In Memoriam

The other day was my uncle’s birthday. He would have been 54. My uncle committed suicide a few years ago, and it was the first time suicide had been close enough to breathe its rancid breath in my face. I remember a few years before my uncle’s death, my best friend’s father committed suicide as well, but having not known his father all that well-I probably saw him a total of 15 times in my entire life-it struck me but it did not hurt me. I even began writing a novel entitled Silence which would have been very loosely based on that particular suicide. I reasoned in my mind that I could ask my best friend for permission or-barring that-I could just pretend it had nothing to do with it and that “any correlation to actual events is purely coincidental”. But when my uncle died, the evil demon threw me to the ground, pounced on my stomach, and spat its bile in my face. Never had I felt so helpless, so out of sorts. I could not write a novel about suicide, because it felt like I would be capitalizing on my uncle’s death.

You see, my uncle was not the “typical” suicide, if such a thing exists. He was a happy man, proud of his family. Yes, he’d had setbacks as we all do and while I’m sure the thoughts to “just end it all” were there-as they are, I suspect, for all of us in times of desperation-but my uncle was a strong man and a kind man, willing to give anyone the shirt off his back with a smile and a pat and a “let me know if you need anything else”. And he would mean it, every time. I remember a man came to the viewing, that most morbid of ceremonies which precedes burial, and said that he had been involved in a car accident with my uncle not too long before and that my uncle had made such an impression on him that when he saw his name in the paper he felt he had to come pay his respects to “the kindest man I ever had the pleasure of meeting”. I think over 300 people attended the viewing, and I couldn’t tell you how many were at the funeral. I remember thinking, “If he could only see all these people wailing and gnashing their teeth at the unfairness of a life lost at the hands of this wicked being Suicide he would never have given in. He would have fought and kicked and screamed and done everything in his power to live.” And I guess that still holds true to me, for it gives me comfort.

There is an old tradition that if a loved one has gone off to war or sea or just away, you light a candle and place it in the window as a sign that you are waiting for them, and that they are always welcome back into your home. I’d have bought every candle in existence and lit it for my uncle if I had known he was at war with Suicide. But I didn’t; no one really did, for Suicide is a cunning enemy. It wears down slowly, assaulting the mind and causing it to become diseased. It begins in various ways, but it always ends the same if fought alone. No man is an island so the saying goes, and nowhere is it more evident than in the aftermath of a suicide.

I miss my uncle terribly with each passing day. I think of his infectious laugh, his smile that never seemed to stop. I think of the advice he gave me throughout life. I think of the time my cousin and I shook his beer until I thought it would explode, placed it back on the table, and then laughed as it did explode all over his face. And I think of how instead of becoming angry, he simply laughed and went to clean himself off. Was my uncle a bad man? He had his flaws, of that I am sure. And I am also sure that in my memories he has been romanticized, for memory is an untrustworthy thing when recollecting those we love. But to say he was bad would be to say that the Grand Canyon is small. My uncle was a good man and he tried to treat everyone with fairness and respect. Some would say that he is in Hell, being tormented for committing an unpardonable sin. But I say he is in Heaven, looking down on his sons with pride and smiling at his family, every last one of us. Because I can’t imagine the God Who sent His Son to die for humanity’s sins sending a man who loved Him so much to Hell simply because he lost the battle with one of Lucifer’s most seductive minions. And if I am wrong, and that is how god is, well, I choose my uncle over him any day.

I think I’ll start working on Silence again…