In October 2003, an author decides to commit suicide. Carolyn Heilbrun, author of several books of feminist literary criticism also wrote under a pseudonym, Amanda Cross, for which she penned the Kate Fansler mysteries.

I have always been an admirer of Heilbrun's work. I enjoyed her book of essays, Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty, which I found moving and insightful, not to mention beautiful in its elegant prose style. Her essay on the purchase of a house of her own reminds me how one can romanticize solitude and yet find comfort and peace after that initial period of loneliness passes.

Heilbrun defended her right to commit suicide as an extention of her feminist beliefs that a woman had a right to choose how she ended her life. In Katha Pollitt's essay in the NY Times, "The Lives They Lived: Choosing Death", she uses phrases like 'rational suicide' and 'untreated depression' and her reflections are a serious attempt to make some sense of why someone as accomplished at Heilbrun would commit such an act that ultimately leaves her loved ones unfairly bereft.

Pollitt notes that Heilbrun pared down her life towards the end: "no more dinner parties, no movies, no theatre, no shopping..." but she concludes with this sentiment: "maybe, it's good to have to go the grocery store..." Yes, Ms. Pollitt, it is. Going to the grocery store, that mundane task among many, can be the saving act that keeps us from committing an act of desperation. Like any common task, it has the capacity to yank us back into daily life, forcing us to place priorities and to imagine other possibilities. When one is left in solitude for too long, when one receives little discussion for the ideas which one considers, then it is possible that one might contemplate a desperate act without thinking about the consequences. Suicide in certain religious traditions is considered a serious mortal sin. With good reason. The belief is that one's life is a gift from God and that one should treasure one's life as gift. Committing suicide is tantamount to wasting God's gift and ignoring the possibilities of what one can do with one's life. It is the sin of pride with capital letters. When we see our lives as a mere marker for our own individuality, then we can also place undue importance on our right to choose what we "do" with it.

Life is about remaining in the struggle even when one encounters difficulty and suffering. One might consider suicide as taking the easy way out.