The S Word, Part 2

Making Sense of the Senseless

Recently, I’ve decided that two key factors kept me from fathoming why someone would commit suicide.

The first is that I simply didn’t understand life. While I had gone out teaching about life and the Plan of Happiness for two years, I knew deep down that I really didn’t grasp some very important aspects like how I was going to get married and have a family when sex and intimacy seemed completely unappealing.

Upon meeting Grey and forming a relationship with Mark, life itself became understandable. I was different and there was a reason for so many awkward situations and conversations that had come to pass.

The second factor was branching out and meeting people that were not part of Utah’s bubble world. This was easy as a college student. International, intellectual, and GLBT friends showed me that there really are more questions than answers in this life. No one can profess to completely understand another person.

I’ve learned about suicide and abuse from people who have faced it first-hand, and realized that these problems are so prevalent in society through movies and works of literature such as Prayers for Bobby, Latter Days, and Facing East.

Essentially, we are put in a state of cognitive dissonance. Part of us is aligned with Church teachings while the other half stands (whether it be in action or existence) in opposition to that ideal. We all have different methods of resolving this conflict (as I discussed in Walking the Fence) and unsafe behaviors such as suicide result because they seem like the best option.

Another Death in the Family

It was Saturday night and one of my last nights at my parents’ house before moving out. The phone rang.

“Hi, grandma. How are you?”

“I’m good. Is your father home?”

“He’s at a court of honor. Might I give him a message?”

“Tell him Craig’s shot himself and to come over as soon as he can.”

Grandma was always one for keeping her cool. The worry and grief in her voice were imperceptible.

I sent my father on his way, shocked that another cousin, seemingly a happy family man with a wife and two-week old daughter, would take his own life. The family had gathered at her house to grieve.

Four days later, we sat at the funeral. I will never forget the words of Tanner and Craig’s fathers. Both of them described in uncomfortable detail an uneasy trek up stairs to learn about their respective sons’ last act.

Tanner’s father found a letter neatly sealed on the kitchen counter. He read it aloud to Tanner’s widow in the kitchen holding her as they sat together at the kitchen table. The depression he’d fought for years became unbearable. Expressing his love, his doubts, and regrets, he said his final goodbye.

Approaching the pulpit, Craig’s father kept his composure. “Every step I took, I hoped I would hear some sign of life, of my son’s love as I went up those stairs. Each step grew darker and more silent.”

His voice cracked, tearing a gap in the dam holding back the tears. “My ears were first to tell me something was wrong. Then my nose. I could tell he was not there anymore and I saw him—No!—his body lying there.”

The silence was labored as no one wanted to hear even the barest of accounts.

Speaking for himself and Tanner’s father, he said, “After what they put us through, forgiving them has been the hardest thing either of us have ever or will ever have to do. We still love them and they are missed.”

From then on, it became an issue at the back of my mind. I didn’t ever want to hear another story like that. Of the depressed father, of the rejected Gay Mormon son or daughter, or the person nobody thought had a care in the world.

End, Part 2.