by Camden Chaffee

I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there.

- David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

My great-grandmother died in 1951, 49 years before I was born. I never knew her, and my mother never knew her. She died in the Goshen Hospital, having intentionally swallowed carbolic acid in the bathroom of a tavern on Goshen’s South Main Street. She was 29 years old.

Some of my earliest memories include going with my grandmother to the Shore Cemetery, to put flowers on her parent’s graves. As I got older, I began asking her questions about her mother, about who she had been, and what kind of life she had lived.

“My mother drank Drewery’s beer and smoked Kool cigarettes,” my grandmother would say. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of her”.

Since 1951, there have been nearly three million suicides in the United States.

My great-grandmother, Frances, was born in 1921, the child of a railroad worker and a housewife who had taken her own life 10 years prior to Frances’ suicide. Frances was raised in Goshen, marrying Andy in 1936, and telling friends and family that he had slowly become her everything. In 1947, on New Year's Day, while driving home from hunting, his car slid on ice and collided with a mail train. He died from injuries sustained in the accident. My great-grandmother fell apart.

She began drinking heavily. On multiple occasions, she was arrested. Her three children were taken from her by the state.

My grandmother’s sister told me once, “Your great-grandma always told your grandma she was coming back for us. And she never did. She never could”.

In early 1948, she sent her daughter an Easter card, writing:

“Dearest Peggy,

Honey, I am having some things made for you girls for Easter but I’m not sure I’ll be able to get them in time to send them to you. But they will be there just as soon as you know it. Happy Easter! Love, Mother”

She sent her daughters several embroidered handkerchiefs for Easter that year.

Frances eventually married Pete, a heavy drinker and factory worker from Sturgis, Michigan. Their marriage ended in divorce shortly before her death.

In February of 1951, Frances sent her daughter a Valentine’s Day card, signed, “Love, Mother”. A week later, she walked into the bathroom of a bar on Goshen’s Main Street and swallowed the contents of a bottle of carbolic acid.

“My mother. She was always afraid of getting fat. She liked to cook. She read to us at bedtime. She was afraid of the dark, so when my dad was gone to the Army, she had me sleep with her and we would have a light on all night. My mom always wanted pretty fingernails. That was important to her, so she showed me how to do my nails at an early age. She showed me how to crimp the edges of a pie… My mother loved my father and her kids very much,” my grandmother once wrote to me in a letter. “My mother hurt a lot,” she later told me.

Suicides rip through families like a tornado, leaving wreckage and debris behind; questions and sentiments, and pleadings are left unheard.

To live on the fringes of society, to feel crippling loneliness, and to struggle with regret and guilt and shame, is nothing anyone ever wishes for. It, often, is a struggle to choose life. Life, which so often slams against us like an enraged ocean against a seawall, can break us.

But there is always hope.

If you, or someone you care about, is considering suicide, there are resources available. https://988lifeline.org or call 988.

She Drank Drewry’s Beer and Smoked Kool Cigarettes