So anyway, I found out recently that a boyhood friend who died about a decade ago committed suicide. I mean, I knew he had died, I went to the viewing. But I didn't consider it appropriate to ask his brother what happened. Also recently, I learned that a onetime class mate and subsequent acquaintance also killed himself.
So that brings to five the number of people I knew who took their own lives. I wonder where that ranks. Does everybody know somebody who has committed suicide? Is five high or low or average? I'd suppose psych-ward workers stand a better-than-average chance of surpassing that number. Or people who hang around with habitually depressed people. But the five I knew didn't appear to fall into those categories. Some of them I knew better than others. One was a longtime teammate and classmate and friend. I would see him intermittently after we'd both gotten out of school. His chosen profession: butcher. He told me he loved it. Not enough to sustain him, as it turned out. I lent him money in high school that contributed to an abortion, an act with which I wrestled then and have wrestled with since. But loyalty, or at least my teenage notion of what constituted loyalty, carried the day, so I ponied up the funds. I don't know how he killed himself, and I'd rather not want to know. But I do wonder if the particular technique says something about the level of self-loathing or despair or whatever serves as a catalyst reveals about a person.
Another person I knew hanged himself. He was a real-estate agent, and from what I heard, distraught over the dissolution of his relationship with a stripper. I don't know the veracity of that information. What I do know is that I've had to see his parents and children consistently at the Little League field ever since. His father apparently remarked once that people didn't say anything about it. What's to say, other than I don't think your son should have left behind two kids? Your son who also survived an organ transplant. On the other hand, nobody can gauge the depths of someone else's despair.
Another was a high-school teacher. Apparently struggling with alcohol and finances. He had kids. Jumped in front of a train. Finality. But to me he never fit the profile of someone who would commit suicide. Blustery, outgoing. Maybe such a profile doesn't exist. We don't know which people possess the most vulnerable characteristics. The butcher who loved his job, the in-your-face teacher. Most people put up a facade, anyway, it seems.
Yet another person, that onetime classmate and subsequent acquaintance, served as a veterinary technician, last I knew. He got kicked out of our high school for stealing a wallet from someone's locker. He allegedly had above-average mathematical skills. His brother previously attempted suicide, so perhaps a familial predisposition existed.
Another guy I knew slightly, from the gas station where he worked and the local bars, hanged himself, I heard. That came after he got arrested for burglary. Could that one traumatic event have provided the motivation? Or was it the final straw? This from Lucinda Williams:
Was it hard to finally pull the plug
Was it hard to receive that final hug
Did evil triumph over love
Was it hard to finally pull the plug
When did you start seeing black
Was it too much good you felt you lacked
Was it too much weight riding on your back
When did you start seeing black
The people I knew were all men. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, almost four times as many males as females die by suicide. Firearms, suffocation, and poison are by far the most common methods of suicide, the NIMH says. Women use guns less than men but poison themselves more frequently. Suffocation is nearly even. I'm thinking hanging falls under the suffocation category. Pills would be an example of poisoning, I guess. Older Americans are more likely to die by suicide than the population at large. But the ones I knew wouldn't be considered older. Some men probably kill themselves because their significant others (SO's) bitch so much (IMHO).
This book talks about how George Washington wanted liberty--financial independence, but also freedom from "involuntary passions." Involuntary passions being addictions or the like, I would think. Failing that among the living, does suicide provide liberty, the ultimate independence? Perhaps independence lies in the capability to commit suicide.
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