Tomorrow is my father's birthday. On Friday, I spent some time with a co-worker who has a friend whose son committed suicide recently. I shared with her some information I amassed after my father's suicide and it reminded me of that dark time in my own life. It's important to stay in touch with the grieving friend. It's really amazing how many people simply drift away when someone commits suicide. The survivors are left to try to mend their lives alone. For me, that wasn't such a big deal. I'm a dealing with it alone kind of person. My mom, however, felt that people blamed her for his death. That's a very difficult thing to deal with when you blame yourself and everyone blames themselves. There are a million things you see that might have made a difference had you thought of them in time. That's incorrect. There is, in fact, not a thing in the world that you can do if someone really wishes to die. There's no way you can monitor them 24 hours a day. There's no way you can remove every means by which suicide might be accomplished. None of that matters, though. It's just a part of the process. You feel guilty. You feel that you should have seen it coming and done something about it.
People who kill themselves tend to be difficult all of their lives. As far as my father was concerned, that's the understatement of the century. It took really hard work to have a relationship with him because the world was all about Ed. Ed was insulted if you got him the wrong Christmas present. No matter what was going on in my life, everything had to come to a screeching halt when Ed phoned. If Ed gave me a gift, I could say thank you a million times and it was never enough. He sucked all of the oxygen out of every room he ever walked into. I hated him and I loved him. I was furious with him and I pitied him. Any complex relationship I've had since then has been a day at the beach compared to him.
My co-worker believes that suicide is a profoundly selfish act. Actually, I have a number of friends who feel the same way. I suppose it is. However, the mind state of a person who's getting ready to pull the trigger doesn't really allow much thought about anyone else. They've been sucked into a vortex that doesn't have room for wondering what will become of the survivors. I've been suicidal many times in my life and I guarantee you that it's a very dark space to inhabit. The pain of living is so intense that there really is no room to think about anyone else. You just want the pain to end. Ironically, though I have a lot of sympathy for people who decide to cash in their chips early, I hold it against people who kill themselves in the house they share with loved ones. That really pisses me off. Could you not just walk out of the fucking door to pull the trigger? My dad had the decency to go down the street from my parents' house. Well, I guess the truth is that he was just trying
