Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light

varkam

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Tue Feb-26-08 10:26 PM
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Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light

I don't know how to start this post. I've been sitting here now for a few minutes, in my recliner, smoking a cigarette, trying to figure out the words. The subject line came to me instantly (it is from a famous Dylan Thomas poem), and the emotions are all here...anger...regret...sadness...the kind where you can feel the tears lapping behind your eyes as if at any moment the dam might burst.

I guess all I really know how to say is just that suicide, any suicide, makes me ill.

It's not that I hate the people that do it. I feel anger towards them, but that passes. The anger is mostly directed at the situations that they find themselves in, the situations that trick them and make them believe the terrible falsity that there is only one way out. The situations that take all that is unique, special and beautiful about that person and corrupts it. The broken homes, the needles and the pills, the divorces and the deaths, the sin and the suffering.

I still think of my Uncle Mike from time to time. I have a rug of his in my apartment, a beautiful antique persian that was one of his favorites. I look at it, and I think of him. I think of the last time I saw him, just outside Toronto. He was in rehab for painkillers, and I remember sitting with him by the pool of his brother's house, smoking cigarettes, joking, and watching the sun set over the Canadian wilderness. I still think of the day we got the news, too. He had just come home from Canada. He saw his wife off to work, and his grand daughter off to school (her father, Scott, was killed in a car accident and her mother was and still is incarcerated). Then he wrote a note that read "Call 911. Do not come inside.", and tacked it to garage door. I guess I don't need to explain the rest.

I remember how my father took it. Mike was my father's kid brother, and my father had always stood up for him, always protected him, always loved him, and never abandoned him. But he couldn't protect him, this time. He couldn't save him. Not that it was his job to, but that's how he took it.

I still think of November of 06, when I decided to take my own life. Seatbelt off, guardrail breaking, the water would come in through the windows, I could take a deep breath, and it would be over. Of course I wasn't thinking about my family or my friends - the people that loved me and didn't want me to go. The situation I was in took all that was good about me and corrupted it, made me confused, made me believe the lie. I owe my life to an addict who, through luck or providence or whatever you want to call it, happened to talk to me that morning. Happened to save my life.

But I digress. I'm just so full of emotion right now. By all accounts, Josh was a good guy. I didn't know him well, but we had mutual friends.

He shot himself yesterday.

I don't really know what one is supposed to do with that. I want to go talk to someone, but no one is answering their phones. I imagine they're all still trying to deal, too.

My experience over the past year and a half or so has taught me that the best way to deal with suffering is to allow it in. To give yourself permission to feel it, and to try to relax with it. To not say that the feeling is good or bad, but just that it is.

So here I will sit. On this rug with my recliner and my cigarettes. In the process of writing this, the dam has mercifully burst and so I will just try to relax with this awful feeling. Thank you for allowing me to grieve here.

I'm sorry, Josh.