The New York Times yesterday had an article about Nicholas Hughes, the son of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Like his mother, Nick Hughes suffered bouts of depression, and a few weeks ago, also like his mother, he committed suicide.

            My mother knew Sylvia Plath. They had been classmates at Smith College. When I was in high school, I read Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, and my mother and I got into a discussion about suicide. I remember my mother telling me that she thought suicide was a selfish act, especially for a parent like Plath. It wasn’t long after this that my mother’s father, despondent over my grandmother’s death, took a full bottle of prescription sleeping pills and washed them down with whiskey. Suddenly, my mother realized that selfishness might not apply.

            The tragic legacy of Nick Hughes also started me thinking about my cousin John. Several decades after our grandfather’s suicide, John, a married father of two with a successful dental practice, was attending a convention in Anaheim, California. He was staying at the Disneyland Hotel, and the day before he was to return home, he simply walked out on to his fourteenth floor balcony and jumped.

            I read some responses of people reacting to John’s suicide in the newspaper, and they were not sympathetic. That he’d jumped from such an iconic tower in The Happiest Place on Earth made people speculate he was trying to get attention. What if some impressionable child had witnessed it? (Thankfully, none did). The most commonly blogged refrain was what was he thinking? The fact is, John had been battling agonizing depression for over a year, and when he jumped, I doubt he was thinking of anything other than ending the pain.

            I think it’s significant that my grandfather and my cousin left behind no suicide note. Neither did Nick Hughes. I’m thinking that they wanted to take the whole grim business with them, to lock the door and throw away the key. I’m thinking they deliberately left no trace, no marker of their uniquely grim and tortured terrain, lest anyone, especially someone they loved, follow them.