I was phoning a neighbour across the river to check how much rain their gauge had registered after last night's downpour, when she asked me, "Have you heard?" "Heard what?" I said. "Yesterday the postman found our neighbour dead. He had hanged himself!"
If this keeps going, little Nelligen will soon need its very own suicide help-line because this has been the fourth suicide since I've lived here.
The first one was a young bloke in Nelligen Place who shot himself after his girlfriend had left him. The second one was a neighbour up the lane whose wife left for Sydney to visit her daughter. Before she left, she'd told him, "When I come back, I want you gone!" So he put one end of a hose onto the exhaust pipe, started the engine, and put the other end of the hose and himself into the car. He was gone alright. The third one was a gunsmith who was professional to the end: he shot himself. And now this Indian rope trick by someone who hadn't even been an Indian!
I have never liked the word 'suicide'. Nor have those who committed it "passed on" or "gone to a better place". They killed themselves and are dead! FULL STOP! Germans used to call it "Selbstmord", literally "self-murder", but they, too, seem to have gone soft and now call it "Suizid".
Why not call it even more euphemistically 'a permanent solution to a temporary problem'? If you have a temporary problem, don't call the suicide help-line, call me! I will come over with a couple of beers and talk and talk and talk so much that you'll kill me instead of yourself!
P.S. As for that offending hyphen in "Help-Line", I am right now reading "Meet Mr. Hyphen (And Put Him in His Place)", a book written entirely about the hyphen. More about that tomorrow. I know you can't wait!
