I Weep for a Man that I Do Not Know

It’s the middle of the night, and I cannot sleep. I gave my baby a bottle and never made my way back to bed; I felt an urgency to edit, revise, and add a quote to the posting that I wrote about Sylvia Plath on February 11 (the anniversary of her suicide).

In searching for 2007 interview that Frieda Hughes gave Time magazine, I made an unexpected discovery. Frieda’s brother Nicholas Hughes, who is also the son of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes committed suicide a few weeks ago.

So in the middle of the night, I weep for man who I do not know. A man who killed himself 46 years after his mother took her life when he just a one-year-old, sleeping in the room beside the kitchen where the poet ended her suffering; a man who grew up without a mother; a man who watched hundreds of scholars, critics, and biographers scavenge through his parents lives and poetry looking for anything that would sell; a man who like his mother battled depression; a man, who unlike his sister, didn’t write poetry and openly talk about his parents but instead dedicated his life to the study of ecology. A man who found poetry in nature; a man who could not overcome the legacy of suicide.

This is why I cry in the middle of the night.

If you need someone to talk to you, please call The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).