I understand suicide. I know people who understand suicide. I know people who have been touched by suicide but do not understand it. They are unable to fathom anything could be so bad as to cause someone to end their life. What they don’t understand is rational thought does not apply. When you are in that place and when you are that depressed, there is no rationality – there is only the need to end the pain and find peace. It consumes you and eats at you from the inside out. I don’t think people really commit suicide because they want to die – more likely they want desperately to live but feel like they ARE dying.
I believe in choice. I believe in people’s right to make the ultimate choice to live or to die. I believe 90 year old grandmothers diagnosed with terminal cancer should be allowed to end their life when they choose (probably the most rational and logical reason for suicide). Even if someone chooses to end their life as a foolish permanent end to a temporary problem, I still respect their right to make that choice.
My cousin committed suicide slightly over eight years ago. I was in a meeting at work when I was interrupted by the emergency call from my mother. She told me he’d done it, put a gun under his chin and fired. His fiancé returned home from work in the morning to find him in his bed, dead. She didn’t know why; no one knows why and he left no hint as to why. Some think it would have had to have been something so bad, worse than anything they could ever even imagine. I think it could’ve been something much simpler. It could have been any number of things – it could’ve been he had everything he thought he’d always wanted but still was not happy. It is devastating to think you SHOULD be happy but no matter how hard you try you just can’t feel it. And maybe it was no reason at all – maybe he didn’t even realize what he was doing; maybe he was acting in his sleep. His decision, if it was a conscious decision, was a mistake. It was stupid and cowardly. But when you love someone you support them when they make mistakes – you stand behind their bad decisions. And I do. I respect his decision even though I do not agree.
When someone dies in this way, you futilely search the smallest corners of your memory looking for a clue. You look for a reason and you look for a sign you missed. For awhile, you feel guilty. Was it something I did? Something I didn’t do? Did I ignore the warning signs? It is hard to accept never knowing why and it is harder to accept there was nothing you could have done to prevent what happened. Whatever the reason, his method of dealing with it was his decision alone. He decided; I had no control over that decision. I think at least part of the trigger for these guilty, questioning feelings is misdirected anger. The person who deserves your anger is no longer there to take it; there is no one to slap and tell, “What were you thinking!?! Idiot!” You are just left with an empty void for which you cannot explain the cause definitively no matter how hard you try. The only thing to do is try to learn from his mistake so his death was not in vain; to realize it is eight years later, I am still here, my heart is still beating, I am still breathing and even though I’ve had some hard times, I have had many blessings. All I can do is LIVE.
