Why, Sylvia, why?

Why, Sylvia, why?

For years, I have pondered the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the wonderful young poet who was also daughter, friend, wife and mother. Plath became my "hero" when I was young, but I never fully understood why. Was it because she was so talented, easy to believe if you've read "Ariel" or because she had the courage to end it all when things got too rough, if courage can be used to describe suicide? I still don't know the answer, but maybe my obsessive thoughts about her have to do with the impermance of life and how fragile the thread of life can be.

Some believed that Plath's suicide was a suicidal gesture that went wrong, that she never really intended to die that day. Her au pair was due to arrive that morning but was detained, something Plath did not know would happen. The old woman upstairs was nearly deaf and would hear nothing that occurred in the home below. Plath was especially caring of her children that day, feeding them and putting them out of harm's way. I don't think this is an action of a deranged woman. Was her gesture just a bid to get a luke-warm husband to pay more attention? Was she just repeating a pattern? She implied in her book that she "had to try it," i.e., suicide every ten years. Or was she, as some suggested, under the influence of drugs or in the midst of a psychotic episode?

Why was I so interested in Plath? Others have committed suicide, others who were also talented or young. Her death was no more tragic than Marilyn Monroe's but had far more impact for me. Perhaps it is because I like to write, love poetry and felt more "related" to her or perhaps it was because I once had an unattentive husband. Maybe I have been too attracted to death at times, depressed certainly. Do I secretly admire those who take their lives into their own hands? Do I find it courageous to cheat God out of the act of dying by doing it before "my time?"

I don't know the answers, but here I am, once again, pondering the suicide of Sylvia Plath, many years after her tragic death.