Paris in a Bottle

There is a French saying: "Avec des Sis on pourrait mettre Paris dans une bouteille". 

In other words: with Ifs you could put Paris in a bottle.

In the aftermath of tragedy, we struggle to make meaning, to slow down the story and go back to any inflection points where we see the story could have taken a different turn or had a different ending.

What if this? What if that?

What if I had given Justin Thacker more pepper goat cheese sandwiches?
Sitting with that feeling. It may be ridiculous but just putting a lid on it won't work. It has to run its course into the next feeling. Like a river leading somewhere that can't be clear at first.


This post is however not at all about me.

People hurt from loss and they also hurt from the type of loss: losing someone abruptly, shockingly,  is very different than losing someone who is ostensibly sick for years for instance.

Some losses are more Paris in a bottle-y because it feels like they could be prevented.

Perhaps.

IN MEMORY OF JUSTIN AND HIS
LOVE AND INTEREST IN SO MANY PEOPLE

Suicide is the second leading cause of death between 10 and 35 and the fourth between 35 and 54.

Famous movies like "it's a wonderful life" portray its antecedents pretty badly.

The reality is that there are many key risk factors and that they add up and sometimes converge in a deadly fashion and that people, adults at least, often think or talk
about suicide for many many years before attempting and/or committing suicide.

As a society we, including many physicians, struggle with recognizing and heeding these risk factors with the same urgency that we would a dangerously high blood pressure or heart attack signs.

That will never change if we don't start not doing that.

Love to all. So so so sorry.

Till Later,

Anne