Yes, it's all too sadly true. Nicholas Hughes, the son of writers Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, killed himself. Apparently he had been suffering from depression for some time. A report from Fairbanks, Alaska is linked here (click on the title of the essay). I liked this report because it gave much information on what a rich life this man lived, not just "the son of the suicidal poet."
It is terrible beyond words when depression becomes fatal like this. It is unspeakably sad for those left behind, too, and can have repercussions into subsequent generations. I hope that his family can find some comfort, somehow, in that he battled his depression bravely for so long and lived such a productive existence, in which he contributed so much to his chosen work. What an unbelievable tragedy. Depression is a robber, and I am deeply saddened to know that it robbed us of Nicholas Hughes along with his mother.
My thoughts and prayers are with the Hughes, Plath and Farrar families tonight.
Nick And The Candlestick
Sylvia Plath
I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears
The earthen womb
Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs
Wrap me, raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.
Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,
Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish----
Christ! They are panes of ice,
A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking
Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,
Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo
Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean
In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.
Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses.
With soft rugs----
The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,
Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,
You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.
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