“The Best” is a song galvanized by both observing and experiencing parental suicide. It moans of PTSD, shame and depression, which grow like ivy up the spine of someone who lives their life in the wake of their parent’s intended death.
Inspired by a combination of true stories, the song stands rather vivid. I had the honor of being close to someone much older than I who shared her story with me. She was just 11 years old when she found her grandma, whom she alone lived with, hanging in the basement.
I, too, stand in a line of suicide. My father and grandfather found slightly more subtle ways to claim their lives.
In “The Best,” the narrator voices repeatedly returning to the memory of finding her grandma hanging in the basement. She feels despairingly as though she hangs with her and cannot get down. The shock of the event and its gaping reality confine her to that space. She also identifies with her caretaker, mirroring her, as children do. Part of this is noble, part of it is natural, and all of it sticks her to a nightmarish what-should-be-dream.
The song mocks the psychological position one is put in when their parent signs up for death, bringing amusement to the fact that apparently all bets are off. “I guess I got my pick of a room now that grandma killed herself.” The reality is that even with all the rooms now open, the narrator is still down in the basement. Her subconscious (the piano) runs her life, playing itself without her will.
When a parent commits suicide, they become silent. In possibly the loudest act you can make, they opt out of a life-defining conversation with their offspring. That offspring finds themself in a state of cruciality. They must teach themselves and implicitly learn to critically identify where and why it is imperative they assume responsibility. Equally important and possibly more entangled is discerning the situations and what to do with them in which it would only harm them to take blame.
In a world full of pressure and projection, consumed in the shallow waves of status and materialism, this person is now much deeper than they used to be. The fact that our society does not encourage us to explore our depth doesn’t make it any less important to do so. Understanding who we are, where we are and what being here means to us is the thread that has the power to keep each and every one of us stitched together or totally unraveled.