Last week I stumbled across an in-depth story about a middle-aged man who was randomly murdered, while out for a run, by a mentally ill man who'd been a running back at a well known university and had dropped out due issues stemming from his mental illness. This article focused on the difficulties institutions (educational, professional) face dealing with mental illness. He and his wife had no children, and I saw in a related article that she was so devastated by his death that she took her own life a week later.
I was pretty irritated by the journalist who acknowledge the tragedy this woman had experienced but nonetheless branded her suicide as selfish. This strikes me as an easy way to dismiss those who succumb to their depression and to prop ourselves up at their expense. Maybe she (the journalist) was just invoking an important defense against depression in her own life, but I couldn't make myself read her article after seeing the headline. Perhaps she went on to investigate whether the distraught widow had had a history of issues with depression, and her husband's senseless murder had simply pushed her over an edge at which she had previously managed to maintain a troubled equilibrium. (This causes me to reflect on how stable my own equilibrium might really be, which is probably not a bad thing to consider for a guy who won't get a semicolon tattoo at least partly because his mother always insisted, "Don't write a check with your mouth that your ass can't cash.")
We have a friend who was ten years old when she discovered her grandmother, who lived in her home, dead by suicide. We've never really talked about what that was like for her; I would never ask her directly and she hasn't shared beyond these simple circumstances. But I often think of how important it is for my own grandchildren to know that they bring me joy and hope, or rather, to never have to face the question of why they didn't. My bride, too, would be devastated by my passing should I ever become so low as to disregard the difference her love makes in my life.
My dad's self-inflicted death was not as traumatic for me, though I'm certain that was at least in part because mom hid the details of his death behind the technical code phrase "cerebral hemorrhage," not revealing to me that it was a suicide until over a year later. When he died, the hardest thing for me about my dad's demise was my certainty that the reasons my prayers for him weren't answered were my own fault. Perhaps knowing sooner that he'd killed himself might have alleviated that concern, but I'm not at all certain of that.
I've long felt that the only semi-considerate way to commit suicide is to make it appear accidental. Fortunately - and, on re-reading prior to publishing this post, I take it as a positive sign that I didn't consider putting the prefix "un" on that adverb - I have learned that it is very difficult to set up an "accident" such that it is certain to a) be interpreted as such, b) result in death, and c) not physically or emotionally traumatize someone else.
Life is a precious gift. But I understand all too well how easy it is to be overwhelmed by it.
We have a friend who was ten years old when she discovered her grandmother, who lived in her home, dead by suicide. We've never really talked about what that was like for her; I would never ask her directly and she hasn't shared beyond these simple circumstances. But I often think of how important it is for my own grandchildren to know that they bring me joy and hope, or rather, to never have to face the question of why they didn't. My bride, too, would be devastated by my passing should I ever become so low as to disregard the difference her love makes in my life.
My dad's self-inflicted death was not as traumatic for me, though I'm certain that was at least in part because mom hid the details of his death behind the technical code phrase "cerebral hemorrhage," not revealing to me that it was a suicide until over a year later. When he died, the hardest thing for me about my dad's demise was my certainty that the reasons my prayers for him weren't answered were my own fault. Perhaps knowing sooner that he'd killed himself might have alleviated that concern, but I'm not at all certain of that.
I've long felt that the only semi-considerate way to commit suicide is to make it appear accidental. Fortunately - and, on re-reading prior to publishing this post, I take it as a positive sign that I didn't consider putting the prefix "un" on that adverb - I have learned that it is very difficult to set up an "accident" such that it is certain to a) be interpreted as such, b) result in death, and c) not physically or emotionally traumatize someone else.
Life is a precious gift. But I understand all too well how easy it is to be overwhelmed by it.
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