The suicide of Margaret

Philip Lorca diCorcia, Untitled

In a few hours, she’d be gone. This painful sentence turned without interruption in her head, without ever taking a concrete form. It meant nothing. They were just random words, and they wanted to destroy her. For the time being, she was there. She felt the weight of her body sinking into the hotel’s cozy bed. They had assigned her room 13. It was a stroke of fate. But she was not superstitious. Margaret had chosen her destiny with lucidity, without fear and without regret. What could she regret about her dreary and empty life, without friends, children, or husband ? Margaret’s husband had died ten years earlier. She was now old ; her short, cut white hair and the frilled dressing gown she was wearing betrayed her age, like the wrinkles that now marked her tired face.

Her two sons wanted to convince her to go into a nursing home. To end her life like that, she who had traveled the world without release, in search of a meaning, or a treasure that she discovered at each port. How could she have endured the slow and monotonous rhythm of an old people’s home : playing cards, eating daily meals, never raising her voice, always remaining polite, obeying... She had never obeyed anyone, Margaret ; she had always chosen in her existence, and did not believe in fate. Her end would therefore be in her image : free and original. Of a chilling originality.

She watched the calm sea and waited patiently for her hour. She felt no fear. She had faced lions and tigers, famine and epidemics, cold, drought and thirst, storms and frozen desert nights. The sea could never have frightened her. It had been her ally for 40 long years. It always promised extraordinary discoveries. Behind the waves and whirlpools, something unknown awaited her. And this prospect aroused her far more than the dull faces of the old people waiting for death to come and take them without warning. Margaret had decided to call death, to summon her to her bedside ; and death, in a short time, would come to the appointment. Because no one had ever disobeyed Margaret.

In the soberly furnished hotel room, the television looped the images of the hurricane that was devastating the state of New York and approached dangerously close to Manhattan. Margaret had studied the path of the tornado and had booked a room in the most exposed hotel in the city. The institution was now empty. The receptionist himself had deserted the premises. He tried to convince Margaret to follow him, but she refused. She must be crazy, he said to himself.

Margaret’s farewell was not a lament, a complaint or a reproach to the world. It was not a spectacle for men, as were most suicides. No one would know that she had chosen to kill herself. Her children will think of an accident, and will never feel guilty about her disappearance. The sea, the sweet and dreadful sea, would bury her body in secret. Between the two, the union would finally be complete, hidden from the shameless gaze of the world.

Mitia