Nicholas Hughes couldn't keep living

Shit, it's not like I KNOW these people, but the Plath/Hughes legacy and poetry has been an major interest for me much of my adult life, so hearing Nicholas killed himself was like a small tsunami. Just recently, I've been re-reading Birthday Letters and planned on writing something about that journey, which in reruns is still devastating. But this morning, before I'd had a gulp of coffee my local news station starting talking about Nicholas Hughes. He'd died. Hung himself. Frieda...Depression...Oh fuck.

Frieda is now the sole living legacy of that story, sort of like Caroline Kennedy, but without the offspring. The end. Hughes had fallen off the professor list at UAF, so I had thought maybe he left the state. I read this morning after a quick google that he'd quit his job as professor a couple years ago to commit more time to pottery and other interests but stayed in the Fairbanks area. Pottery. Those wet circles that require all your attention, a respite from yourself. Art is like that, a respite and meaning when you feel like an empty glass, or worse. I too suffer (can't emphasize that word enough) from demon depression and can relate. Not to suicide itself, but pursuing something that you discover brings some relief; I imagine the pottery must have been like that for him. I'm completely projecting, but it could be true. It's so sad to think the of pain that lead to the final act, a sort of legacy via a propensity for depression, family ties, so says science and observation.

Depression is a wound that will not heal. Or it heals, but breaks again, and again. It's easy to understand those who tire of the routine of crawling out of those pits or pretending to have done so. What a sad turn of events for all who knew and loved Nicholas. Peace.