Suicide must be one of the most unusual forms of death. While it is intended to end one single person's suffering, it almost always causes and immeasurable amount of suffering for the people around the deceased. Suicide never accomplishes its purpose of stopping the pain, because it starts a never-ending cycle that affects all people involved. Suicide is a selfish act committed by people that are blinded by their own pain so that they don't realize the pain they will bring to others around them. They don't realize how deeply they will scar their friends and family or the second-guessing that will fill their friend's and family's lives after the fact. This second-guessing is as Roberts puts it, "the devil's game for there are no answers and infinite questions."(Roberts 110) She also says it is like a bad song that plays over and over in your head no matter what you try to do to get rid of it. Suicide is a horrible act that causes pain, suffering and angst for everyone except the deceased.
The emotional appeal of Roberts" essay is very evident throughout the entire work. She talks about how the pain of the deceased is not even comparable to that of the people around the deceased. You can tell through her writing that this statement is absolutely true. Some of the things she says in retrospect, such as, "Maybe I wanted him to die" or "These are the legacies of suicide: guilt, anger, doubt, blame, fear, rejection, abandonment and profound grieving," show how deeply hurt she was by her father's suicide, even though she tries to show some toughness throughout. Also, she talks of the scars that a suicide in a family creates and how deep and long lasting those scars are. This goes to the core of one's being, because it is scary to even imagine losing a loved one in one's life, especially by such a faceless act as suicide. I say faceless because suicide is a faceless act. No one will think that it will occur in his or her family.
