This article offers an ethnomethodological analysis of suicide practices in situ. By analyzing a viodetaped record of a public suicide by a government official, the temporal relations between the unfolding suicide act & the situational contingencies arising from its interactional context can be examined. Analysis focuses on how the audience’s reaction to the imminent suicide foreclosed the suicide ceremony while at the same time pre-empting the pre-suicide speech deferring the impending suicide.