This somber blog entry actually started life almost a year ago as a Facebook note, when a professor of mine, a man I respected and admired, took his own life. I’m revising and reposting it for two reasons. First, more people read blogspot.com than the forum where this first appeared, and why blog if you don’t want people to read? Second, recent events have given me more to think about when it comes to suicide, and I find myself still wanting to write. No, another friend of mine is not dead; I’ll explain in due time if you’ll read on. But as you read, consider these questions: is suicide worse for those left behind when they are left wondering why, or is it worse when those left behind know exactly why.
Until the last year or so of my life, I’d known only one person before this who took his own life. It happened about five years ago, and as for the young man in question, he was a vengeful, hateful person whose passing didn’t disturb me in the slightest. In case any of my readers (always assuming anyone reads this) knew him and actually cared for him, I’ll refrain from mentioning his name. But his suicide was a vindictive act, intended to inflict pain and guilt upon a select few against whom he held a grudge; that was his own assertion at the time, not hindsight. The fellow even called up those whom he hated as he was dying and told them that they were responsible and that he did not forgive them their offenses. No I was not one of those whom he hated, this young man; having said that, I did not mourn his passage. I found him somewhat pitiable, but grieve, that I did not do.
In September 2010, a senior professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois took his own life. This was a man I’d worked with, taken classes with, done research with and who sat on my doctoral examination committee. It seems egocentric to say that this suicide matters more because he matters more to me, but let’s leave aside accusations of egocentrism for the present. He did matter to me, a lot more, more than the first person I talked about. More relevant to the discussion of suicide is the unanswerable question, at least, unanswerable in his case. Why did he do it? It’s a question I attempted to persuade myself not to investigate, not because I feared the answer, but because I had, and still to this day have, no means at my disposal for finding an answer. Even those closest to him may not have anything approaching an answer. And that lack of answer is something we will simply have to deal with. And yet, because this is suicide, that lack of answer proves more vexing than it otherwise would. Why do I say this?
In the weeks following my professor’s death, I read and reread the doctoral dissertation of someone who has been like a sister to me for a lot of years, because it is most germane to the point. Consider this from the concluding chapter, “Despite its unfortunate prevalence, suicide-related bereavement is a non-normative, sometimes traumatic experience that stands in sharp contrast to the normative nature of non-traumatic loss” (Anderson p. 115). Too true. A common sense conclusion, if most diligently researched. My complements. What that conclusion means today is just this: if this man, respected scholar, popular professor, devoted family man and sincere in his Christian beliefs, had died of a heart attack, in a car accident, had even, let’s say, been murdered, the nature of what it is I felt would be different. The “why” would still have been asked, but the question of agency, or at least, his lack of agency in the matter, would make wrestling with it a bit easier. Who can control the car accident, who can control the death by natural causes that overtakes you, who indeed can foresee and forestall a senseless violent crime? In the three preceding questions, we would do well to ask, fore who can know the mind of God? Our recourse in those former cases to the will of God is more than just a pat answer, though it can come across as such depending on who’s delivering it. Yet in those cases, we must perforce accede to the will of God, because as his ways are indeed, not our ways, nor his thoughts, ours. Yet suicide. Such divinely oriented reasoning seems to fail with suicide in so far as the death of the person is concerned precisely because it does not appear to be the will of God that you do such a thing. … An inherently interesting choice about your existence, to decide not to exist anymore. And then to do it, to perform the final instantiation of agency that, in and of itself, deprives you of all further agency, forever. To, in a manner of speaking, short-circuit God’s plan.
What is the bible’s answer on suicide? In truth, the bible itself is little help here. The word, “suicide,” doesn’t appear in the King James Version or the New American Standard Version at all. And there are, so far as I can see, only four genuine suicides in all of scripture, with three more popularly being offered up as examples of suicide. The others are arguable, because it’s debatable whether Jonah wanted to take his own life (Jonah 1:11-15), that is, did Jonah throw himself into the sea expressly to end his own life, and a similar question shows up when we look at Sampson’s death in Judges 16:21-31. . Similarly, some suggest the case of Abimelech as a suicide in the scriptures, but when you read Judges 9:54, you see clearly that his servant actually kills him. Abimilech requests the favor, granted, but Abimelech’s death still comes about through murder at another person’s hand. Of the other four, the suicides of Ahythophel, 2 Samuel 17:23 who hanged himself when his advice went unheeded, and the case of Zimri, 2 Kings 16:18, who burned his palace down around him to avoid capture, are relatively obscure incidents. The two most well-known are probably the suicide of Judas as recorded in Matthew 27:35 and the death of King Saul and his armor bearer as recorded in 1 Samuel 31:1-7. In none of these cases does scripture say anything explicitly about taking one’s own life or about God’s view of one who has done so. There is the commandment that forbids willful murder, but whether, “thou shalt not commit murder,” extends to the self is open to some interpretation. Most theologians think that it does and that Judeo-Christian scriptures forbid suicide by implecation.
