'Change and decay in all around I see' or Abide with I

A girl like I is apolitical (a fancy way to describe ill-informed laziness) but I can't not comment on the recent tragedies in Norn Iron. A local newlywed was strangled in her honeymoon suite in Mauritius in January, having intercepted hotel staff stealing from her bedroom. The morning rush hour traffic was at a standstill for hours as the suicide attempt of a 31 year-old paraplegic was thwarted , on a bridge over one of the busiest roads in Europe. This woman was buried last monday, having returned to the exact same spot a fortnight and a day later, to fulfill her death wish. The road was re-opened just a couple of hours after the body was removed. You can see three or four bouquets attached to the railings as you whizz past, getting on with your life.

There was an interesting contrast in the media treatment of the two women in question; the details emerging from Mauritius were both sublime and ridiculous but always positively prurient. We know exactly why Michaela Harte went back to her room that day, salacious accounts of her struggle with her attackers have emerged and a great deal of information about her funeral was given, even her burial clothing. I repeat none of it here-it's unnecessary, of course, both because all can be rapidly revealed online and because much of it was none of most of our business anyway.

However, little is available to illuminate the case of Karen Cromie, the temporarily dissuaded suicide. There are obituaries available in various forms and a sparse account of her funeral. Here the discretion has been admirable and ironically, I find myself very interested to know more about this very unusual sequence of events. There is to be an 'inquiry into her aftercare' following the suicide attempt. Mental Health professionals may find themselves taken to task, in the coming months. Answers are required where, it seems now, ultimately none can be given. We will never know or understand how or why a person can arrive at this unimaginably desperate, hopeless, solitary desolation. That we must accept, if we can.

The same I cannot say, as regards the parents of the two children who commited suicide last week, in unrelated events ,and the teenager who collapsed playing rugby and later died. People at funerals have often panicked about what to say and I always bellow advice and often a possible mini-script. But sometimes there really are no words.