It is not the job of medical examiners or attorneys to concern themselves with the psychological disposition of the decedent. If a motive is not obvious, they do not need to find one. It is, to put it crassly, none of their business. A 1947 article in the Yale Law Journal by Orville Richardson and Herbert S. Breyfogle reminds us that in distinguishing suicide from accident, motive is irrelevant. “The springs of human action are often hidden,” conclude the authors, “and are of such obscure origin that not even a psychiatrist with the full and voluntary cooperation of his patient can find them.”
Rey Rivera died in the middle of May. Most people assume the absence of sunshine triggers suicide risk. Winter can certainly be depressing, but it is indisputable that suicide rates worldwide increase significantly as soon as winter is over. From the cold depths of hibernation, it is common for the depressed to become so numb they cannot feel what Freud calls the “ordinary unhappiness” of daily life—they cannot mourn, grieve, or cry. They are on ice. When the winter comes to an end, however, the frozen depths begin, very slowly, to melt. Forgotten memories emerge. Old desires resurface. Movement and action are possible. “The bright day brings forth the adder.”
Spring is the real suicide season.
If Rey Rivera killed himself, it means he went from rushing to finish editing a video and making plans for the weekend, to suddenly deciding to jump off a very high building.
Is there such a thing as impulsive suicide? Do people really kill themselves suddenly and spontaneously, out of the blue? Those who study the subject believe so; they call this type of death the Richard Cory suicide, after Edwin Arlington Robinson’s famous poem. The Richard Cory suicide is considered to be the act of a supreme narcissist, a person who cannot admit, even to himself, that everything in his life has gone awry. The grandiose and mysterious final gesture thereby performs a kind of alchemy, transforming passive humiliation into an active mastery of the situation.
On an Internet suicide grief support forum, I found accounts of some of these Richard Cory suicides. At least, they were reports of people who apparently committed suicide abruptly and unexpectedly, in the middle of what appeared to be an otherwise ordinary day. One man wrote that his partner woke up late, realized she’d missed an important meeting, called in sick to work, showered, had lunch, and then hanged herself. A woman described how her father put laundry in the dryer then lined the stairs with masking tape, as if making ready to paint them, then changed his mind and hanged himself instead. Some accounts, more specific, led me to newspaper articles, Facebook pages, and memorial websites, where I learned about these perplexing deaths in more detail.
On December 18, 2010, Miss P., a popular and successful twenty-seven-year-old investment banker and charity worker, left her apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan early in the morning and walked sixteen blocks north to 180 Riverside. Surveillance video showed her entering the building dressed in Ugg boots and a winter jacket. She got into the elevator along with a woman who’d just returned from walking her dog. Miss P., who seemed alert and aware, asked the woman how to get to the roof of the building. The woman told her. At 8:13 a.m., Miss P.’s body was found in an interior courtyard; she was pronounced dead at the scene. She left no note. Friends and family say Miss P. was bright, attractive, ambitious, and well loved, and that she always appeared to be in high spirits. The day of her suicide, she’d planned to meet a close friend for brunch. “It’s like something just changed overnight,” said the friend.
On Tuesday, July 1, 2014, around nine in the morning, a number of people saw a man jumping from the Tobin Bridge in Boston. The jumper was reported on various Twitter accounts, including that of the Boston EMS, where he was described as “non-viable.” The Tobin Bridge is a two-level cantilevered structure, and the man, who was killed on impact, landed not in the water, but on the lower, northbound level of the bridge, which is an extension of the Charlestown neighborhood’s Terminal Street. He was later identified as Dr. F., fifty, a brilliant, handsome, and talented MIT professor and scientist. Well loved as a teacher, mentor, and passionate community activist, he was described by friends, family, and colleagues as cheerful, extroverted, and successful. He was married with two young daughters, and according to reports, had never suffered from depression or any mental illness.
On October 19, 2014, a former BBC journalist, K., fifty, was found hanged by her own bootlaces in a toilet at Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport. K., who had been working in Iraq as the interim director for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, was also working on a Ph.D. at the University of Canberra, and had just submitted the first chapter of her thesis to her supervisor. CCTV footage shows her entering the women’s bathroom alone. There was no sign of a struggle. She had two credit cards in her wallet, along with a large amount of cash. When her death was ruled a suicide, there was an outcry of disbelief. Those who knew her found it impossible to believe that K. would simply abandon her friends, loved ones, colleagues, and pets, and her important humanitarian work in the field of conflict.
On February 8, 2016, fifty-four-year-old Mrs. H. of Mountlake Terrace in the state of Washington, a systems analyst who worked at a center for HIV/AIDS research and prevention, took a piece of meat out of her freezer for dinner, drove to the overflow lot at the nearby park-and-ride as she did every workday, then texted the driver of her car pool that she had forgotten her workplace identification key, was running late, and would meet her in ten minutes. Then she left her car in the lot, walked a mile and a half, disposed of her work ID and cell phone so well they were never found, crawled into a ditch, taped a plastic bag over her head, and suffocated.
Friends, family, and coworkers describe Mrs. H. as “full of life.” At least five hundred people attended her funeral. She had been married for over thirty years, had a grown son, enjoyed her job, was active in the community, and had recently adopted a cat. Her car was found locked and secured, and nothing had been taken from it. Her clothes were intact and not in disarray. According to the autopsy report, the cause of death was “asphyxiation and fresh water drowning.” There were no injuries or defensive wounds consistent with an assault, abduction, or struggle. Toxicology tests revealed no unusual substances in Mrs. H.’s system. There was nothing to suggest she had been robbed. All suspects, including her husband, were eliminated. Her death was ruled a suicide.
These apparently impulsive and spontaneous acts of self-destruction baffled the police and bewildered family and friends, many of whom, as in the cases of K. and Mrs. H., refused to accept the verdict of the medical examiner. And yet we do not know how long any of these people had been contemplating the act; neither, perhaps, did they.
Consider the case of K., for example: just prior to her death, she had fallen asleep at the airport in Istanbul and missed her flight by fifteen minutes. The next flight was not for another twelve hours. For a seasoned traveler used to working in war zones, this should have been a minor setback, but K.’s sister, who gave interviews with the British press, believes it was the breaking point. Friends and colleagues regarded K. as fearless and resilient, but her sister suspects this was a persona K. worked hard to project. In her sister’s opinion, K. was fragile, vulnerable, and plagued by a sense of incompetence; she took on the problems of other people as a way to escape from her own. We assume that years of living and working in war zones makes a person tough, but K.’s sister thinks it had weakened K. to the breaking point, and that the accumulated trauma may have been just too much for her to bear.
On this particular night, her sister speculates, K. may have been simply “exhausted” and “emotionally raw.” It was late, K. was tired, she’d missed her flight, and perhaps the person at the desk had been rude or short with her. When told by airline staff she had to buy a new ticket, K. apparently became “tearful.” Surrounded by unfriendly strangers, she may have been feeling unbearably desolate and sad, and the thought of spending another twelve hours at the airport may have simply pushed her over the edge, leaving her unable to think about anything except extinguishing her pain. “I think she just took a snap decision to check out,” said her sister.
In the case of Mrs. H., we have no idea what could have happened over the weekend that might have sent her into a state of despondency by Monday morning. Had she learned some bad news? Had she been diagnosed with an illness? Had her husband asked for a divorce? Had she discovered an act of betrayal? Had she somehow lost hold of the thread that drew together the fabric of her life? I picture