Suicide vs the Threat of Suicide

I cannot stop thinking about the death of Robin Williams.  It was so shocking to those of us who never knew him outside of his profession as a comedian and actor.  He entertained us, made us laugh, made us cry, stirred up emotions inside of us with the roles he played and the stories he told.  Some of his closest friends were in shock over the death of their friend and then to hear that it was a suicide death set them into an even deeper shock.  How could they not know?

I think back to my friend Cedric who also took his own life.  Cedric, His Final Day's  I have often asked myself that same thing.  "How could I have not know?"   How did I not see past the pain he carried inside of him from the death of his girlfriend, Alana, who was the love of his life?  She also took her own life.  How did he not know she also felt suicide was the only way out?  How did we all miss the signs of despair in the people we loved and knew so well? 

I felt I did everything I possibly could, after Alana's death, to tend to Cedric and the pain in his heart.  I kept in touch with him daily, texts, phone calls, visits, even attended mass with him.  Me and the boys drug him out for boys nights out.  He kept promising he would get back on the ice soon, which was his next greatest love in life behind Alana.  All the signs of Cedric being OK were before me.  Yet I failed my friend.  Everyone tells me that I did everything right, everything I could.  That Cedric led me to believe he was OK, that he was on the road to recovering his loss.  Acknowledging the pain would follow him through life but it was bearable, manageable. 

I look at all the pictures in the media of Robin Williams the man.  I see all the photographs of the characters he portrayed.  I was part of the audience he made laugh, made cry.  I was part of everything he did artistically.  When I view those pictures, when I watch those movies, I noticed the one thing I failed to notice about Cedric.  The eyes.  Robin Williams eyes were always shining, always had a sparkle to them.  He lived to make others laugh.  He developed the art of entertaining others so they could enjoy a bit of pleasure in their lives.  He lived for other peoples happiness, even though he could find none of his own.

When you look beyond the surface of his eyes you can see the sadness.  Every picture is the same.  The deep sadness inside of him can be detected by taking the time to look into them.  Past the gleam, past the joy he got out of other people's happiness, deep deep down in the soul so sad he was certain to run out of strength in dealing with his internal pain.  Hidden from his fans, his friends, even his family.  The one thing Robin Williams did better then entertain the world was hide his sadness.  When life became to painful to live, when that final straw broke the camels back, he took the most painful trip in his life, to end his life. 

Just as Cedric had done.  I cringe when I think of the two brothers he left behind.  I cringe when I call his step-dad and hear the pain in his voice as he reaches for reason to find comfort in the lives left behind.  I cringe when I think about Cedric's mom who herself felt a pain so deep from the loss of her first born son she too decided to take that final painful trip beyond a breath of life.  I still get angry with Cedric for leaving us all behind to deal with the thoughts of how we could have saved him, how we should have known.

Why didn't I see it in his eyes.  Gracie and I spent hours communicating through our eyes, reading each others thoughts of happiness, fear, pain, and all the other emotions we journeyed through together.  Why did I not see it?  Why did I allow him to trick me into believing he was doing OK.  That he was going to be alright?  What could I have done differently? How will I handle the next tragedy in one of my friends or families life so I don't miss any signs?

People will tell the story they want you to believe.  People will lead you to believe that their happiness runs deep.  When they are determined to end their pain by their own hands, they will not ask you for help.  You can reach out to them, help them understand you are their for them.  You can ask all the right questions, do all the right things, look for all the signs you should, but at some point it becomes their decision, their responsibility, for how they deal with the pain so deep the only way out to them is to leave. 

Suicide is not a cry for help.  It is not a selfish act.  It is not meant to cause pain to others.  It is not an act of desperation.  It is the end to an illness that has no end to it while breaths are being taken.  It is the end of despair.  It is an end to a sad soul.  Just because we cannot see the illness, does not mean it is not there.  Depression, while it can be medicated, cannot be cured.  When you feel you have taken every other means to handle your depression, the cure you reach for is death. 

The threat of suicide is a cry for help.  The threat of suicide is when you reach out to be saved.  When you have suicidal thoughts and you fear death and you reach out for help.  The threat of suicide is real and should always be taken as a sign that someone is reaching out.  Looking for help to get out of a place so dark they fear they cannot come out of it alone.  When someone shows signs of the threat of suicide it shows they still believe there is hope.  They still believe the pain will subside, get better, be manageable.  These people want to live, these people are still able to fight through their depression, fight for a better life, a better outcome to what they are feeling inside.

Yes, I believe there is a difference between Suicide and The Threat of Suicide.  Unfortunately Cedric and Robin Williams never showed signs of wanting to be helped.  They never threatened suicide to anyone so we could find a way to help them deal with their pain and depression.  The wanted to leave it all behind, they lost hope for themselves, they had reached the point of pain where they decided their was no turning back.  I don't hate Cedric for leaving, but I do understand the path that takes you to the fork in the road.  I would like to say I always choose the road to the right, but who am I to say it is the right road?  That is a personal choice. There may be a road to your left and a road to your right, but is there really ever a wrong road?  Until you are there, you should not judge.

