Calvin and Hobbes and Death

I've been putting this post off. A lot actually. I never really knew what to write, to properly talk about this, to say the right things...

Recently (about 2 weeks ago now), an ASL teacher killed herself. From what I gather, she had been depressed for a while and finally decided to kill herself. I didn't think much of it, except how sad it was for both her family and her students.

Suicide is a touchy topic for me. My second cousin killed himself when he was 6. I never met him, nor knew anything about him. I think I realised something had happened when my family stopped talking about him. There had been mention of him: going to Harvard, graduating, etc. in my home life for a while. Then it all stopped. My parents told me about it a few years later, when the decided I was "ready" to hear about it. My question soon became, is anybody ever... ready to hear that? Perhaps more prepared than others but not... ready. This is why one of my first thoughts jumped immediately to the kids. A grade of fourth graders had to be told and taught why their teacher was not coming into school anymore. Kids, no older than six or seven have to learn what suicide is. I was not ready for that lesson when I was seven, and I don't believe I am so much more ready at 17. But, perhaps I'm wrong, and you adapt. You have to be able to learn what is put in front of you. You have to be able to move on. Ms. Dalloway had to move on. She congratulates Septimus on his suicide, in being able to succeed where she could not. She thinks that "it was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress" (Dalloway, 164). She was almost proud of him for throwing "it away while they went on living" (Dalloway 165). Septimus himself "did not want to die" but instead thought that "life was good" (Dalloway 132). This topic is so complicated and tough and...just... forgive my language but shitty to deal with.

I thought about my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Sederjei, who I loved like a second mother. I couldn't imagine even now that I am 17 and haven't been in her class for upwards of 6 years, to be told that she killed herself would be too hard.

One last note about death. I recently was researching an acting project on Calvin and Hobbes. I came across a story that I had mostly ignored in my previous devouring of Watterson's work. It's called the raccoon story. It is beautiful and powerful, and magical. I just thought I would mention it and include the link. It has made me cry every time I have watched it. It is a masterpiece. Helped me to accept death. And life. And friendship. And family.
http://wintersonata13.wordpress.com/2008/10/05/calvin-and-hobbes-the-racoon-story/