I
went to a funeral yesterday. He was the son of a very good friend. Her family
and my family have been friends for 30 years. Her mom and my mom used to call
each other Laverne and Shirley. I used to babysit her and her brothers. At
20-years-old, this young, man committed suicide. During the service, I realized that I was
really angry at him. I was angry at what he put his mother and grandmother and
brother and sister through. I was angry at what his son was going to have to
deal with when he became old enough to understand what his father did. I'm
pretty sure that most of the tears I shed yesterday were tears of anger, rather
than sadness. All I could think was, "The selfish, little bastard killed
himself. Typical." Life didn't turn out the way he planned when he was 14,
so he killed himself. Perhaps you think I am being harsh. Perhaps I am. But I
can't help the way I feel about what he did.
These
feelings reminded me of when I studied the novella The Awakening by Kate Chopin in college. I was just as angry, if
not more so, at the protagonist in the story. She committed suicide, too.
Taking
place around the turn of the 20th century, The protagonist was given a choice
of staying with a husband who thought of her as property for the sake of her
sons, or divorcing him to become the woman she wanted to be and never seeing
her sons again. I was angry at the character for not actually making a choice.
It was argued in class that suicide was a third choice, but I was never able to
accept that. Who did suicide help? Her sons were still without her: the sons
she felt she couldn't abandon through divorce. It didn't actually do anything
to fight against what was causing the torment, either. (You know, the fight for
women's equality.) In fact, the only purpose it served was to run away from a
conflict, and that made me mad, mad, mad!
I
guess it's natural to assume that because of my reaction to these two
situations, I don't think suicide is the answer to anything. You would be wrong.
Sometimes, I do think it is the right answer.
My
niece, the one who had the heart transplant, chose to die. She was almost
12-years-old, and she had spent more than half of her life in a hospital room.
By the time she decided she had had enough, her body was rejecting her heart,
again, and most of her other organs were failing, as well. Were there things
that could have been done to extend her life? Maybe. But she would have been
hooked up to machines and in constant pain. She didn't want to do that, so my
brother granted her request to be taken off all of her medications. She never
would have seen 20. She probably wouldn't have even seen 13. She was tired, and
forcing her to stay alive only served the purpose of keeping her around for us,
her family. That didn't make her death any harder to bear, but I don't feel
that her decision was a cop-out. I don't feel like she was running away from
difficulties.
I'm
not saying that I wasn't angry at my niece. I was. It's part of the grieving
process. But as I moved through my grief, I realized that I wasn't really angry
at her. I was angry that I would never get to see her, or hold her hand, or
study with her, or tuck her in, or go to the Renaissance Festival, or do a
million other things with her ever again. I wasn't angry at her for choosing to
end the pain. I was angry that she had to make that decision. Maybe I'm angry
at God, or the universe, or whatever, but I'm not angry at her, anymore. I just
miss her.
There
is a time to fight, and a time to give up. Elizabeth fought as long and as hard
as she could, and she only gave up when there really wasn't a reason to fight
anymore. That's why my friend's son's death angers me so much! He was healthy,
young, and intelligent, but he was also spoiled, selfish, and entitled. (I'm
not going to sugarcoat his defects just because he is dead, so don't yell at me
for it.) His death feels useless, meaningless, like he was running away from
something rather than putting an end to something. Maybe that's why I'm so angry.
Or
maybe it's because I spend every day clawing myself through every hour trying
not to think about how easy it would be to kill myself. Trying not to think
about how much I want my pain to end, but don't want to increase the pain of my
family and friends. They say that if you have a plan to kill yourself, you're
more likely to do it. Well, I have several plans. I've thought of various ways
to kill myself for over 25 years. I've even gathered what I needed once or
twice, but I never did it. I believe that suicide for no reason other than to escape,
to cause pain to someone else to alleviate my pain, is selfish. You may not
agree with me, but that's okay. You don't have to. This way of thinking,
though, keeps me from taking my own life every time. It doesn't, however, stop
me from wanting to die.
As
I'm writing this, I find that I have thought of another reason for being angry.
I'm angry at my friend and her family for not recognizing that her son was in
so much trouble. Heck, I'm angry at MY family for continuing to not recognize
the struggle I face every day. I've talked to them about my disease, disorder,
situation, illness, whatever you want to call it, but still they make comments
and jokes about things that they seemingly
don't realize I am going through. Yesterday my mother said something to me and
got offended when I didn't laugh. She asked me why I didn't laugh, and I told
her that I would have if she hadn't been talking about something I was going
through. My Swiss cheese slab of a brain won't let me remember what she said,
just that it hurt knowing she didn't realize what she was talking
about was something that affected me, and it wasn't funny.
Is
that what was going on with my friend's son? Did he have severe depression and
generalized anxiety disorder, too? Did no one try to get help for him, get him
diagnosed? Did anyone bother to try to understand his disorders? Did people
tell him to just "get over it," or to grow up because life wasn't
fair? Did his friends and family make comments and jokes about mental illness
that made him feel like he couldn't be open with them? Did they know that he
was ill and still make those jokes? Did he feel like no one cared, too?
Maybe
I'm not really angry at my friend's son, after all.
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