When suicide is not painless, and brings on many changes

GLYNIS Horning is one of South Africa's best writers, and this book is testimony to this. I just wish she never had to write it.

It was an ordinary Sunday morning when Chris, her husband, came into their bedroom and told her their son Spencer, 25, was dead in his bed.

And so begins a story no one ever wants to have as part of their lives. Spencer was due to start a new job on the Monday, he'd had a good walk and chat with Glynis the evening before. And now she was confronted with her son dead in his bed: “He could be asleep, lying against the pile of cushions…”

What follows is a story written with searing honesty and openness about what happens when someone dies of suicide. And in between the detailed descriptions of how the family tried to find out why, there is an important lesson. It's about how we, as a society, talk about death by suicide, we use the word “commit” as if for the person who undertakes this journey there is a choice.

As Glynis tries to find clues as to why this option became the only option for Spencer, there is a sense that trying to make sense of it all is a lifetime process.

Honest, to the point of telling the reader about her beloved son, the young man who had strong friendships, is the underlying truth that he also had a real illness. An illness that had been managed to the best of everyone's ability.

It's also a story of the strength that friends offer when the unbearable happens, about the need to know as many facts as you can, to try to make sense.

Waterboy is not an easy read, but it is an essential one, if we care enough to try to understand.

Ultimately, through the sorrow, and truth-telling about the effect of this painful death, Spencer and his life shine through.

It should be compulsory reading for us all.