Suicide and what side I’m on

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Part of 

My basic philosophies and where they lead me

 

 

I have had some limited experience with suicide over my years.  I worked on the suicide prevention line at the Unitarian Church in Boston and spent many hours on the phone with despondent people.  Ironically, if someone calls into a suicide prevention line, they are already letting you know they want to be talked out of it!

Otherwise, they’d save the dime or the toll charge when there were things like that!

There was never a case where someone said nope I am going to kill myself – bye!

Since then, I have had other brushes with self-inflicted death, and they did not turn out so well, or maybe they did!

The first was a man named Mr. Klug.  He was a retired machinist in his 70’s and his wife had recently died.  He was so lonely and depressed that he went into a hardware store, where in Massachusetts you can legally buy guns, and asked the clerk to sell him a gun.  The clerk asked what do you want it for, and he said, “To kill myself.  I don’t know what the law is about selling a gun to someone who says they want to kill themselves, but this clerk called the police.  The policeman asked Mr. Klug why he wanted the gun, and he gave the same honest reply.  I want to kill myself!  The policeman knew that was not a good, healthy reply and said he wanted to bring Mr. Klug to Metropolitan Hospital, a mental institution in Waltham Ma.  That is where I met Mr. Klug.  I was an attendant, and one of my jobs was to admit patients.  There was a call to the ward saying that they had a man who needed to be admitted for observation, under an “order paper” whose number I cannot recall.  I went down and saw a very depressed man sitting there with no emotion except grief.  As I took his blood pressure and pulse, I asked him a battery of usual questions asked at the admitting room of a mental hospital, like who the president is, what day it is, what year it is, etc.  Then I asked him why he wanted to kill himself, and he said he missed his wife and wanted to join her and could not live alone without her.  “She was all I had,” he said, “and now she is gone!  I told him I could imagine how lonely he must feel, but assured him that we could help him to feel better.  I then told him we would admit him for observation and care for the next 10 days. I think that is the length of time the state order gave us to evaluate him.  He put up no resistance and was a model patient.  He attended all the sessions and took his medication.  He was actually quite helpful in the group therapy sessions and gave lots of advice to others who were depressed or confused by life and how it treated them.  At the end of the 10 days Mr. Klug, who had no sights that he would be of harm to himself or others, was discharged.  He went home to the house where he lived, alone with no relatives who could care for him.  I am not sure if a health care worked visited him or not, but a little while later as I arrived for the shift change staff meeting I was told that Mr. Klug had killed himself and I said “Good for him”, which is not the appropriate response for a mental health care worker.  I was confronted in the staff meeting about my blurted out feelings and I said “ We did all we could for a man who had such deep pain that all he could do was live a partial life.  He is not grieving now and if he were here he would be.”  

But we could have helped him came the un-impassioned response from the clinicians in the room.  Perhaps, I said, but for me I think he did the right thing.  I still believe that.  He did not call for help. We intercepted him.  He did not put up a fight we just delayed his intentional actions.   We postponed an inevitable event, in my opinion.  And if anything he added to our lives with is eternal love and longing for his companion and show how grieving need not consume our lives, we can consume our sorry and end it.

Had I not spent hours and hours with those on the phone line who had questionable intentions on suicide I might have felt differently, but Mr. Klug had just cause to take his own life and I don’t feel the state should take away that right, from him anyway.

 

My next two encounters with suicide were much closer to home.  One, an old college roommate who was despondent after Katrina, the other, a very good friend who faced his health and a future he preferred to not live through.  The roommate and I had had a falling out years before and I really didn’t care what happened to him.  But, when I found out he had borrowed his ex-wife’s gun went to his flood house stuck the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, and learned of it during an angry email thread where mutual acquaintances were condemning his actions as cowardly, I piped in.  I wrote a reply to them saying that it may seem cowardly and it certainly was a very selfish thing to do, which was not out of character with the deceased, I felt we had no right to say it was cowardly.  We were not in his shoe and bed with a gun in our mouth, which to me seems pretty terrifying in it’s own right.  We cannot know the inner pain that he felt, regardless of how misplaced it might be in the greater scheme of things.  He might have been able to salvage a life after a tragedy as so many other ravaged by Katina, but who am I to say he should have or could have.  I also said in my email that he is the only one facing who ever or whatever it is that we face when we die and that force of nature whatever it might be is the only judge and jury about whether the blown out brains and the shattered lives was justified.  Only the self-inflictor can know if their decision was right or wrong and they will live with it for the rest of eternity wherever that may be.  I think maybe a call to help line might have help, but in his case he had had too many disconnection with those who could help and perhaps that was part of his ultimate troubles.  We will never know!

My most recent and probably most tragic head on with suicide happened to a good friend, a true bon vivant and a man who amused lots of people and was loved by many many more.

I had stayed with him and knew of his health issues.  He thought he had shingles but it turned out to be something else, which will remain a known mystery!  There were other things in his life that might have precipitated his untimely brute force decision to die.  But they are too complicated and irrelevant to go into.  I had lunch with him at a Chinese restaurant as we discussed how to turn his airstream van into an Air B&B, so there was some optimism and plans for the future.   As he sipped some soup he would wince.  I asked “What’s the matter?”  He said he had sores inside his mouth form the Shingles and it hurt to eat or drink.  I said “That sucks” and nothing more.

He also said he noticed he was starting to limp when he took his dog for walks.  He said, “ I don’t want to be a gimp, I don’t want to grow up to be a gimp!  I don’t think I said anything, wanting to topic to change as quickly as possible.  We ended our lunch and went our ways.  A few days later I got a call from a mutual friend who asked if heard what happened to out friend.  I said NO.  He crashed his car into a dumpster and is in the hospital.  My first thought was and I blurted it out.  “I think he tried to off himself”, I said.  “No” my friend said and I told him about my lunch conversation the day before.  There was a silence and he said,  “Well maybe.

There is more to this story, as the crash victim did not die at first.  He was in critical condition in the hospital and several of us wen to see him but we had to gown up into to enter his room.  The Doctor and Nurses said they were concerned about infection.  Eventually he was released and sent to what seem like a long term nursing facility/hospice.  I visit him there with another friend and he tried to communicate although he could not speak and could barely communicate.  He was trying to say something about getting out of here.  I interpreted it one way and my other friend another way.  They thought he wanted out of the hospital and said they would help top make that happen. He looked me and as he painfully repeated what do I have to do to get out of here and took his hand made it into a gun fist, put it to his head and went POW!  I interpreted it as what I had suspected all along.  He want out of it ALL. Eventually his failing condition and the aliment he had got the better of him and he was gone.

I thought of Mr. Klug at this tragic passing.  I don’t think there is a way to be happy with life, and why continue to be unhappy and unhappier?  He had an image of himself and the life he wanted to live that was no longer possible.  He wanted out or “check please,” as he would probably say.

All three of the sad ends to these lives were tragic, but in each case, they took a life that was theirs and a life they did not want to live.  Personally, I am not suicidal, more because I am curious how it all turns out rather than feeling there is some sanctity or value to life itself.  I hope I will never be in a position where I feel I can’t go on. And if I am, I hope I can face the decision as I see it for what it is, an intractable act that only I can be held responsible for.