04 July 2004 — Suicide
Cold, cold water surrounds me now
And all I've got is your hand
Lord, can you hear me now?
Lord, can you hear me now?
Lord, can you hear me now?
Or am I lost?
(Damien Rice, ‘Cold Water’)
That song is so beautiful and sad. I'll never be able to hear it again without thinking of my uncle Herman and his suicide. How awful that must have felt.
I don't know how to grieve. It's this constant low-level ache that becomes periodically sharp. There is a space with no filler. There is a memory and a random moment of realising suicide all over again. There is a sense of injustice and crying out and empathy and wishing you could help but if it's anything, it's too late. I think of him, smiling or laughing or teasing me as a child, and I think, did anyone ever think you would end this way? It seems so tragic and stupid and useless to have things end like that, and then I think of all of us left behind, left with this gaping hole and a sense of "how dare you leave us, we loved you, we needed you, how could you leave on purpose?" and a pang of guilt for being angry at the dead.
There is a sense that we, in modern society as we are, should be past this, should be dealing with it better, faster, but we are not healing and we will never fully heal. We will always be Herman-less, the skin will always be raw, and that is how we know that we loved him. We will carry him with us longer and closer because he shouldn't be gone, because we wish we could console him, because we sense that suicide is shameful but we are proud, not ashamed, of his memory. We know that there was so much more to him than the way he ended, and his end is foreign and surprising and a slap in the face, every time, regardless of how many factors become obvious as it begins to make sense.
Ultimately, it will never really make sense, how a person can turn on himself, overpower the part of himself that is mammal and fights at all costs to survive, sever his ties with family and friends, choose a grave of inescapable cold water over one more sunrise. We don't understand. Suicide always seemed so far, something that other people do, but we knew him and we know that we are like him and if he can succumb to it, maybe we are capable of it too.
I wish I could say to him, hang on, Uncle Herman, just hang on for a few more minutes. If you could see how packed your funeral was, if you could see the lines at your wakes, if you could see so many people break, if you could hear how they loved you and what a hole you left, oh just hang on for a few more minutes and we'll figure something out, anything else to fix it, we'll get you something to drink and a way to sleep and a calm mind again and it won't have to be this way. It's all I want, just a chance to say it, and it's all we'll never have.
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