Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die- to sleep-
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks 1755
That flesh is heir to.
I had breakfast yesterday with a handsome young man--a 33-something former student who is in town to bury his father yet wanted to break bread with me, his old English teacher and now Facebook friend. Imagine!
The young man's name is Kyle. He has a fraternal twin brother that I also had in school, and another older brother whom I don't know. He asked to meet me at Bob Evans at 8:00 AM, the morning of his father's funeral visitation. We arrived at the same time and greeted each other with a heartfelt hug in the parking lot. I told him I was so very sorry about the circumstances of our meeting, and he expressed that he was, too. Then we went in.
I always had a soft spot in my heart for Kyle. He's an ambitious young'un--a do-er with a can-do attitude. Sometime just after graduation from Monrovia, he expressed interest in amateur radio and becoming a pilot. I took him, with the help of a friend who worked there, on a tour of the Air Route Traffic Control Center in Indianapolis. (This was before 2001. When 9/11 happened, that sort of thing came to a roaring halt.) He got a pilot's license and went on to sell radios, professionally. I figured he could even become president some day! I consider Kyle one of my educational success stories. Thank God, we've always been able to talk frankly to each other. He knows I am one of his cheerleaders, and I know he is a loyal "follower" of Ms. McNary.
Which brings me to our breakfast together. Kyle's father's death (in Florida where the dad lived) was "sudden and unexpected". I only found out the night before, from Kyle, that his passing was a suicide. An unpremeditated suicide. He shot himself in the head, without fanfare, in front of his wife and paramedics who had just arrived to treat the father's visiting brother who was having a heart attack. No one knows why. There were no clues. No hints. Just a knee-jerk thing that leaves family and friends alike thinking they are living a nightmare that will be over if they can just wake up from it. All that is left are questions.
Kyle talked about it. He wasn't emotional, although he certainly could have been. I think he's just numb and terribly, terribly confused. He was working on writing his father's eulogy that he will deliver today at the funeral. I told him that I wouldn't be there for mobility reasons, and he understood.
We didn't just focus on his father. We did catch up on other things...his brothers, his job, his life and mine. As much as we could do in the 1 1/2 hours we soaked up space in the booth. My heart left with him, but I--like the rest of his family--came home with sooo many questions about suicide. We all have hard times and sometimes depression, but we don't all consider doing away with ourselves.
1. I think everyone can respect someone who takes his/her own life due to physical pain in a disease situation that isn't going to get better. Choosing death on one's own terms is noble. I could never fault the people who jumped from the towers on 9/11, for instance. Or someone who was in horrible pain from cancer, or unable to exist without the hard work of other people due to paralysis or a degenerative disease. I get that. Kyle's father wasn't sick, that anyone knew of. The Medical Examiner has requested his medical records and is awaiting toxicology reports. The dad was full of life and passion; loved his family; had just bought a new boat, etc.
2. A re-run Dr. Phil show that I saw after I heard about Kyle's dad featured a family whose father had killed himself due to illness and depression. One of the daughters expressed the question, "Why wasn't I enough to make him want to live?" Yes...there's that.
3. Kyle asked, "Why would he want to do this to his wife? She is a mess. We don't even know if she can come to the funeral." (The wife is the boy's stepmother of 16 years.) There's that, too. No one knows WHY.
4. The problem with an unexplained suicide is that no one gets answers. The only person who can answer the questions is gone forever. This particular death is labeled "uncharacteristic" by his family.
5. What's worse, people who forever threaten loved ones with suicide but never make an attempt, or those who do it without any warning whatsoever? Either case makes us numb, but for different reasons.
6. All of the loved ones left behind will spend the rest of their lives wondering "what if"? It's not fair, but life isn't fair...so I guess we all need to suck it up. Too many former students and too many of their parents have committed suicide to think it is all that uncommon. I know of at least ten people who have deliberately done away with themselves. That's too many!!
My heart is with the Kaiser boys today. They are bearing one of "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to". May God be with them.
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