                                                        American Foundation for Suicide

 

Pains Legacy

 

                                     

Today I had the great opportunity to speak to college students pursing mass media and journalism degrees in their hopes of careers around the mass media fields.  I was honored to be asked and even more honored to know they have been following my blog site for the past year.  Just graduating from college myself a few short months ago I found it refreshing and exciting to share some of those experiences with these students.  Their eagerness to learn more, to reach out for more knowledge and more life experiences, reminded me of how much I will miss not going back to campus this fall.  I so enjoyed my four years of college and found myself envious of the students sitting before me.

When their college professor asked me if I would speak to these students I did not hesitate to accept his invitation.  We were attending the same conference, packed wall to wall with inspiring journalist who are trying to get a jump on their field of interest.  I am trying to get closer to publishing Gracie and my story of her life on earth and the short time she was here.  I was sure when he told me his students have been following my blogs that it was the story of Gracie they wanted to visit with me about.  While we did visit the topic of the Amazing Gracie blogs, it would be one single blog that they would choose to discuss with me.

 Legends Never Die would be the chosen blog.  You can follow that link to refresh your memory of the blog in its entirety but to sum it up for you briefly it is about a friend who lost his best friend in an untimely death and the pain it left in his heart.  It is the fifth most popular and read blog on my BlogSpot with almost 5000 reads.  It is the first non-Gracie blog in number of emails I have received from our blog followers.  It is the most shared blogged I've written and it has been read in 16 different countries, translated in many languages.  I was not surprised that this is the blog that the majority of these students wanted to discuss. 

There were 23 students before me as we started our discussion.  The first question I was asked regarding this blog was "How were you able to capture the pain in such a manner that the reader could not just feel that pain, but put themselves in the position to understand that pain as if it was them who lost their best friend in such a tragic manner". 

My friend Keri in Omaha once said something along the lines "until you have experienced the loss of a loved one, you have no idea how much it hurts".  That is exactly how I answered the question before me.  I carry the pain of loved ones gone with me every day.  It is there when I wake up, it is there when I go to bed.  I have lost many people in my life who meant so much to me.  They all occupied a piece of my heart when they were here and in their passing the memory of them remained inside my heart.  It is a pain that is as unexplainable as why bad things happen to good people.  It puts life in a new perspective for you.  You see the world differently, you function differently, you are never the same as you were before the death you are facing, the loss of a loved one.

It never gets easier, and it never goes away.  The more people you lose to death, the more you accept it, but you do not understand it any better.  You find ways to go on, to convince yourself you are ok, it will be alright.  You justify your loss as someone else's gain.  You buy into the whole reasoning that this is God's plan, that God needs your loved one now.  That they are in a better place and one day we will see them again.  The pain you feel is real.  Like the wind you cannot see it but you can feel it.  When the wind blows to hard you find a way to shield yourself from it, just like when the pain becomes unbearable you find ways to push it deep inside you to avoid it, but it is still there.

Another question that surfaced was regarding my explanation of how when you lower the casket you are planting a seed and that seed is the legend that lives forever.  "Where did you come up with the explanation about planting a seed?"  That was not as easy to explain but I used the death of my brother Joey to explain myself.

My biggest fear of all is that as time moves on the people in my life will forget about my brother Joey's life, before he died.  That he will eventually be forgotten as everyone moves on through their lives.  Not just Jake and Mikey, or my brother Jordy, but everyone who has gotten to know my brother Joey through my blogs.  That his legacy will never continue.  Joey was 24 when he died, he had no children to carry on where he left off.  I fear time will pass and with each year goes by that Joey is no longer with us his life will be forgotten. 

I work hard to see that he is not ever forgotten.   My brother Jordy has two girls, Olivia and Jaci, who were born after Joey died.  They will never know him on earth, even though I believe they will meet him one day in heaven.  I keep Joey's memory alive through them, talking to them about him.  They have pictures of him sitting on their nightstands and pray for him often.  Though he is no longer here, the memory of him is.  So is the pain of losing him.  The same pain that we all will face as our loved ones pass. 

Writing that blog out of respect for my friend Cory and his buddy Davy came very natural to me as I have felt it, seen it, and experienced it.  Until you have experienced that loss, you will never know that pain.  Once you lose someone you love, you will forever live with that pain.

My parting advice to these students pursuing careers in various fields of media was this:  Never try to write beyond what you know.  Never reach for a feeling you have never experienced.  Never assume how much pain someone else has unless you are living with that pain inside of you.  Anyone can write about pain and how it hurts, but only someone who is living with it can write it in such a manner that your readers will feel it as though they are living through it.  Keep it real, write with passion, be true to yourself and honest about your feelings.

I feel blessed for being offered the opportunity to share my thoughts with these students and I am sure as they continue their journey through their college days they will find success.  I hope they have taken away from me as much as I walked away with from the time we spent together.  I thank them for their interest in my blogs and I look forward to reading theirs.