The Writing Of Close To The Edge
I wrote Close To The Edge two weeks before one of the most devastating moments in my life.
I heard someone screaming out one evening from across the road where I was living at the time. Another neighbor and I went over to see if she was ok. Through her back fence, she said ‘My son’s killed himself’.
Shocked, we ran through into the house and into the backyard to see a mother with her lifeless teenage son in her arms.
As the other neighbor gave CPR, she turned to me and said ‘my other kids are inside’.
I said I would look after them – I sat down in the living room the boy’s younger brother and sister and played with them like nothing was wrong.
I still remember the look on the father’s face as he walked through the front door, then the grandparents – the look of absolute helplessness.
Out of this experience, I said to myself ‘no one should ever have to go through this’… not the family and everything they would have gone through following that devastating night, nor the boy who felt like that was the only way out.
I then asked myself – there are people that need help, what are you going to do about it?
I wrote Close To The Edge two weeks before one of the most devastating moments of my life.
