Cecilia's Suicide
This is a songfiction about Cecilia's final suicide. The lyrics are translated from Szomoru Vasarnap in Hungarian, better known as Gloomy Sunday or the Suicide song. They cannot fail to move me, along with the urban legends of the Hungarian suicides, many of them clutching the sheet music to Rezso Seress' song as they fell to their death in the Danube. I decided to relate this to Cecilia, as the song captures accurately her mood and feelings.
It is autumn and the leaves are falling,
All love has died on earth.
The wind is weeping with sorrowful tears,
My heart will never hope for a new spring again.
Useless, she felt so useless and pathetic. Her sisters, Bonnie, Therese, Lux and Mary were all downstairs at the party pretending to be having a good time with the boys under the beady eye of their mother. How they lied to themselves. Cecilia scowled at the memories she had of her sister's facades of happiness. They were all false, so very false. She wanted nothing more than to escape this counterfeit existance in a world that didn't care.
My tears and my sorrows are all in vain,
People are heartless, greedy and wicked.
Love has died!
She took a final look at her taped up wrists, covered with brightly coloured bangles and bracelets, her first failed attempt. She remembered the cool water drifting about her, the streams of crimson coursing from her veins as she held the Virgin Mary close to her heart. She recollected the way that her life was slowly flowing from her weak body and her coveted salvation that she had come so close to.
The world has come to its end; hope has ceased to have meaning,
Cities are being wiped out, shrapnel is making music.
Meadows are coloured red with human blood,
Cecilia Lisbon edged her way to the open window. This time she would succeed. This time she would escape the world she despised so much, her disillusioned fancies to damn her in the beliefs of her sisters. Except Lux of course, who seemed to hate God. She peered down onto the spikes of the fence that lay below and did not even feel remorse or sadness at her imminent suicide. No tears were shed as she jumped…
There are dead people on the streets everywhere,
I will say another quiet prayer.
People are sinners, lord, they make mistakes…
Her weak frail body plummeted towards her end, her torso meeting the spike which killed her. It stabbed through her, piercing her internal organs and spilling her blood. But no screams were heard from Cecilia Lisbon. When the ambulance arrived to remove her limp corpse from the front garden fence, one could almost see a faint smile dancing on the lips of the deceased thirteen year old child. The flame of her soul was put out in defiance to the world.
…the world has ended!