iris chang shot herself.

we were waiting for our take out indian food when i, idly leafing through remaindered newspapers at the counter, saw the obituary.

it shocked me deeply. how? what happened? i assumed, an accident.

she killed herself, he said.

but -

i guess she was struggling with depression.

i'm not sure where he got that information, as it was nowhere mentioned in the lavish obituary. in fact her husband was quoted saying that she lived for her work, loved it. died for it, too?

it's so close, i said. death. that could be me.

iris chang was five years older than me, and i always identified with her, perhaps in the way a younger sibling might. respect and admiration mixed with envy and jealousy and created a sense of familiarity, of family. i saw her speak several times, talked to her afterwards about her work. that book, the Rape of Nanking, i wish *i'd* written, and in fact believed i could have written it better. ah, the arrogance of youth. but she seemed to have it all figured out. she had a career that had won her accolades (at which i, too, dissatisfied with my own graduate school ambitions, grumbled that she was less historian than simply journalist of the past), she had written a very important book to further east asian scholarship, she had a loving husband and, recently, a child. she had what i wanted, in two or three year's time; i saw in her a possible role model, a model for the trajectory of a satisfying life.

and now she's dead by her own hand.

how close it is, how close the curtain of death. one moment of weakness and - it terrifies me - i can almost see it there. lisa said once that she found comfort in its being so close - just there, right there on the other side. simply push the curtain and you're there. but i find it frightening because it is so easy. it is always there in front of me, my own shadow, my companionable spectre.

and i think in despair, if iris couldn't make it, how can i? if she couldn't choose life, after everything, if she couldn't even see that life was worth living to write books that changed the world, to raise a child, to hike in the mountains with the man you love, then how, how, how can i? how can i view my life as anything worth living?

i think what saves me, for now, is pure cowardice. but sometimes i wonder what will happen when i finally muster the courage to step past the curtain. will i do it? and if i don't, what will stop me?