Can there be a more tragic literary and human scenario than this?

Plath commited suicide some 46 years ago. Now, her son Nicholas Hughes is dead by his own hand at 46. Nicholas was but an infant when Plath gassed herself to death in her kitchen with her two children in the next room. Long considered a great poet, Plath is often looked upon as a victim of her own depression and a deep angst at the infidelities of her husband Ted Hughes (another poet). But it’s the lurid and tragic nature of her death that perhaps has kept her so long in the public eye.

Suicide is often described as a victimless crime. But it is not so. The devastation that a suicide leaves behind can often never be repaired or recovered from, the loss of the loved one an unrecoverable and mystefying horror for all those left behind to wonder at and grieve.

There is no comfort that poetry or anything else can give when the survivors ponder “what might have been”, and try to deal with the tragic frustration of not having been able to stop the suicide from happening.

Guilt, sadness, horror, frustration, angst, grief – it’s a cauldron from which many do not ever escape.

My sympathies to Mr. Hughes’ friends and sister. What may appear to be an impossible situation today and seem to have no solution may look entirely different tomorrow or next week. Suicide is a permanent solution to temporary matters. There are solutions waiting to be found. Life is precious.

The Times of UK has an extensive story on Hughes here.