there's a kid a floor below me saying brother can you spare
sunshine for a brother old man winter's in the air
walked me up a story asking how you are
told me not to worry you were just a shooting star
-elliott smith, "sweet adeline"
Those of you who have known me for a very long time know of my experiences with suicide. Two very good friends both took their lives within a six month period when I was in high school. Neither knew the other, each had a different rationale. One was probably the closest friend I had ever had up that point in my life, the other was someone who I wanted to emulate in life. Both effected me in ways that I really can't explain and both continue to effect the recesses of my psyche.
I think in many ways, though, it's made me a better person. It has made me a better friend, a better listener. Those experiences have made me cherish every moment I have with my friends. Made me live for the present, if you will. Yes, I know it all sounds trite. However, it's all very true.
Late last week I learned that another friend decided to leave us. Noel Cross, better known to all as simply Sofa, was someone that I had never met in a traditional sense. Sofa and I belonged to a small e-mail list of friends and was a very good friend to several mutual friends. Sofa and I exchanged many e-mails and he posted more than a few comments here in the early days of randomness. Sofa was also a musician of some note and I'm very grateful to have his recorded work on a couple discs. I remember Sofa as a lovely, bright and fun-loving man who I really had hoped to meet "for real" one day. We all knew that Sofa had a history of depression but I, for one, never knew him to be anything but full of joy. It sounds odd, but I really miss him.
Today we learn that one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Elliott Smith, also decided to move on. As Dean said this morning, somewhere there's a great new indie band being formed.
Suicide is a difficult animal. Those who are left behind feel a tidal wave of complex emotions. We feel helpless. We feel anger. We feel guilt. All we can do is live each day to its fullest and let people know how we feel about them in our lives. I wish I'd had the opportunity to tell Sofa just that.
Posted by mikewolf at October 22, 2003 10:49 AMIt's odd to me, looking back at this post, to note that I didn't even mention that my uncle committed suicide just last year. That which should have effected me the most was simply glossed over. Sorry, Ron.
Posted by: mrw on October 22, 2003 10:59 AMMike, sorry to hear of your uncle and your long-ago friends. As I alluded to in our Blood on the Tracks discussion, I had a friend who took her own life. We met in a place set up to prevent that very thing, but it didn't work in her case. It's very complex for the survivors, way more than natural death is. Wes Anderson's use of Elliott Smith's "Needle in the Hay" during the suicide attempt in Royal Tenenbaums now seems eerily prophetic. Anderson really captured the confusion and anger that leads some people to negate themselves so irrevocably.
As someone who taunted and bluffed the Savage God in my youth, I can certainly understand the impulse. What Sofa did has made me think hard about family and friends. I was raised to trust the former more than the latter. From the way my parents lived, I inferred that family is forever but friends will inevitably let you down. Many is the time I've cursed that lesson, because it often leads me to put up subconscious barriers. And family can let you down just as much, maybe more. There's a saying about how you don't get to choose your family, for better or worse. I envy the closeness I've heard Sofa's friends describe, because it has been relatively rare in my life. But those insular, family relationships are what kept me alive in my early 20s, so it's hard to regret how I got where I am. Regret's nothing but a killer, besides. Now that I've got kids of my own, checking out is unthinkable. It's one thing to inflict that kind of pain on your friends, quite another to lay it on your children. But rationality seldom enters into it, I guess.
A saying I made up (to best of recollection) is that anyone who's never contemplated suicide doesn't understand this world, and anyone who's committed suicide never understood it either. But it sure can be hard getting past the first understanding to the second one.
Posted by: Vernam on October 22, 2003 12:17 PMWhy should we think that we know best for the person who takes there own life. If they are in that much pain why should we make them have to live out every day? I am sure this is a very unpopular idea but shouldn't we have the choice to live or not?
I have suffered with depression for as long as I can remember. I could not even count the number of times I have thought about suicide much less the times I held the means to my distruction in my hands. I was for what ever reason at the time unable to do it and now I can not. I have a child and I have to live for them. But at what price? Is this living, I am not sure. I think about my own death several times a day. I think about how other people would go about there life and you know except for the child I don't think it would be that bad. To finally beable to rest and not have to deal with the emotional pain of living.
I know what you are saying, "get help". Well I have tried and to date have had no sucess. I don't want to be on a prescribed medicated high. So now I live with the pain.
Thanks for posting this. You have put into words some of the feelings that I have never been able to express. And hearing Vernam's thoughts has given me a glimpse of the other side as well.
A few years ago I was finally able to ask my mom what happened with J. Had he left a note, was there any explanation? I wasn't really satisfied with the answer, but I think I have finally reached some peace with it.
My brother married a woman who is a devout born-again Christian. At a church they went to when they first moved to Billings several years ago, T. went up to the front to be blessed by the minister. The minister looked at him for a moment, laid his hands on him and said: "I cast out the spirit of suicide from you." Now, I'm certainly not a follower of Christ, but that story really freaked me out. This guy had never met T. before.
Posted by: tiffany on October 25, 2003 11:36 AM