I have long been an advocate of the Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruitatingly Correct Behaviour.

It was Mottsu who annointed me with the moniker of Miss Manners. He with his elbows on the dinner table. I loved that about him, how he could gently mock and have me laughing at myself. Miss Manners! I am that priggish at times.

Manners: They are like laws in that they codify or set a standard for human behavior, but they are unlike laws in that there is no formal system for punishing transgressions, other than social disapproval. They are a kind of norm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manners

When Mottsu left he committed a social transgression. Not the suicide, not drowning, not the shock of it all, but he didn’t leave a note. I was asked again and again, by yet another someone trying to comprehend the horror of his actions: “…did he leave a note?”

A note? It sort of surprises me (even years later) that it might be presumed that the depressed and suicidal personality might have the composure and good manners to leave a note explaining the inexplicable.

He left, no note. So rude. Society disapproved.