End of Madness: Taking a Life

For many years I always wondered how my grandmother died.  Throughout our house we have pictures and mementos of her, but never did I really get the chance to meet the women who was behind all the paintings.  In pictures, she resembles my mother and myself very well and from what I have heard about her she was very artistic and the “Jackie Onasis” of her time.  For years at family events I would hear one of my mother’s relatives approach her and bring up my grandmother.  “Tragic” was the word that I always heard come up when discussing my grandmother.  It wasn’t until I was about 17 when I finally asked my mother about her.    

My grandmother committed suicide.  According to my mother she gave up on life.  Living with a husband that wasn’t that understanding and raising three children who didn’t know what she was going through was hard.  My mother told me how my grandmother would make comments to her.  She would say things like: you’re going to have to deal with all of this when I’m gone.  At the time my mother paid no attention to it.  A few short weeks later, my grandmother was found missing.  They searched their property that consisted of so many acres plus a dairy, yet they could not find her.  Three months went by and finally, when a man was hunting on my grandfather’s property, they came across her body.  My mother was only 17. 

Reading the short story from Salman Rushdie called Harmony of the Spheres, made me reflect back to the night that I asked my mom about my grandmother.  This story slowly made me think about how people lose their balance and their minds. In the short story, Eliot Crane commits suicide.  His schizophrenia drove him to his decision and madness slowly took over his body.  Actions such as seeing and hearing other people that didn’t exist and writing down hateful things about the people that were closest to him.  Throughout the story his friend (the main character of the story) and Eliot’s wife, Lucy, all tried to figure out why he did what he did and pick up the pieces of the life that he left behind.   

I really do not know how or why people end up losing their minds.  In Eliot’s case, he had a disease; his wife knew, his friends knew, but no one could help him.  He created lies about starting a book, which they found out never really existed.  Instead he had notes and letters that had hateful things about his closest friend.  “There were many virulent attacks on me, and pages of steamy sex involving my wife Mala, ‘dated’, no doubt to maximize their auto-erotic effect, in the days immediately after our marriage...Pages about Lucy were both nasty and lubricious.” (144). In the end, our main character finds out that those “fantasies” that were written on the paper were real; Eliot was having an affair with his wife.

Looking at the story, I feel that one of the reasons Eliot Crane lost his mind because he couldn’t be with the one that he loved.  Instead he watched his friend marry her and then he just settled for Lucy.  Ironically, Lucy and the main character also had some chemistry between them, making this whole story one big love triangle. Maybe the schizophrenia was already present before the affair, but still, the thing that drove him mad (in my opinion) was that he couldn’t be with the one that he loved. 

Like I said before, this story really made me think about how a person can lose their mind.  How does one get lost to the point where they feel that they need to take their own life?  Many say that people who take their own lives are selfish and don’t think about the others around them.  I, in a sense, somewhat agree, but the person who is about to commit the act needs to know how their loved ones feel.  In Eliot’s case, he felt trapped, he couldn’t be with Mala, and so death was the only choice. In my grandmothers’ case, no one understood her.  Her children were too young and her husband didn’t know what was wrong.  Maybe if her loved ones paid closer attention to her actions and emotions she wouldn’t have made that rash decision.

There are many things in this world that can drive a person mad.  For some it might be love, the feeling of not belonging, or the feeling of not being understood.  Everyone has a different way of dealing with their own madness; some write down their problems where others take action.