We are more than how we die
and more than our biggest mistakes or our worst day
Today my dear almost 95-year old neighbor’s family helped me to hang my curtains. I was grateful for this help, this ol’ southern hospitality, since I was unable to get the screws into the hard wood around my windows.
One of them, a nice and friendly guy, a retired mechanic, shared with me his struggles with Lyme disease and how the symptoms really made him suffer. He said at points he didn’t want to live.
Then he said—
“But I don’t believe in ending your own life…I think that’s up to the Lord.”
I paused. Chilled. I was brought back to memories of my dad, who I often heard say:
“I believe the good Lord takes you when it’s your time.”
…Says the man who offed himself.
I think about my brother, the minister, one of great faith, who did the same.
I didn’t say anything to this man. What was the point?
But I did pause, and think—
We never really know what we’re capable of.
Especially when we reach that darkest point, the one of despair—
…when we’re that unwell, in the throes of addiction, of depression, perhaps when alcohol interferes with our sleep-aid and anti-depressant meds, and messes with our minds, playing tricks on us.
I get it, it’s scary, and many of us don’t even want to admit it, to allow our minds to go there, because it’s too scary—the sobering truth that—
We never quite know what we’re capable of… in our darkest points.
Killing ourselves, perhaps killing another…?
That is downright terrifying.
I don’t think my dad was full of shit when he claimed this belief in the Lord taking him when it was time.
He did many things in life and to his family that weren’t all that great, and were pretty selfish, but he was always very principled and believed he knew “right from wrong,” and he tried to follow that, and held his values and principles dear to himself.
And, he claimed that for many years before, and he didn’t kill himself, even though I know now that he was very depressed. And he mentioned dying from time to time.
I never thought he was, depressed that is. In depression. That title was reserved for my mother. I always just thought he was an alcoholic.
He was, but now, older and (hopefully) wiser, I now think this—
People don’t wake up one day and decide to become an addict, an alcoholic, a binge eater and morbidly obese. Or whatever other habit that threatens our health and life.
We end up in these lifestyles because we’re traumatized and in pain, and so we do things to try to cope, to escape. He was in depression as well; he just drowned his sorrows in alcohol. Later in life, when he couldn’t breathe, in late stages of COPD, and he saw himself relapse again, after a few years of sobriety, he worried the harm he would cause my mother again. And with his chemical state of mind all imbalanced with an array of drugs that you should not mix with alcohol, he did something that he said he never would do:
He took himself out of this world. He didn’t wait on the “good Lord,” as he said he would.
Over the years, I have wrestled with this a lot. His death. Going back on his professed values.
But now, I think this. I firmly believe that we are more than how we die.
Now, I get it: This seems quite obvious, but when we apply the death of suicide to people and their lives, sometimes it changes. Because of the shock and horror of how they die and it can seem too big and take up too much space, all the space, and there doesn’t seem to be much less left to remember who they were when they were living.
Suicides are rough.
But, they were still people. They still lived. They still had principles and though they may not always have followed at the end, they still had them.
We are more than our worst mistakes, our worst day. We are more than how we die.
And this is still true for those who complete suicide.
And they should be remembered, as such, by the bereaved, the survivors, their family, those who loved them.
<3
