

Only 1 out of 5 suicides is likely to leave a note many notes are left unsigned notes are written on a variety of materials more notes are written than are found and notes are most often written by those who kill themselves with drugs. He describes the patterns he picked up on from his study of the notes-especially those of Antoon Leenaars, Edwin Shneidman, Charles Osgood, Jacob Tuckman, James Conway, and Jerry Jacobs. The writer became interested in suicide notes because he thought they might contain revelations about the end of life that couldn't be found anywhere else. Edwin Shneidman, which had an account of a woman describing her various attempts at suicide. The writer pulled back from these thoughts, and then read "Voices of Death," by Dr. He describes the relief he felt when he thought that killing himself would relieve his difficulties. He describes his own thoughts of suicide a few year ago when circumstances caused him to become despondent.

The writer ponders what drives people to suicide. The writer describes witnessing the autopsy of one of the suicides. During the year that he spent as a policeman, 3 people killed themselves and 2 others tried. The writer describes two of the cases involving suicide. On nights when there was absolutely nothing to do, the writer would look through the department's records and photographs, especially those concerning suicide. Since Wellfleet was a small town of about 2,000 people, there usually wasn't a lot for him to deal with. Because he was the rookie, he usually worked the midnight to 8 AM shift.

The writer describes the routine of his job. The man's deaf brother had been sitting upstairs, unaware of what had happened. The writer describes an incident where the police were sent to locate another woman's husband and found him hanging from a yellow nylon cord in the basement of their retirement home. He describes how they had to inform her that her husband was dead. He describes being sent to an old man's house after the old man died and the man's wife didn't know it yet. The writer describes the kinds of people he encountered on his job. The writer describes how twenty years ago, while he was a policeman in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, he imagined what it would be like to kill himself.
