What happens when life finally becomes too much to bear? He thought about it a great deal - but was unable to put hiself into those shoes. What happens when you feel death is more important than life? Or is that the wrong question to ask, he wondered. Perhaps the real question was: why had she decided that death on her own was preferable to life with him?
He had come home that day - an ordinary day like any other day - and been surprised not to find her in her usual place in the kitchen. Every time he looked at her favourite chair, with its rumpled cushion and its footstool, in the corner of the kitchen, he seemed to see her ghostly outline still sitting there. She would be knitting. Or watching the Antiques Road Show, or Cash in the Attic, with that absorbed look on her face, as if mentally valuing all the items within the house - all the collected items from 50 years of marriage. As if you could put a value on a lifetime of shared possessions, a lifetime of shared memories.
Clearly she had not put any value on it. Not attached a price tag to their life or to him.
They say the commonest method for women to commit suicide is by taking pills. It was a shock to find her body hanging in the garage.