[I just returned from the dentist. The Novocain† has left my tongue a bit numb and unwieldy, so forgive me if I thhlur thum of my words. And I've decided to schlow down how quickly I type to make it easier for you schlower readers to keep apace (that's such a silly old joke, but I love it). But I will pass along, gratuitously, that Dr. David and his (gorgeous) assistant Jane are indeed the dynamic duo of dentistry. They're so good, I purposely encourage my own tooth decay. (OK, I jest about the decay part). With this lighthearted note, I present a somber post.]
Loyal Contratimes readers will remember that last month I mentioned the recent suicide of an old college buddy, a doctor who turned his own medical skill against the miraculous physiology which was his body. Just to let you know, M.'s suicide has left me unsteady on my feet. I am often struck midstride with vertigo, my soul suddenly tipsy with grief and incredulity. There is something truly staggering about it, and I have to will myself back into balance. I have tried to express my sorrow and disappointment without trundling out my bag of sorrows before you, estranging you with my candor. And to think, M. and I had not been close for years.
With that said, it would not be unfair to observe that there is a societal tendency to look at suicide romantically. If that is untrue, then it is at least clear that there is a tendency to look at what leads to suicide through something of a romanticizing lens; that the suicide victim was a tormented yet brilliant genius, unfit for the world which could not embrace him, which could never understand the breadth of his comprehension or the delicate sensitivity of his soul. The suicide victim in some cases was too good for this tawdry life; was too ideal for our mundanity; was too creative to live in the banality of society. The tormented mind is perceived as heroic, discerning through the trite claptrap that fills our daily lives and glimpsing the real, the just, the true; the beyond. The tormented mind is even permitted to be bored with our vacuous little pursuits; he finds the things most people worship to be so much ephemera, so much rejectamenta, so much yawning emptiness. He is perceptive without limit.
Of course, I reject that, and so would M., I believe. His was neither a life nor a death that can be understood in such terms. What comes to mind with M. is the need to stop something, to find a cessation to a constant that should never have been; to close a half-read book that had no possibility of a happy ending (or so he perceived). His was a death born of fatigue, not genius.
I wrote of my struggles with M.'s suicide just before Christmas:
"... I noticed something strange about suicide that I don't think I've ever noticed before. For instance, had M. died suddenly from a natural cause, or in some horrific crash, I would be meditating on his past far differently than I have, in fact, been doing. I would have thought only about the goodness, even the greatness of M.; and I would have been angered at the world's loss of so bright a light. I would have looked over M.'s life and noticed little else but that bright path of his light still glowing in his wake (ignoring even his sins). But instead of doing that, I can't help but look upon M.'s path not so much for the lovely things, but for the sad and dark things, the hints and clues, the causes and influences, that led him to his very sad end. I know this is not what M. deserves, nor is it what I suspect he would've wanted me to do. But I can't help it. Is this experience a necessary result of suicide? Are my meditations, all cloudy and at times even angry, an unavoidable consequence of such deaths? Is it possible to look at the suicide of a friend and not blame oneself; to not look upon all the misunderstandings and lost opportunities without some sort of self-doubt? Egads, a young man who is a notorious rascal who dies suddenly in a skiing accident is nearly sainted at his funeral, with everyone his best friend; but the saint who commits suicide is reflected upon with misgivings, with doubts abounding about perceptions, and whether anyone was ever a best friend."
I still feel this way, and I won't be shaken free of these thoughts any time soon. Suicide does not really memorialize the hero in the person who kills himself; it brings out the dark rememberings, the ugly guesses and "what-ifs"; the doubts that the person was ever transparent or honest or sincere. Or even a friend. In other words, if the suicide victim intends his survivors to memorialize him in wonder and triumph, he is most likely mistaken. Beneath the veneer of mourners' polite gratitude there will be doubt.
There was a time when suicide victims were buried separately from the rest of the dead. As they separated themselves from the living in this world, so they were separated from them, at least symbolically, in the post-mortem memorials of terrestrial graveyards. I understand the sentiment behind the decision to separate -- although, in admitting that, I am not suggesting I know the eternal fate of the soul, nor am I suggesting damnation.
G.K. Chesterton once suggested that suicide was not the killing of one's self, but the killing of the whole world. In a very real sense, that is true: the suicide has indeed murdered us all, cutting us off from him, declaring, in the fateful act, that there is nothing here worth living for or, perhaps, even remembering. There is no baby's smile, no blossom or bee or bluebird sky that is worth marveling at just one more time. It is all worthless, and even if the suicide deems that he is the only thing worthless, he admits in death that there was nothing in earth or sky or lover's eye that could ever redeem him.
There are no conclusions reached here. There is only sorrow making its tipsy way toward something that I hope is not darkness forsaken, but light and life everlasting.
Contratimes
†For you spelling nerds, Novocain is the proper name for an actual brand of anesthesia; novocaine is the generic name or synonym for procaine, or so reports the Oxford American Dictionary. A mere trifle. But I want to be accurate for each of you (nerds).
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
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