WHO IS TO BLAME FOR A SUICIDE?

No one.

I would like to share what I know first-hand from my father’s successful suicide and my own, blatantly obvious, failure.

My father was rather a free spirit. He had never had a job, but he was quite successful doing lasting, needed projects on his own. He wrote a book on Aberdeen Angus cattle, printed it himself and made money doing that.

But this free spirit was not responsible about money. His mother admitted spoiling him when he was young, and it seemed as though she continued into his adulthood. But she had inherited money which sustained her, her second husband and my father. When my father was out of money, he simply went to his mother who then supplied the amount he needed.

I think never having had a job crippled him in a way. He never in all his life took orders from anyone. So, when he was served with jury duty summons, my father tore them up and put them in the trash. But for reasons unknown a judge called my father to tell him that the judge was sending the Sheriff Monday morning to drive him to jury duty.

You can imagine how he felt about that.

But there was a more serious problem. His mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. In 1955 when this was known as her condition, the chances of her recovering were slim to none. She made plans to go to Sloan Kettering thinking her son and her husband would be with her.

My father was told this by his mother. He certainly shared this with my mother…