So know, resort to the divine does not provide comfort or answers to the “why question or to any other questions where suicide is concerned. I have concluded, tentatively, that it’s not an answerable question for me in my professor’s case, as I’ve said, but it is difficult to stop asking it, and perhaps that too is as it should be. Normative grief, not maladaptive grief, to borrow once more from that excellent dissertation. Quite normative, quite unpleasantly normative. And I was just a student. Not a parent or, god forbid, a child, of which he left behind three, ages 12, 9 and 7, one of whom had a birthday right around the day he died. And for the record, I wasn’t his wife either.
All of this leads me away from 'why' and towards something a bit less abstract, anger, and, forgiveness. Wow, isn’t that just a can of worms. Yes, I am well aware that anger is considered one of the five stages of grief, both on the part of survivors and on the part of those suffering, say, a terminal illness. Yes, anger is normal. I know. And yet, I did not wish to be angry with this man. I had never been angry with him until that time. As a student and junior colleague—we were collaborating on research after all—I never had cause to feel anger towards him. And yet it was not entirely non-altruistic anger. Like many others, I was angry that he knowingly and willfully did this and left his children behind. 12 isn’t old enough to know and understand everything, but it’s old enough for death. And you can’t tell me that poor boy won’t, or hasn’t since, attempted to draw a connection between his father’s death and his recent birthday. I’m sure no such connection exists, but try telling him that. And what of the other two? "Daddy’s not coming home anymore?" To what extent do children of that age cognitively understand death, let alone suicide? I don’t know. I was 7 when my grandfather died, and I certainly understood it. I still remember the day I was told about it, January 5, 1990. I remember where I was, when in the day it was, and exactly what words my father chose to tell me. And if that memory is so clear to me, I must assume that they, his children, could not be unaware of his death. They must know, and it must be terrible, and just what the hell was so bad that he did it? That he caused the situation wherein they struggle with it and ask, ‘why?’ I have, sadly, no answers for them. No one does. Even were God to attempt an answer, his best reply would be, “I am.” And, being God, that will be sufficient. Temporally, they have it bad. That’s the long and the short of it, they have it bad even now and likely will for a long time. I’m so sorry, Children.
As for my own anger, it revolved around the question in the last paragraph. What could have been so wrong with his life that permanently checking out seemed like the solution? Nothing is that bad. No shame, no disgrace, no stress, nothing, is that bad. Admittedly, I’ve never been suicidal, never wanted to commit suicide, never planned it. I have friends who have thought about it, even planned and attempted it, so I realize my opinion here is not the only one available. But to those friends I would ask, in all sincerity, what stopped you? If you planned, or attempted suicide, you’re still here. And the fact that a person plans but does not attempt, or attempts, and does not succeed, in committing suicide is significant. It’s fairly easy to do, after all; the human body is remarkably destructible. And he did it. It has the hallmarks of something that was deliberated, meticulously planned, and put into action. And what, I return to the point, could have been that bad? Money? Sex? Departmental politics? Somehow I doubt it. Not that I’m in any condition to doubt, because had you asked me to list faculty members in my department who would be likely to commit suicide, none would have appeared likely, but he would have appeared less so. But I was wrong, it seems. That leads me to his mental state. Did he suffer debilitating depression? Did he suffer a nervous breakdown? Those are the kindest explanations, because they present an act committed by a man not in full possession of his faculties at the time. And for my part, I’d like to believe that such a thing was the motivator, and those explanations, if true, are likely forever hidden from my knowledge. Still, it appears to have been deliberated. The disappearance was deliberate, the location of the car and the body were equally well-chosen so as not to be spotted by aerial surveillance. This was not an impulse suicide, which makes it all the worse on those left behind for that. It also, at least to my thinking, makes it harder to attribute his actions as being the product of a mind that was faltering at the time. He didn’t get drunk and then attempt something stupid, as someone did in my home. He didn’t get some piece of particularly bad news, go into his office, lock his door and blow his brains out. This was calculated, thought about. Concluded. I suspect he went away for a while, gave his life some serious thought, and decided that it was no longer bearable, or would be a case of diminishing returns, for him to continue to live it. As I say, that makes those kind explanations questionable, and questioning is what I was, and still am, reduced to. More to the point, the absence, or the improbability of those kind explanations left me unable to mitigate my anger and puzzlement in that way. Only time has been able to partially do that.
