In an obituary by Bruce Weber in the New York Times today, David Foster Wallace’s father, James Wallace, talks about his late son’s long battle with depression.
His father said Sunday that Mr. Wallace had been taking medication for depression for 20 years and that it had allowed his son to be productive. It was something the writer didn’t discuss, though in interviews he gave a hint of his haunting angst.
“He was being very heavily medicated,” he said. “He’d been in the hospital a couple of times over the summer and had undergone electro-convulsive therapy. Everything had been tried, and he just couldn’t stand it anymore.”
When someone of Wallace’s stature, incredibly successful by the world’s standards, succumbs with such finality to depression, it reminds us how terrible and serious a disease depression is. One can only begin to imagine what a person must struggle with in his or her mind before making the decision to end one’s own life.
Well said.
My sister-in-law died of suicide. Less than a week before she died, she’d been released from a psych hospital because her HMO only allowed x number of days, and she’d reached the limit.
We really need a better understanding of this frightening, heart-breaking, often fatal disease.
Hi Katrina. I’m sorry to hear about your sister-in-law–how sad. I wonder how many people die under similar circumstances–people who might have lived if they had been able to stay longer in medical care.
Well said. I’ve been kinda frustrated reading online “tributes” to David Foster Wallace that talk about the cause of his death as if it reveals some moral failing or lack of strength on his part. As you say, suicide reveals just how serious– and often fatal– a disease depression really is.
wHILE I see the surfeit of comments about his obit., I am still struct by the lack of insight into the why and wherefore of how this, ( suicide ), happened. So, ( digression now, my father committed suicide when I was 12 yrs old. How to comment on that?.)
DFW’s brain was exploding, ( so was my
dad’s).
Some people’s mind can only absorb so much, and then a kind of uncontrolable explosion occurs, whether, in DFW, or my dad.
The logical(?) release is to quit because it’s just to painful to continue.
It’s really a situation that an, (outsider), cannot influence, control, or have any fucking say in the matter.
It’,s a nut wrenching experiencing for those who are left ( behind ? )
to deal with. All these, could I have said this?,could I have been more there for him, her, etc., etc.
DFW, and my dad, left their impacts.
NMTBS,nothing more to be said.