It's a sort of kinship, is all I can say, as though there is a family tree of grief. On this branch the lost children, on this the suicided parents, here the beloved mentally ill siblings. When something terrible happens, you discover all of a sudden that you have a new set of relatives, people with whom you can speak in the shorthand of cousins.
--[From Sedulia: I am not sure this attribution is correct. Please help if you can]-- Joan Wickersham (1957-), in The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order (pub. 2008)
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