Is that the telephone ringing?

Have you ever thought of committing suicide? I mean serious suicide, not this ‘cry for help’ business. I have. Trouble is – apart from the difficulty of finding a method that doesn’t hurt – suicide is so final.

Benny Hill used to sing a song, about a man, who, by some freak, was the only person left alive in the world after a nuclear disaster. He’s living in a penthouse on the top floor of a New York skyscraper. But after a while he can no longer stand the loneliness – and he jumps.
And as he passes the seventh floor he hears the telephone ring.

So you hang on, ‘waiting for the telephone to ring’
Your ‘ringing telephone’ might be: a letter, telling you he loves you after all. Another’s ‘telephone’: the police have dropped the charges. Someone else’s: the depression mysteriously lifts, and doesn’t return.

Of course, if you are of a certain religious persuasion, death is simply a gateway to another, better life. And if you belong to a certain 'faith' this might induce you to strap a few pounds of explosives to your person, and go out in a blaze of glory: a martyr to the cause.

Ah, but if you have the misfortune (from a potential suicide’s point of view) to be a card-carrying member of the Roman Church, then it’s no virgins for you! You have committed the worst possible sin. And it is going to need a lot of petitioning on your behalf if you are to have a chance of making it to heaven instead of hell.

It's all very well to say you should read the 'suicide' clause before you sign up - how many of us are that far-sighted.

Yes, but what if the telephone doesn't ring?
Look here – I haven’t got the time to discuss such morbid thoughts. The sun is shining, and the Parks & Gardens truck is outside, the driver impatiently blowing his horn.
Where are my boots!