Suicide is Painful

This morning, I attended the funeral of one of my son’s high school friends. His name was James and he had just turned 22. That’s not his real name because I feel funny putting his name out into the blogosphere. I’m not sure why. Maybe the wound is too raw. Maybe I think his memory will suffer from people knowing that he killed himself at a young age.

Life can get complicated for a kid his age. Maybe I should say "man." But I remember him as a gangly 13 year-old with acne and a squeaky voice. I can see him as a morose 15-year-old getting in trouble for wearing his black trenchcoat to school. This was just after the Columbine shootings and any teen boy in a long trenchcoat was instantly suspect.

James was an outcast anyway, a kid with a chip on his shoulder who would mutter asides to his teachers and then laugh. For all the teachers knew, he was calling them an asshole or something worse. Or maybe he was saying "You’re a fine human being, sir." It didn’t matter. All the teachers knew that James was a bad sort, constantly muttering things under his breath and hanging out with a bad crowd, which included my son. He and my son and their fellow outcasts were often suspended, constantly in the principal’s office, tussling with the more mainstream members of the student body.

During the four years since their 2003 high school graduation (most of them did graduate), the boys have gone separate ways. I lost track of James. My son entered drug rehab in Florida and earned his G.E.D. He came back to Wyoming and then moved to Tucson and that’s where he is today, working full-time and attending college part-time. He was upset when he called me last Monday to tell me that James had committed suicide. James had just graduated from art school in Denver and had moved back to his hometown. He lived with another friend. Life (apparently) hummed along. One day James was dead by his own hand.

As I said earlier -- life can get complicated for a young man. Guys his age are dying every day in a senseless war in Iraq (Bush started it four years ago today). They drive too fast and slam their cars into trees. They drink and drug too much and slam their cars into each other.

With James, it was a long slow death from depression and maybe some other mental problems. At the funeral, his adopted mom – the mother of a high school friend – said that she and James bonded because they shared a lifelong struggle with mental illness. But she admitted that there was something inside James that she couldn’t reach, that nobody could reach.

That’s the way it is sometimes. James left behind four brothers and his parents and grandparents and lots of cousins. His two oldest brothers, charged with delivering eulogies, couldn’t speak when they reached the podium at the funeral home. His oldest brother, a burly U.S. Navy petty officer, broke down in tears when it came his time to speak. Later, his tiny wife had to support him and he walked from the ceremony.

I looked at him and saw myself. This would be me if my son or my daughter or my brother committed suicide. I am not afraid to speak in public. I gladly get up in front of crowds to read my work or to emcee an arts event. But a blow like this would lay me as low as it did James’s big brother.

There will be dozens more suicides this year in Wyoming. The long winters and the solitude and western stoicism and lack of quality mental health care take their toll. The same can be said of other western states. James is one among many.

That is no comfort to those he left behind.

If you are thinking about suicide, or know someone who may be, contact the National Hopeline Network at 1-800-SUICIDE or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. In Wyoming, you can contact Casper's Wyoming Behavioral Institute.