning. When did she decide? How long did she have to wait until everyone was out of the house? Did she not, for just a minute, think of taking a nap instead?
I once asked why she did it. I’ve never heard of a note. Art was a hard man to live with, is all that was said. I have never really believed that one shitty man could smother all her light.
The truth, I suspect, is simple. And sobering. Ellen killed herself because that’s the cloth she was cut from, the kind that is equally and intensely present to the wonders and horrors of life. I bet the jolting green of lichen on wet bark made her catch her breath. And I bet she lost count of the hours spent feeling hollow and small; an endless, silent scream. I bet I know the feeling a little too well.
Suicide is that strange derealization that happens when you stare at your own face in the mirror for so long that it becomes unrecognizable. And the longer I stare, the less sense it makes. Frankly, it’s become funny to me that the greatest threat to my personal safety is my own flimsy will to live. Fucked up, but also funny. I’m not trying to shock or worry anyone by making light of it. It’s just that the shock has long since worn off for me. Now it’s just something to manage; more irritating than alarming. I have no lack of love for myself, and I know I am worthy of living without this, if only I could. I’ve never made plans or hurt myself. It’s just there, buzzing around, sometimes descending on me in urgent and disorienting ways.
I know the feeling of slowly inching away from a precipice. I know it because I’ve taken those small but crucial steps so many times. It’s how I feel when I take the second pill. And every time this happens, it’s the same bittersweet realization. This is the real me. The one that lives beyond the shadow’s reach. And I’ve spent so little of my adult life as this real me.
I don’t want to live a tortured life. I doubt Ellen did either. It feels so needlessly tedious to sidestep the landmines that litter your own mind when all you really want to do is live your life, drink a few cocktails, enjoy a few sunsets. I wish I could write a different ending for her. I wish the lore of Ellen was something else entirely. But I think I’ve held so tightly to her story because I’m determined to move it in a different direction. I’m committed to saving my own life. Even if I have to do it over and over again.