The Intangible Significance of Living
by Susan Scarlett
Suicide is a shape-shifting temptress. She seduces me with song, changing her look and her story to suit her own misguided and temporary needs. I can’t escape her songs; I grew up with them, and her grip on my family is profound. Suicide’s melodies run deep, haunting me with the lure of a way out, should I ever need one. While I’ve never come close to taking Mistress Suicide up on her simple, innocent-sounding message, the one so masterfully used as the theme song from MASH …
🎶 Suicide is painless,
it brings on many changes,
and I can take or leave it if I please 🎶
… several members of my family have fallen under her spell and taken their own lives. Yes, one had Parkinson’s and one had cancer, and both had other crippling life realities. Despite all that, I’ll never know for sure why they died. Were they seduced into thinking death was their only way to escape their reality, or were they in prisons of their own making, prisons defined by health or other life conditions?
Here’s what I do know: in 2000, I got cancer, and then in 2015, I got Parkinson’s, and then in 2021, I got cancer again, a different one. If anything would have suggested that it was time to go, it might have been on the occasion of one or more of these diagnoses. While I truly believe that suicide is an individual right, one that no laws should preclude, I have never considered it as the answer to any of my life’s challenges. It is always present as an option, because, after all, that’s the story I grew up with. Now, I not only have chronic pain, I have a degenerative neurologic disease. As Mistress Suicide shape-shifts right along with my ever-changing symptoms of Parkinson’s, she subtly offers the allure of “escape”. So … what to do? Do I accept her tempting way out and escape from the Parkinson’s prison while I still have a chance?
I don’t know what my future holds as a person with Parkinson’s, and yet
I sense that leaning into this life-or-death issue may be exactly what I need. Maybe I have the wrong question? Maybe I’m afraid of something? I don’t know; I have a lot to learn.
Who better to learn with than my friends and family in the Day One Chorus? They are always there for me, and their thoughts and opinions help me gain clarity as I fight old voices in my head. My choir gang knows me well. They see that I still carry delusions about living a
story-book life, and that I have not yet accepted their counsel that fairytale endings are not real. They see what I cannot: that their love and problem-solving generosity ultimately left me uneasy about dealing with conflict or disappointing others.
My friends and family and I decide to go on a day-long song-hike together, and we follow a trail called The Hero’s Path. Spending this time with loved ones, singing and talking together, might be just what I need to help me find my own voice and figure out how to respond to the temptress when she sneaks into my subconscious. Traveling with me are my husband Chip, my parents, and my brother Dave. Also with us are Reality (a former Parkinson’s Prison warden who is now the conductor of the Day One Chorus), and my mentor Onion (who is really the voice of my own inner wisdom, the one who demands that I peel back one layer after another, discovering deeper questions and then insisting that I answer them). Finally, my Truth-Tellers are traveling with us; they are the friends who always find a way to show me my own truth, and they have a special tool, a magic mirror, which tells them (and me) when I’m disconnected from myself.
Reality wants us to sing with and for each other this afternoon, and he searches for just the right songs which we will sing in just the right place. He titles our performance “Stories We Tell Ourselves” and creates a song list from what we’ve learned about each other over the years. Yes, he knows reliving these stories through song may bring pain and possibly even fear to any one of us in the choir … and he knows how much that awareness can help us face our fears. As our journey takes us through The Hero’s Forest, Reality remembers a nearby cave, a place with a long history of helping those who are seeking their truths. It’s called The Cave of The Ordeal, and Reality knows that it will be just the right environment for the performance.
As we begin to warm up our voices and I look over the song list, painful times of my life come flooding back in. No longer do hear my father singing songs like “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and “Oh! Susanna”, as he did in the ‘50s, now all I can hear is “I Will Not Live in Pain” and “No One Knew He Had a Gun” – mythical songs which represented his truth just before he died in 2003. Mistress Suicide has a wicked and uncanny sense of timing, and my own father couldn’t resist her. Even his mother, my grandmother, who used a pair of scissors trying to end her life, couldn’t resist.
As soon as we begin rehearsing, everyone in the choir sees that I need help, support, love. They gather around me and the questions begin.