*I am currently reading The Suicide Index. It is a non-fiction book about a woman writing about her father's suicide, and her quest to find out why he did such a thing. Why he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
Last night - deep in the night - when fireflies no longer light up the room - I cried. Somewhere in the book the lady talks about the obvious: once you have a suicide....you change. Your perspective of everything changes. Nothing fits right anymore. You know too much. You know that a bullet can shatter a skull and flip out the brains.
Daniel.
Oh, Daniel.
I thought of my beautiful cousin and that horrible moment a few years back when I heard my mom running down the hall screaming, "Daniel is dead. Oh God he's dead! He killed himself!".
I am different from the author, though. She had no idea of why her father pulled the trigger. We all knew why Daniel did. He tried for years to kill himself, and fate always told him, "Not yet".
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At his funeral all of the cousins were there. It's funny, odd - on my Mom's side of the family (she was one of five kids) all of us cousins have had a mental disorder of sorts. ALL of us. This includes myself, my brother, Daniel, Sara, Rachel, Robert, Richie, and maybe even Shawn. We are talking depression, mania, bipolar, ocd, etc. We cover it all. We will sit around at holidays and joke about it. I remember joking about it with Daniel before.....one Thanksgiving comes to mind. We were sitting outside smoking and we were all talking about what perscription meds we were on and how they made us fat and lazy. We always took our mental states lightheartedly. We had to.
I remember at the funeral us cousins were standing outside so that I could smoke, and we all said, "I can't believe he actually did it. That he finally did it." Quiet a few of us talked about how we thought about killing ourselves over the years. The half-hearted attempts to kill ourselves. Now here we stood. Angry with him. Sad for him. Calling him a selfish bastard.
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The next weekend his younger brother graduated high school. We ate cake and nervously laughed at the ying/yang of life.
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About half an hour before he pulled the trigger he called us. I answered the phone and he asked to speak to my Mom. Mom talked to him and she said that he was driving, and drunk, and wondering why the whole world was against him. She told him to calm down - we loved him - we support him - go home and get some rest. The call came a few minutes later. He was dead.
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He blew off half of his head. They needed to use his dental records. At the funeral it was an open casket. There was a cover over his head. IT was right under the cover. His open skull. Did he have his eyes left? Was his mouth intact? We didn't think it was going to be an open casket (duh), but someone decided last minute they needed that closure of seeing him. Perhaps his Mom. It was so last minute that there was still dirt under his fingernails. His hands were ice. He was the first dead body that I have ever touched.
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I still think of him, yet I will never allow myself to think of him in that next-to-last moment of his life. I will never wonder, "What was he thinking?", because I've been there. I know what he was thinking. He was thinking that he was finally free.
*
I'm glad, over the years, I finally realized that freedom was not worth it
3 comments:
I identify with your seeing the death as freedom. Many times in my life I have felt overwhelmed by the responsibilities of life. I'd repeatedly say, "My life will be better as soon as.....is over." Only to find that once whatever was weighing me down, would be replaced by another overwhelming event. One day I realized that these events, sewn together, are the fabric of my life, and I grew to accept this and even enjoy the fact that the life I love is created by these moments/events which are sometimes stressful but must be lived to the fullest. I don't know why some people can never fully get their arms around their lives and live them joyfully. I do believe that a strong faith that there is a greater power orchestrating it all, in spite of the free will we've been given to do distructive things, helps in finding a peace in one's place in the greater plan. I'm sorry for your hurt and pray you can find that peace which I know.
Faith has played a HUGE role in all of our lives - even if some of us no longer believes. Daniel and I would talk about God a lot, especially after our Grandfather died in 1989. He grew up across the road from him and he was like a second father to Daniel - and a very religious man. A Quiet Christian, I always like to say. Much like myself. He never had to talk about his faith - you always knew it was there.
Poor Daniel always had a hard time with drugs and alcohol due to his upbringing. His mother probably had the worst life ever (molested by her brother, etc.) and turned to drugs when Daniel was little. They would do drugs together, even.
He never believed in himself due to a lot of circumstances, and he had faith...yet he never had faith in himself. He always told me that God loved him and spoke to him, yet without that faith in himself...well.....the gun was too easy.
Thankfully his mom has been sober for 2 years now. The death of her Son woke her up - and she's finally clean after around 25 years. There is that.
I hate it that he lost the faith in himself, because he was a bright, witty, crazy funny guy. Very good looking. Very creative. Damaged soul. Drugs ate his brain. He had a fiance. There were her two little kids in the house when he did it, and he adored them.
That's how out of his mind he was. Those little kids saw him without his head. They had to go to therapy.
There are a lot of regrets - a lot of "what ifs". Like - why didn't I talk to him when I answered the phone? Why didn't I ask him how he was doing? Or tell him that I missed him? (All of us cousins have grown up crazy close to each other - we are all like brothers and sisters). Why, why, why. It took my Mom forever not to blame herself anymore. She was finally able to get mad at him.
Ramble, ramble, ramble.
Thank you for your kind words, Charlotte. They were much needed.
I would very much like new post, preferably one with pictures of Bella and some of your kick arse writing please.
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