"It offends our sensibilities in a way that almost nothing does anymore. A crime has been committed, but the victim and the perpetrator are one and the same. That is the essential conundrum of suicide, and a good part of what makes it so hard to discuss."
The last 4 sentences of an essay titled "On Writing About Suicide and Not Finding Catharsis," by Philip Connors, who wrote a book called "All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found," about his brother's gunshot-to-the-head suicide.
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We always ask "Why?".
We always say "If only..."
Hearts are saddened and broken by the tormented soul of those we love, those we could not help.
We must let them go.
Let them go to God.
"Let them go to God."
Well, that's a very dangerous notion! Traditionally, suicides didn't get to go to God. If suicide were believed to be the expressway to God, there would be more suicide. Obviously, you'd like to offer this palliative to family and friends who believe in God, but potential suicides hear it too, and so the consequences -- which you don't intend -- are too obvious to ignore.
The problem with blowing your head off is you spend all eternity in Heaven, staggering around, bumping into stuff.
What if the person also had good reasons for the suicide...are such reasons ever enough to justify the act, or merely enough to make all but a few think much about it?
What if you think they should be punished for many of their crimes, a la Jeffrey Dahmer ir even Bernie Madoff and you're not going mind too much if they do the deed?
From that excerpt/preview Connors is a very good writer. I hope you can link to the rest of it too.
He brings to mind that a family has a lot invested in the love or hate bonds among its members who must play out their assigned roles. A Suicide cheats the family out of the rest of the acts in the play.
I see a mental illness as a partial suicide killing off the potential for normal life. And the "auto-immune" diseases can do that too without the free will element.
It is almost that if one doesn't get you the other will.
I see the "Let them go to God" as a grieving mechanism, for believers. Those potential suicides who are, or who at one time, believed in God or some sort of Higher Power would hopefully see and embrace that relationship - the comfort - and stay. I don't buy that they would see it as a ticket out. A friend's mother, recently did just that. It's not that unusual.
"... the victim and the perpetrator are one and the same."
There have been several suicides among my friends and extended family, and I don't agree with this. As the rest of the essay illustrates, the victims are living, and left behind.
Prostitute: I am hopelessly hooked on drugs, my teeth are falling out, my family has disowned me, my pimp beats me mercilessly and I am reduced to selling my body for money with no hope for anything better. Sometimes I think suicide is the only answer.
Customer: I'll throw in another hundred for anal.
Prostitute: You just saved my life.
I am Laslo.
I don't quite get why he's so hung up on his brother dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Would he have felt better if his brother had hung himself? Or OD-ed on painkillers? Maybe jumped from a high bridge?
I still find premeditated murder services offered by the abortion industry to be the most offensive to my sensibilities. Not only does the industry terminate wholly innocent human lives for a consumer's causes of wealth, pleasure, and leisure, but it debases human life generally, unlike any other business and service. It reduces a common civilized standard for justified murder from immediate threat to a personal burden. Not even the military has such low standards for committing murder and especially for the open commission of collateral damage.
There is a lady at my church who lost her only granddaughter to suicide, and then a year later on the anniversary her only grandson, who was still struggling over the death of his sister.
It's all so very sad. I can't muster any dudgeon over suicide. It just makes me sad.
None of us knows what is inside someone else's brain, soul or reality.
I first thought about suicide when I was about 15. I could have faked it to look like an accident. A few years later I found drugs and alcohol. That helped for about 15 years until I finally reached my end. I made it through my stuff but I also know that not everyone finds their way.
"Traditionally, suicides didn't get to go to God."
I think that's a Catholic belief, not necessarily shared by other Christian denominations. Are there any passages in the Bible to support this? How is one's fate in the afterlife seen to be imperiled by other religions, if at all?
Even if there were a god, it would be so vast and mysterious, so unknowable to us, that we could not possibly fathom it or its works or wishes. (Can an ant or a beetle comprehend a human being?)
So, if there were existence after this life we know, who can say what it is or how our means of passage to it will affect our experience of it?
Perhaps it's time for him to adapt his sensibilities and modify his categories of justice.
"I don't quite get why he's so hung up on his brother dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Would he have felt better if his brother had hung himself? Or OD-ed on painkillers? Maybe jumped from a high bridge?"
Why do you think it is his brother's means of suicide that he's "hung up" about? Don't you see that it is his brother's act of self-termination--by whatever means it might have been effected--that is the difficult thing?
I like to believe that our relationship to life is similar to our relationship to dreaming when we sleep. Dying, by any means, is like waking up. Sometimes nightmares can be so intense they shock us awake.
It is uncanny how Althouse posts stuff that has a direct reflection on my life sometimes.
