Suicide

      

The title sits all by itself … Alone, one word, Alone, not supported by any other words, Alone, with no direction but inward.  The statistics for suicide are frightening and depressing.  Please follow this link for some insight into the magnitude of the problem, an issue that is becoming worse in our society.  https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/

A few days ago, a friend took his own life.  The despair he felt must have been overwhelming.  The warning sign was given late at night, when most were asleep, an ominous posting on social media.  A few years ago a young woman who had played violin at my wedding when she was a child, took an overdose of prescription drugs and died.  Both were victims of depression, a debilitating disease, and make no mistake, depression is a disease.  Both were talented and bright individuals and loved by many.  One was a middle-aged man the other a twenty-something young woman.  Probably the only thing in common between them was depression.

These beautiful human beings descended into a darkness so suffocating that they thought the only solution was to kill themselves.  They left behind families and friends that grieve and feel full of guilt.  The guilt that says, “Could I have helped, why didn’t I notice, what if I had been a better friend, a more caring lover, a more attentive parent.  The truth is that even if we met all those criteria, the depression would most probably have won and the result been the same.  Most of us are not trained mental health professionals and are not equipped to prevent someone from taking their own life.  The pain ends for the victim and begins for the new victims.  For the survivors are the new victims.

This link is to the story of Eric Kramer, an NFL quarterback who attempted suicide and lived to tell about it, something rare among gunshot victims.  https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nfl/lions/2016/05/21/erik-kramer-detroit-lions/84657892/

Unfortunately, I have known a few friends and a coworker who have committed suicide.  Each time I wondered if I could have done anything, much self-examination told me there was nothing I could have done, yet that does not stop the feeling of guilt.  Why do I know this?  Because every damn day, every day, I think about doing the same thing.  And every day I look for a reason to go on.  I hang on by a thread, just a thread. All we can do is to become better listeners and observers.  Sometimes the depressed individuals exhibit behaviors that are warning signs and some will even threaten suicide, a threat that should be taken seriously.  Some people are good actors and hide their pain behind a bright and cheerful smile.  Compassion in American appears to be in decline, we have become a bitter, greedy, self-absorbed society, and the innocent suffer.  However there are people who care, help exists, if you or a loved one is thinking of suicide please call a suicide hotline like this one: 1-800-273-8255

Toys R Us

Nothing in a child’s life compares with the adrenaline rush of stepping into a toy store.  The news that Toys R Us is going out of business drove me into a fit of nostalgia so strong I thought I would descend into melancholy.  So many memories emerged from deep inside, they flashed by so fast I had to stop and hit rewind a few times.  Once second I encountered a memory from my distant childhood, the next a memory from my daughter’s childhood, and then my granddaughter’s first time in a toy store.

I have a memory of a small redheaded boy in a shopping cart throwing a temper tantrum that only a redhead could throw, over a toy that is lost to time.  I remember being with my great-grandmother and mother as we shopped in Wolf and Dessauer in Fort Wayne.  I do not remember the particulars of why I threw the tantrum and the memory is strange in that it is from the viewpoint of someone looking at me, almost as if someone else’s memory has been transplanted in my brain.  I suppose the memory took on a life of its own, trapped deep inside my brain with nothing to do but imagine.  

When we lived in Florida my daughter was born and it wasn’t toys that sent me to Toys R Us, but something more practical—diapers for my baby.  I would make a weekly trip to the store and immediately head to the back to where the diapers resided.  As time went by the diapers increased is size in proportion to my daughter.  At first, as I would head down the aisle to the diapers I would look at the toys and imagine my daughter playing with them someday.  Later as she got older, I would stop and purchase a doll or something educational and bring it home with the diapers—fathers love to spoil their daughters.

Recently I took my granddaughter to Toys R Us for the first time.  I smiled and relished in her delight as she scampered about from toy to toy, from aisle to aisle, overwhelmed with indecision.  Fifty-five some years after a little redheaded boy threw a fit in Wolf and Dessauer, his redheaded granddaughter had the opposite reaction.  I helped her make a decision and we happily left the store.   The loss of Toys R US will be to me as calamitous as the loss of Wolf and Dessauer.  As we bid adieu to Toy R Us let me say one thing.  Thank You!