I got back to work on Friday-only to be greeted by a tornado ( No lie-had to get to the bottom of our building and wait there)……and the news that a co-worker on my floor had committed suicide. Leaving behind a wife and a several children. There is no clear indication why. He seemed to be on a “normal” keel whenever I saw him or was in meetings with him-whatever “normal” really means.
Nonetheless, its a shock. This is the third person that I have known in my life who took his own life. One case was a guy threatened with the end of his naval career, the other was similar to this-a bolt from the blue with no clear indication why. I’ve also known anecdotally , of the case of two others-friends of a friend sort of things-where I knew the person by name only. And of course all of us who served in the Navy-of a certain age-knew of a CNO who put a gun to his chest. I had the unpleasant duty of standing in front of a 150 people at quarters and telling them that piece of news. ( It happened while I was giving out awards and a yeoman brought me the news to the podium).
Besides my own powerful fear of pain, I’ve never understood the incredible emotion that can drive a person to put a weapon to his head, or ingest a medication with full knowledge that what he was doing was ending his life. I’ve been through several very low points of body shaking , bone chilling fear-but never, not ever, did that idea ever cross into my head. I’ve kind of made a pact with myself that no matter what happens to me-I’m going to put one foot in front of the other and press on forward. No matter how much I lose or have lost. I also pray fervently that I never, ever, come to that kind of a cliff.
Furthermore, its also a really sharp reminder, that death is not the end of the world-its just the end of the person who dies. When we are young we tend to think of it as the former, as we grow older we come to realize its just the latter. For most of us-the circle of those who remember will be small, and will quickly diminish as time passes. Now THAT is a depressing thought-and a reminder of how truly unfair some things are in this life.
I looked up some statistics on suicide and they are startling-at least to me:
If you have a gun in your home, you are 5 times more likely to have a suicide in your house than homes without a gun.
Although more women acknowledge having depression and attempt suicide more often than men….
4 Times More MEN Commit Suicide Than Women !!
There is probably a lesson in that last bullet-about fairness or lack thereof between men and women. Or it could be that men are just more efficient at this particular skill.
There is a back story that I am sure will come to light-or maybe not-since the place I work is a collection of individual spinning constellations only aligned by proximity. That probably troubles me the most-that as a trouble person moved past me every day-I had no ability or knowledge to offer help, even if it would not have been accepted. What does that say for the rest of us?
Which seems appropriate to close with a Bukowski quote:
We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.-Charles Bukowski in The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors have taken over the Ship (1998)