What Tragedy Means

‘Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying, Though I sang in my chains like the sea.’

Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill

The thought of death obviously frightens most, if not all, of us. The tragic news today of the death of the actor Chadwick Boseman, at aged only 42, brings that sadness and fear home in the sharpest possible terms. Any of us can go in a heartbeat and I don’t care how brave you think you are, but that is a profoundly frightening thought. My own recent brushes with suicide, thoughts of suicide and actual self-harm have brought this home to me as well, as have a few other things, most notably some of the criticism I received from people on social media for talking about this openly. What happened to me, unlike Chadwick Boseman, was not a tragedy – but it could have been. People in a normal state of mind don’t sit with a very sharp pocket knife and slash their wrists, as I did the other week. For others to then go on and sneer at that on social media, yes make me sick to my stomach, but also yes, makes me pity their ignorance and complacency. They clearly have no idea what goes on in a suicidal mind (‘a kind of temporary schizophrenia’, the psychiatrist told me later). One of them even sneered, and I quote, ‘Suicide is easy’. I can’t tell you, because I’m too polite, the contempt I have for that kind of approach, but I can say this: try it yourself (actually don’t, obviously) and see how easy it is. Good luck with that.

Tragedy, real tragedy, is the death of a young person, like Chadwick Boseman, at an early age. But tragedy too is the sight of someone of any age pulling a knife on themselves and making a terrible bid to make the pain in their head go away. Sneer at it at your peril, as one day, and I pray that that day never comes, that person might just be you.

Nick Jordan