In January of 1987, my best childhood friend, already discouraged by several failures, false starts, personal problems, and family issues, surrendered his last ounce of courage, burned the grade report that told him he had flunked out - again - of college, got high, called around trying to find someone to help him, give him a last minute reprieve, and finding none, went out back, put a long-barreled firearm (I don't know if it was a shotgun or rifle) in his mouth and nearly decapitated himself. I spent my last semester in college trying to understand not only "Why", but why I was reacting the way I did. Twenty-one years later, the "why" doesn't interest me at all, because I have come to the conclusion (as heartless as it sounds) that he was a gutless coward, afraid to turn to those of us who loved him and tell us that things were pretty messed up in his life.
I had survivor's guilt pretty bad. That summer, I had a nightmare from which I woke up screaming. I was a camp counselor that summer, and a bunch of kids hearing their counselor screaming in the middle of the night was most likely unsettling. I was sitting in a theater, and I saw Chip a few rows in front of me, he turned to me and smiled and as I watched, the skin and flesh melted off his head, leaving a glaring, bloodied skull laughing at me maniacally.
You wonder why I woke up screaming?
The reason for reciting this little bit of personal history is this post by Angry Ballerina, which concerns this story in The New York Times on a string of suicides and questionable deaths on Nantucket. While I once had compassion for those who, at wit's end and suffering from either acute or chronic depression, found no recourse but death acceptable, I have since changed my mind, and believe that compassion only ends up handing these people the support they need to commit this one final act of treachery against those who love them. As someone who spent time dealing, professionally, with a case of acute depression, I know what that is like. Going that extra mile, however, reminds me of the emptiness and anger I lived with for close to a year, the sense that I had failed somehow.
I know now, through the benefit of hindsight, that I didn't fail. The failure was his and his alone. I feel fortunate that I also do not hate him anymore (I spent quite a few years hating him for what he did; he committed murder), and when I am home next week, I shall go down to Tioga Point Cemetery in Athens, PA and stand above his grave and we'll chat (don't call me weird, because I know all sorts of people who spend their time in cemeteries having conversations with those whose bodies lie interred beneath their feet). At most, I will berate him because I so much wish that my wife and kids could have met him. Mostly, I'll just stand there and remember some of the crazy stuff he used to do, and got us to do (walking from one of the pool to the other; driving with his knees while combing his hair in the rear-view mirror; that day in the locker room shower with his girlfriend . . . OK, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that one).
This is one area I know I have a blind spot. I wish I could be more compassionate with those for whom life has become too much of a burden. I wish I could hear their pain, and legitimate it. I can't. We all live with pain. We all have to deal with failure, sometimes multiple failures. We all have to live with the consequences of our bad decisions and limited knowledge. Deciding that such makes life unlivable is cowardice, pure and simple. While I hope the individuals find, in whatever lies on the other side, something like peace, they should know, before they go, that the turmoil they leave behind is as much their responsibility as the turmoil they created in their lives in the first place.
R.I.P. - Charles Kinch, 1965-1987.
Virtual Tin Cup
