Dear Agrivillers,
Committing suicide remains an unspoken conversation in most discussions. Even death has become an obsolete word. "Stella passed". "Bert is not with us anymore".
We are uncomfortable with death, and when we compound that discomfort with dreading our own death, it's not surprising we avoid speaking about suicide.
But it's real.
From a practical point of view, a family needs immediate help just to get by when suicide happens.
Cotton committed suicide in their farm home on November 1. The family are not allowed into the house for awhile. Nor will they be able to bear living in the house again.
I never met Cott in person, we always planned to but never got around to it, but even so, just as with you, he influenced me, he crept into my thinking, he reached out to me. To us.
I didn't, we didn't, know how to hear what he wanted us to hear, needed us to hear, did we? I listened but I didn't hear his most important message.
We cannot change what is done.
So today, I decided I've learned enough about life to know his wife Michelle will need some help, without asking, just to get the telephone bill paid. To pay for haircuts. Harvest has been hell.
You know I'm a practical woman. If each of us chipped in $20.00, crowdfunding, instead of sending flowers, your sum of remembrance will pay for milk and eggs and bread.
Farmers have stressful clouds hovering above them.
Larry Weber, John Kotylak and I believe that we can choose to do something concrete.
To talk about suicide. To listen. To reach out. To be practical. To be kind.
We hope you will too.
Pars and Larry and John
Committing suicide remains an unspoken conversation in most discussions. Even death has become an obsolete word. "Stella passed". "Bert is not with us anymore".
We are uncomfortable with death, and when we compound that discomfort with dreading our own death, it's not surprising we avoid speaking about suicide.
But it's real.
From a practical point of view, a family needs immediate help just to get by when suicide happens.
Cotton committed suicide in their farm home on November 1. The family are not allowed into the house for awhile. Nor will they be able to bear living in the house again.
I never met Cott in person, we always planned to but never got around to it, but even so, just as with you, he influenced me, he crept into my thinking, he reached out to me. To us.
I didn't, we didn't, know how to hear what he wanted us to hear, needed us to hear, did we? I listened but I didn't hear his most important message.
We cannot change what is done.
So today, I decided I've learned enough about life to know his wife Michelle will need some help, without asking, just to get the telephone bill paid. To pay for haircuts. Harvest has been hell.
You know I'm a practical woman. If each of us chipped in $20.00, crowdfunding, instead of sending flowers, your sum of remembrance will pay for milk and eggs and bread.
Farmers have stressful clouds hovering above them.
Larry Weber, John Kotylak and I believe that we can choose to do something concrete.
To talk about suicide. To listen. To reach out. To be practical. To be kind.
We hope you will too.
Pars and Larry and John
Comment