The Good Samaritan

by John Marrs

‘Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.’ —Muhammad Ali

‘While seeking revenge, dig two graves – one for yourself.’ —Douglas Horton

Once they begin recounting their woes, there are some you take an instant dislike to and others you can see yourself in. Some you want to grab by the wrists, dig your fingernails in deeply until you draw blood and shake some sense into. Others you’ll offer a non-judgemental shoulder to cry upon.

Because when you’re not considered to be a threat, you can get away with much, much more.

Someone, somewhere in the country, is always having a worse time than you.

British law had decriminalised suicide back in 1961, so it was no longer illegal to try to take your own life. However, encouraging or assisting someone else’s suicide was a different matter and the police had a duty to investigate accusations.

So much of what you believe – or what you have convinced yourself to be true – can be flipped on its head quicker than you can ever imagine.

Each terrorist attack, war or natural disaster had her hooked to the screen, like she couldn’t get enough of the rolling headlines and fretting about what it might mean to our baby. ‘What kind of world am I bringing my child into?’ she once asked. ‘One where people are burned alive in cages or thrown from buildings because of their religion or sexuality?’

The morning she died, she’d told me she loved me. How could she say that to me and then throw it all away hours later?

grief is the worst place in the world to be trapped in. In fact, it’s a kind of sub-world that you believe only you inhabit. You aren’t alone, of course, because those you’re close to share your pain. But it’s not really their pain, is it? It’s yours. And it’s a million times worse for you than it is for anyone else.

Nobody had suggested maybe death wasn’t the right way to go about things or urged them to talk to someone. There were threads from teens who’d had enough of living their too-few years and victims of terminal illnesses and mental health problems. Some came from elderly people so scared of a long, drawn-out death that they wanted to go on their own terms. Loneliness, abuse, depression, war, bullying, sexuality, eating disorders … the list of reasons to die was endless.

If it was cancer or a heart condition that had killed Charlotte, people might have related to me better, because many people have lost someone to one of those illnesses. But when it’s an invisible problem like mental health or suicide, people aren’t sure how to talk about it.

‘Dad said we aren’t allowed.’ ‘You are your mother’s daughter, Effie. When has not being allowed to do something ever stopped you?’

I longed so much for something that had been denied the chance to happen.

I once read that if you tell yourself the same thing over and over again, eventually you’ll forget where the truth ends and the fantasy begins.

You need to know that my wife doesn’t recognise her own lies. The psychologists wrote that she rewrites episodes from her history and her recent past if they don’t suit her. She will always be the victim, never the guilty one. And she rearranges timelines and locations. Events that happened weeks ago she’ll think happened yesterday, and somewhere completely different.’

My heart ached for the innocent days I’d never get back.

I tried to imagine how it could have been, had I not tried to gain a greater understanding of Charlotte’s depression; if I’d just accepted that I’d lost my wife to it, then learned to move on.

And for so long, I’d asked myself what could be so awful about a person’s life that they’d feel driven to end it. Now I understood that whether it’s a chemical imbalance in your head, a past that haunts you or other people making your world unmanageable, everyone can reach a point where it all becomes too much.

Mum and Mr Smith had used me, but I didn’t think he was capable of murder. Mum, on the other hand, was capable of anything.