She had signed herself into a hospital for depression. Her kind has a particular name, postpartum depression, the dark shroud that descends on as many as 10 to 15 percent of all new mothers soon after they give birth. Her death is a tragedy, but for me it is an opportunity to say some things. They are a kick in the shins to the rosy cliches of life, but it is the inability to live up to the rosy, unrealistic cliches of life that helps catapult people into a dark from which they become sure there is no exit but death. Here is the first thing.
Depression is real.
It is not something you snap out of. It is not a sign of being weak. It seems to run in families. It seems to strike the bright and the sensitive. For some of us, it is mercifully short-lived.