Not Saying Goodbye

One day a little boy from the neighborhood knocked on our door to visit.  Blonde hair and big blue eyes, he was about five or six. Being a "feed everyone" type of mom, I had popsicles and offered him one.  We saw him often that summer and he became friends with my boys who were two and four years younger.  They shared bad language and sketchy ideas.  They played video games and rode around on bikes.  He was at birthday parties in a group of boys at Nickelcade or the skating rink.  His family moved away after a time and being two years older meant he was at junior high and then high school before my boys.  We didn't see him like we used to, although the boys stayed in contact.

We were told about his death when he was just a couple months from his 19th birthday.  His girlfriend broke up with him and he chose, in that moment, to die.  We went to his funeral to say goodbye.  I looked at his beautiful face with love and anger and sadness.  How could he have been so stupid!  How could he choose to leave his family and friends?  Many teenage friends were there, including my own who were not able to bring themselves to see him or even come inside the funeral home.

What do you say to his parents besides, "I'm so sorry." "I will miss him."  They will miss him more.  If we think about him often, they will think about him everyday for the rest of their lives.  I can't say all of what I was thinking. "It wasn't one of my kids, it wasn't one of my kids, it wasn't one of my kids."  But he really was one of my kids for many years.  And while I'm thanking God that it wasn't one of my own children, it could have been.  And it still could be.

There seem to be more than one kind of death by suicide, and I'm not talking about the method.  Some people are going along well and then hit a wall of pain and need to get out of it.  Some run away, some take themselves out of it by suicide.  Some of us fight every day with depression trying to drag us down with it.  We can get so tired of fighting and the world gets so narrow that death seems like the best choice.  Those two types of situations, the wall of pain and the roller coaster of down and up and down again mean a momentary decision, a momentary choice.  In the time it takes for a stray thought to come and go, the young man steps out a window or hangs himself.  The young woman cuts her wrists instead of just cutting.  A handful of pills.  A loaded gun.  How many of those people we love make that decision, act, and then think, "Oh, shit.  I can't change my mind."  

Let's talk about God and free will.  Why didn't God prevent this?  Why didn't God stop this?  I can love my children with all my heart, which I do, but if one of them chooses in a bad moment to die, it's not about me and there is nothing I can do in that one moment to prevent it.  No amount of vigilance or talking or hovering.  Taking everything away that could be harmful.  Tying them up, locking them into an empty room so they can't make good on that choice?  Do I have the right?  God can stop them.  But He could stop so much and doesn't.  How far can He confine us to prevent us from hurting ourselves or others without making us ceased to be humans?

I was reading a book about police officers that contained stories of patrols. One of those stories was about a little girl, a two year old, who was found under the bed in the parents' apartment.  She had died.  There were two years of neglect and abuse, but the police never found a cause for her death.  The closest anyone could come to was that she had enough and decided to leave.  Like an out of body experience without coming back.  The book implied that this is not unheard of.   Adults have reported out of body experiences or near-death experiences during which they were given a choice to return or not.  Do modern medical advances allow people to return and take up their lives again?   

What does this mean for people who choose to die?  Some who want to change their minds are able to do that, if they are revived and have not damaged their bodies beyond being able to re-inhabit them.  There was recently a young woman who did not die from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and had a face transplant.  Are there others, like people who OD and are given Narcan injections, angry when they are brought back from their intended suicide?

Some people don't choose to end their lives in a bad moment or make a snap decision.  A family friend planned her suicide very carefully.  She chose a holiday weekend and reneged on plans to go out of town so that local friends assumed she wasn't home.  She posted a note on the door telling the next person that came looking for her, not to come in, to call the police and wait outside.  She covered a large area with plastic.  She not only took a bottle of pills, she then shot herself.  She was determined to die and determined that no one would stop her.  Where the former type of suicide seems a crime of passion, accidental manslaughter, if you will, this would be premeditated murder if she planned this for another person.

Does death hurt more or less for the family and friends they leave behind if they succumbed to the moment or planned their exit in exquisite detail.  I never liked the lyrics to "Suicide Is Painless".  No it's not.  Not for anyone.

I refuse to say goodbye.  You can go fuck yourself.  Oh, right.  You can't do that, either, anymore.

EM

PS: I'll tell you a secret.  There's other ways to kill yourself.  The way I know is trying to conform to someone else's vision of what you should be, slowly giving up things you love until you forget you ever loved them.  Until you exist by living your life so you don't disappoint anyone.  Instead of living, you're just waiting to die.