Suicide is on the rise in our country, yet we still don’t know how to talk about it. We speculate in hushed tones about the deceased mental state and rush to conclusions, yet we are hard-pressed to know what to say to grieving family members.
Our reluctance over how to speak of suicide is not a problem unique to our time. While I was researching the life of Maltbie Babcock (1858-1901), several obituaries at the time of his death simply stated, “he died suddenly.” The truth is that following a trip to the Holy Land, he contracted Mediterranean Fever (now known as brucellosis) and took his own life in a Naples, Italy hospital. It came as a shock to everyone. Maltbie was athletic (president of his Syracuse University baseball team), an accomplished musician (his music teachers urged him to consider a musical career), and a great preacher (his decision to accept a call to a New York City church prompted Johns Hopkins faculty to lobby him in writing to reconsider and remain in his Baltimore church). His biographers noted that he had been hospitalized earlier in his life for “nervous prostration,” comparable to depression in our time.
Maltbie’s wife Kathleen published his letters, poems, and prayers after his death under the title Thoughts on Everyday Living from the Spoken and Written Works of Maltbie Davenport Babcock. One poem was inspired by hikes Maltbie used to take in upstate New York, leading to a panoramic view of Lake Ontario. “I’m going out to see the Father’s world,” he would say to Kathleen. His poem, “My Father’s World,” utilized words from Psalms 33 and 50. Each of the sixteen stanzas begins the same way, “This is my Father’s world.” A friend adapted the poem to fit the tune of an English folk song and released it in 1915 as the hymn “This is My Father’s World.” The song closes with the triumphant declaration, “This is my Father’s world, O let me ne’er forget. That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet.” His wife also included this prayer from his collection: