By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com 

INDIANAPOLIS – The note on the front window of the Kate Spade store was unassuming.

It said that the founder of the company had passed and that the thoughts of all employees were with her and her loved ones.

There was no mention of Spade’s suicide, no discussion of why she might have ended her life.

I read it with mixed feelings.

Part of me understood and appreciated the company’s attempt to respect the Spade family’s privacy in a time of immense sorrow.

But another part of me worried that there will be still more tragedies such as Spade’s if we continue to try to cloak or obscure depression and suicide as if they were shameful, things not to be discussed in polite society.

One sobering fact of living a fair number of years is that I have known more than a few people who have killed themselves.

In the wake of Spade’s suicide and that of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, the cliched response has been one of mystification about how a person who had accomplished so much could be so unhappy.

This supposed mystification assumes that happiness can be quantified – that material comfort or career success alone can insulate people from misery or mental illness. If we have enough money in the bank or enough successes in the workplace we can keep despair at bay.

It doesn’t work that way.

Some of the most “successful” people I have known have been driven by a hunger to fill holes in their souls or their hearts, great gaping wounds they attempt to heal by suturing them with wealth and achievements. The patches never hold, and the hunger doesn’t end.

Others have been convinced that they either were unloved or unlovable. They brushed away expressions of care or concern, chasing away the love and friendship for which they longed in the process.

They didn’t do this out of rational motivations. They didn’t sit down and say to themselves I’m going to work myself to the point of exhaustion, frenzy and desolation to stave off feelings of inadequacy until all my efforts fail and I’m left with nothing but emptiness. They didn’t plan to drive away friends and loved ones so that they could spiral downward into distress and desperation.

No, they did so out of a sense of compulsion, a mistaken but entrenched belief that they had no other options.

It is so easy for us to minimize another’s pain, to think that, somehow, we would be immune to it or find ways to cope with it.

But, while grief is universal, each tragedy is individual. Each person’s pain is his or her own.

This is why the temptation to judge must be resisted.

My late friend Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who himself battled depression and once attempted suicide, wrote: “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies … you’ve got to be kind.”

Kurt’s words contain a profound truth.

This world is a hard place. Much of what resides within our hearts remains a mystery, even to us.

We cannot know with complete assurance what miseries dog those around us.

But we can show compassion for what ails others. We can treat their travails with respect and consideration. We can remind them that we care and urge them to get the help they need because they are worth it.

In short, we can be kind.

Another famous author who attempted suicide and, sadly, succeeded spoke to the kind of despair that swallows up human beings.

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry,” Ernest Hemingway wrote in “A Farewell to Arms.”

It is the kindness of which Kurt Vonnegut spoke that helps people become strong at the broken places – strong enough, one hopes, to face the darkness in this world.

And in their own hearts.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.