Saturday, November 13, 2004Iris Chang, RIPI was somewhat surprised, flipping through the Merc the other day to see the announcement of Iris Chang's death. For those who don't know of her, she was the author of The Rape of Nanking, which played an important role in getting the Japanese government to finally apologize for atrocities committed during World War II. I remember her popping up on the Chris Matthews show, Hardball, to discuss the book and the problems of genocide and war crime in modern society. Such a research focus surely must take its toll on the human spirit, but it's not clear if it's what led to Chang's final action: At the age of 36, she drove out to a deserted stretch of road, set a suicide note on the seat next to her and shot herself. She shot herself not far from the Cats, a restaurant south of Los Gatos that I haven't visited but which looks like it's one-part home cookin', one part truck stop. Newspaper accounts didn't give the precise location, but it was apparently one of the many roads going in around the Lexington Reservoir. Behind which I live, which is why this particularly caught my attention. In Chang's final note, she asked that she be remembered for who she was, not who she had become. Apparently, in the final year of her life she'd fallen into an awful depression for which she was even hospitalized briefly, while overseas. She leaves behind a husband, a two-year old son, and a painful reminder for our society: Iris Chang, though in a depressing field, seemed pretty much on top of the world. She was a highly respected researcher in her field who had both academic prestige and a fair amount of clout for a human rights activist not full-time with one of the more prominent NGOs. Where her depression came from is not clear - at least not from the details available for public consumption. Its seriousness did not become fully clear until earlier this week. But a lot of people less famous than Chang meet with the same fate, and our society does way too much of the stiff upper lipping and the "you've got so much to live for"-ing while paying way too little attention to people seemingly suffering personal emotional crises. I suspect there's an element of fear in the way our society deals with depression: if it could happen to Chang, there's no telling who else it might happen to. A loved one. Even us. Easier to say that someone's just out of sorts, or needs to get it together, get right with God, whatever. Better to put the discomfitting possibility that a brain might go bing off to the side and pretend it doesn't exist. The people who are the worst at this are those suffering themselves. What happened with Chang I do not and probably never will know. Even if we get a lot of details, we'll never truly know what was going through her mind in her final day, final hour, final minute. Do we pick up from here with a sad harumph about "who knew?" however, or do we take this chance to let our own loved ones know that it is okay to slow down, okay to feel worn out and awful, okay to need help... and that it is our heartfelt wish to help them get it and support them in doing so? We hear a lot about the homeless, about drunks, about people who "don't want to get their act together." Iris Chang had her act together. She was a wife, a mother, an influential researcher and a widely respected author. She could afford a psychiatrist, a therapist, could afford to take a rest - as far as we know - without laying awake nights thinking about the mortgage. So before you write off someone who just isn't dealing with life anymore, remember Iris Chang and ask which you'd prefer - the self righteous satisfaction of knowing that the child warn't right, warn't your fault, ain't your fault what happened... or the possibility of reaching out, trying to help and knowing come what may that you did your best to help and understand. 
posted by gbarto at 8:30 PM |
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