I started out by offering two questions. Who has it worse, the ones who are left to wonder why, or the ones who know why. This brings me to my second example, and I warn you, you may feel like laughing at it. But if you stuck with me this long, keep on going. The second suicide, the one that raises that second question of mine, concerns a person who, in most senses of the word, never existed. I’m something of a role-play game (RPG) player. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, this is where you create an avatar and role-play through it, constructing a life for your character and making them live it. It’s a form of acting, I suppose, except that it’s acting without a pre-written script. Yet, it is acting in the sense that you must be faithful to your character in his or her portrayal, making them react as their personality would cause them to react, not as you yourself might feel like doing. So you immerse yourself in your character when you act or when you role-play or when you write a novel, and you observe their world and their emotions closely. This is what novelists and actors and gamers have in common.
Without boring you with detail, I’ll say this much about my character. He is thirty years old and a moderately successful movie maker and theater director. Now, I actually had to do my homework in film making and stage directing to make this convincing, mind you. This character of mine had a lover, played by a friend of mine. She was a deeply troubled woman, this female character. Whatever troubles my friend may have, they’re nothing like the ones her character had. I digress. As you no doubt have figured out, my character’s lover took her own life. She blew her brains out in a public place, having already written a suicide note explaining the reasons. The note was written to my character and for him alone, and it explained very clearly why she was taking her own life. While it would probably not be accurate to say that he caused her to pull the trigger, it would be accurate to say that he had an indirect hand in her motivation to kill herself; at least that’s how he sees it.
Now back to the real world. I watched these characters’ situation with interest, and I, like my friend, was saddened when his lover shot herself. For my friend it was worse because the character belonged to her, but let’s not get bogged down in detail. The point of this story is this: in this case, there was an explanation. As my character observed to a friend of his, “I can’t even ask why.” The note was clear and left no doubt. Yet, I found even through vicarious experience, that having an explanation made it no easier to deal with. In fact, the explanation may have made it worse. That is to say, if what a person says in a suicide note can be taken as representing their true motivations, you may be left feeling like you should’ve foreseen it, like you should’ve known that was the problem and like you should’ve been more intuitive, more on the ball, more competent in dealing with that person. You may feel as if, had you but been a little more attentive, a little more in tune with that person, you’d have seen the problem and have been able to act. This is classic survivor’s guilt. And it is as bad, in its own way, if not worse than not knowing why at all. I know that now. I even wrote to my friend asking her this, “you tried to show me what was wrong with her. Did she die because I didn’t pick up on the clues and have my character act appropriately?” Yes, I was experiencing second-hand survivor’s guilt, wondering whether I, Brad Blair, should’ve seen what she, my friend, was trying to tell me. It was a miniature version of the type of survivor’s guilt I would doubtless feel if a friend of mine, or Heaven forefend a lover, took their own lives, suicide note and all. When I realized what answers this role-play experience had given me, I knew it was time to revise this essay. I hope I don’t have to revise it again.
Anger plays its part in both cases. In my professor’s case, certainly. And my character is angry at his lover for doing this to him. I was even upset with my friend, if on a much lower key, for doing this to her character and, by extension, to me and to those few who had extensive interactions with her character. Yet I mentioned forgiveness. That’s part of it too, and it applies in both situations, where a reason is known and where it is not. If we do not forgive, we will not be forgiven. True, but more importantly, and more to the point of those scriptures that echo that sentiment, is the notion that forgiveness is psychologically necessary in order to close the grieving process. Ok, I can accept that. So, even though I was only a student, only a colleague, and this isn’t as near to me as it is to his children and widow, I too must forgive. And I shall, even without understanding, I shall, because I must. I have no alternative. Or rather, the alternatives, what my dear friend Amy called complicated or maladaptive grief, these are things I must needs avoid. And so I shall forgive. My character will also forgive, and his case, he has the added burden of forgiving himself. It’s easy to beat yourself up and hard to stop. And yet, for his own sanity, he will have to forgive. He has no particular grasp of the bible, so that sort of reasoning wouldn’t reach him, but he must accept that in the end, it was his lover who pulled the trigger, and he will need to let it go if his life is to ever be normal again.
It’s interesting to me how a lack of knowledge on the one hand, or how complete knowledge on the other hand, affects the emotional responses to suicide. I’m left asking myself this: in the real world, which would I rather have, the bafflement and puzzlement of not knowing, or the risk of the associated survivor’s guilt that may come with knowing full well why the person is gone? My answer doesn’t stem from any religious background, but from my own philosophical perspective. I do not agree with Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four when he writes his party slogan, “ignorance is strength.” Rather, in knowledge lies power and wisdom and resolution, depending on how the knowledge is used. So, I’d rather know. That being said, that’s all for today.
