Suicide

I would like to say that I, unequivocally, hate suicide. My co-worker's nephew committed suicide today or last night? And she got the news on the telephone this morning. And now she is filled with pain and worry. Worry about her brother and sister-in-law and how they will get over losing a child. Pain for her own loss. I know this because she said so, and because, I have been in a similar position on a couple of occasions.

Now I want to clarify, I don't hate the people who commit suicide, or try to, but I do hate it that they somehow end up in that dark place and that despite people loving them very much, nobody can draw them back out. I hate that people have to feel so much pain and to end the pain they have to cause so much pain for others.

And I wish I could heal my friend. And everyone else who needs the kind of healing that suicide makes necessary. Better yet, I wish there was a pain removal system that left the person who was feeling suicidal completely happy and ready for a long long life. But there is no such invention and I can't really heal anybody. I can just give hugs and watch. And I don't know if being a witness to pain and grieving is a good thing. Does it help? Just being there?

My friend came into work this morning feeling sad and she hadn't even gotten the news yet. She was shaken up by a near miss car accident this morning and she was worried about an unhappy family member, but mostly, she just knew it was not going to be a good day. I think we sometimes have these premonitions. We know things are wrong before knowing what they are. Other times tragedy catches us completely off-guard. But more often than not, in my life, I have felt people slipping away from me.

I heard someone recently say that, "every day we get away with our lives." I don't love looking at life that way, but I believe it is true. Each day, we go about living our lives and we are always avoiding death, escaping it for one more day. Until we don't want to or can't escape any longer.

And in a sense, we also get away with our loved one's lives every day. Every day the people we love go on living, we are lucky. And when we do lose someone, it is our job, really, to honor them, by the way we live our lives from that day on.

I hate suicide.