A new unauthorized biography has many people talking again about the suicide of Anthony Bourdain in June 2018. As is often the case with people who die by suicide, much of the chatter includes questions such as: How did they do it? Who was the last person they talked to? What was different about that day? What was the precipitating event? We want to understand, and sometimes, we look for someone to blame.
Even Albert Camus, in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus,” falls prey to this way of thinking, writing: “What sets off the crisis is almost always unverifiable. Newspapers often speak of ‘personal sorrows’ or of ‘incurable illness.’ These explanations are plausible. But one would have to know whether a friend of the desperate man had not that very day addressed him indifferently. He is the guilty one.”
But this way of thinking cheapens the death and struggles of anyone who has died by suicide or attempted it. Suicide, for most people, is a process. Sometimes that process starts at a very young age. The writer David M. Perry talks about his own suicidal ideation beginning at age 9. I have a former student who first attempted suicide by riding his tricycle through a window as a toddler. My own desire to kill myself is among my first memories.
