(Not) like the others

[Adalie60]

The Last Time We Say Goodbye
Not like the others

Teen suicide is the storyline for both Cynthia Hand’s novel, The Last Time We Say Goodbye and Jennifer’s Niven’s novel, All the Bright Places. While both books talk about love and loss through a suicide, their focus is different. The Last Time We Say Goodbye focuses on how a sister handles loss of her brother and All the Bright Places focuses on a girlfriend’s loss of her boyfriend. In The Last Time We Say Goodbye, novel, the story is about, the oldest sibling, Lex, and how she walked through the devastation of the suicide of her brother, Ty. Ty was beloved by his mother and sister. The three lived together after their parents divorced. After Ty’s suicide, Lex started seeing her brother in certain parts in the house. At first, Lex was scared and confused. At one point, she thought she was having a mental breakdown. One day, she realized the reason she kept seeing her brother was because he had unfinished business and it was her job to complete it. All the Bright Places is a novel about two teenagers Finch and Violet, who meet as they are contemplating suicide. Violet was grieving the death of her sister (who died in a car crash) and Finch had severe mental illness. They grew close when they were partners on a lengthy school project. First they became friends, then a couple. When they were together, they forget all about their problems and seemed to help each other. However, we learn that Finch does help Violet recover, but unfortunately, near the end of the book, Finch commits suicide. Both of these books teach the readers that life is always worth living because there are people in your life that care about you.


Quote
“I shouldn’t have concerned myself with whether he’d keep his promise, I should have thought about whether I’d keep mine” Lex from The Last Time We Say Goodbye. This quote stood out to me because it is so true. It seems that people spend a lot of time worrying about what someone will do because we know we can’t control his or her actions. However, when it comes to our own actions, we think we have ourselves, or emotions, under control and that are actions are perfectly predictable. This is a form of being selfish. We learn lessons from not keeping a promise. We learn not to overestimate our own abilities and underestimate someone else’s abilities. In The Last Time We Say Goodbye, Lex had to come to terms that she wasn’t perfect. She also had to accept the fact that even if she answered Ty’s call, she had no power to stop him from committing suicide. They may have had one last goodbye, but Lex didn’t have the power to stop him.