This morning, in my Sunday School class, I shared the story of my uncle, Bill Carmichael. He's my dad's little brother. Bill was a hippie in the 1960's, had a beard like John the Baptist. Sweet and innocent man. He wanted to be a singer/songwriter. He had the artistic impulse, like me. He used to write songs and send them to Bob Dylan. Songs that never got sung. He once got his picture in the paper for being a street musician. He would put his hat on the ground in front of him, and plays his songs.
His career never went anywhere. He experimented with drugs, and then one day he killed himself. Just a horrible impulse, I think, and one that you can't take back.
Very painful for my family, of course, especially my father. Anyway, in my Sunday school class I asked everybody to pray for uncle, Bill Carmichael. And I actually had the thought, maybe I will ask on one of the cafe threads if people here might pray for my uncle. I would like to bring him closer to God. Thank you.
Taylor Carmichael
I could write pages. And did. But not appropriate for this forum. So, shorter version:
Sober suicide occurs when hope runs dry.
My rational brain tells me we're all going to die eventually. What's the point of prolonging life? A hundred years from now (or a thousand, ten thousand, a million), at some point we become moot. Out, out, brief candle!
I can't speak for everyone with depression. For me, hope and faith keep me going through the omnipresent (and irrational) grief and despair.
Without hope that things would get better, I would have killed myself as a 15-year old. Or at any point between then and now. But everyday I wake up and hope that this day will be different, that tomorrow will be better. Knowing, at some point, this mortal existence/experience must end.
Faith powers my hope that existence exists beyond our current comprehension. YMMV. -CP
"Traditionally, suicides didn't get to go to God."
I think that's a Catholic belief, not necessarily shared by other Christian denominations.
The Catholic Church doesn't actually hold that to be the case -- from the Catholic catechism on suicide, note #2283:
Suicide
2280 Everyone is responsible for his life before God who has given it to him. It is God who remains the sovereign Master of life. We are obliged to accept life gratefully and preserve it for his honor and the salvation of our souls. We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of.
2281 Suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life. It is gravely contrary to the just love of self. It likewise offends love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation, and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations. Suicide is contrary to love for the living God.
2282 If suicide is committed with the intention of setting an example, especially to the young, it also takes on the gravity of scandal. Voluntary co-operation in suicide is contrary to the moral law.
Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.
2283 We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.
Eric the Fruit Bat said...
The problem with blowing your head off is you spend all eternity in Heaven, staggering around, bumping into stuff.
First they go to Purgatory. Then they
take Purgatory Blvd to US-550 S
2 min (0.5 mi)
follow US-550 S to Hell
3 h 50 min (237 mi)
@Cookie, next time read the article before you respond to one of my comments.
Dingbat.
Big Mike: I did read the article. It doesn't strike me in anything he wrote that his grief is particularly tied up with the method of his brother's suicide, but with the fact of the suicide itself.
Big Mike: Just to be fair to your intepretation, I reread the article.
Nope. There's nothing there to indicate it was his brother's suicide by gun to the head that he's hung up on. It was simply the fact of his brother having taken his own life. Had his brother taken his life by one of the other methods you mention it wouldn't make any difference to the article as written...except for the parts where he states his brother's method of suicide.
@Cookie, number of times the author mentions that his brother committed suicide: 6 to 8, depending on how you count it.
Number of times he mentions that it was by gun: 4
The mental illness of a loved one is the hardest thing I've ever had to bear. How can you defend her from herself? At what point do you stop treating her as an adult and call for involuntary commitment? Can you ever recover the trust you shared before that?
What I'm pretty sure of is that as hard as it is for me, it's even harder for her. I will not criticize the decisions made by anyone going through anything like it. I know that before going through this with her, I never would have believed how awful it is for everyone involved.From the outside, you just can't understand it.
My brother was nice enough to shoot himself in the chest so he still looked like himself when it was all over. I think that probably made a difference to me. His two year anniversary passed a couple of weeks ago. He was 48 and not 22, so maybe that also makes a difference. Less potential wasted. In any event, I thought the essay was overwrought. But to each his own. Why his brother's suicide ruined the author's life I don't know. There are too many intangibles to really understand it all.
I will say this by way of comparison. The great mystery, of course, in a suicide is why. It's essentially unanswerable. My brother committed suicide because, in theory, he had a bunch of big life issues that overwhelmed him - marital, financial and otherwise. But why did he chose suicide? He could have become an alcoholic. He could have faked his death and run away. He could have become a deadbeat dad. He could have done a lot of things. But he chose suicide. Why he chose that option no one will ever know. Problems are common. Responses vary a lot.
Big Mike: you're reading your own interpretation of the author's meaning into his words. If his brother had hanged or defenestrated himself, how do you know he would not have mentioned either of those methods four times out of the eight?
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