It doesn’t make sense.
The last time I saw him he had a smile on his face. When I picture him he always had a smile on his face, but is that just my memory playing tricks on me? I knew he was sad. I knew things weren’t going well for him. I didn’t know he would ever be capable of killing himself.
It makes me wish I’d given him a big hug when he left the party where I last saw him. It makes me wish I’d hugged him until he felt it in his bones, almost testing the pressure of his ribs. It makes me want to hug everyone who is important to me like that, every time I see them, just so they know how much I care about them.
I found out at work, behind the bar, and, while the tears didn’t come, the bile did. I felt myself start to throw up and hid in the office. I swallowed, hiding my emotion, and my body went into automatic pilot.
I locked myself in the liquor room and called one of his best friends. A guy I really care about, and the first person who came to mind when I heard the news. “I’m so sorry,” I said in my voicemail message, and it was a loaded apology.
I’m sorry that I didn’t see it. I’m sorry that I didn’t react stronger to the things I did see. I’m sorry that my other friend has to go through the pain of one more person in his life dying on him. I’m sorry for the parents of my friend who died. I’m sorry for all of us left behind wondering how we missed the signs and for all of the people who are trying to show signs that none of us are picking up because we are too busy with the minutiae of our lives.
I asked a customer three times what he wanted to drink. He was nice about it, but as he patiently said “Crown and Coke” for the third time he must have wondered if I was part of the Wal-Mart greeters program at Z-Tavern. I tried to make drinks and would put each bottle down before pouring and forget where I left it.
The friend whom I’d called came into the bar and gave me a hug. I followed him outside and the first words out of his mouth were, “I’m fine.” I just looked at him. “I’m fine, really, I’m fine.”
We live in an area with one of the highest suicide rates in the country, when someone kills themselves we all look around and wonder: who’s next? You’d think life would be easier in A-Town and Smurf Village; we wear shirts that read “My Life is Better Than Your Vacation”.
Really, what could be wrong in our world? Perhaps it’s the pressure to be having fun always. Perhaps we attract adrenaline junkies and that’s the new rush they look for when they get depressed. Perhaps we self-medicate in ways that lead to poor judgment.
Edward Dow 1976-2010
Definitely, we self-medicate.
I see it during every shift and I do it when I’m down. People say it as they walk into my bar, “I just had a really crappy day, boy do I need a drink... or twelve.”
It’s a week later and I definitely drank too much a few nights ago; the night of Ed’s memorial. It didn’t make me miss him any less, but it did make me say and do things I wish I could take back. Things I can take back, or at least make an attempt to apologize for. That’s the thing about suicide, you can’t take it back. There’s no waking up in the morning and thinking “Oh my, what have I done?”
There are people who have a crazy-switch that flips after a certain amount of alcohol. I’ve watched it happen time and again where, in as little as one sip, a patron goes from happy and buzzed to the crazy place. We have one guy who even has a different name when he hits the crazy limit. His drunk name is “Duane” and his real name, like his kind and sober personality, is buried in there somewhere.
Ed had a switch that flipped. Sober, he was one of the nicest guys in the world. Drunk, it was hit or miss. Anyone close to him heard him say to someone whose buttons he was pushing, “Suicide is an option.” Was that a cry for help we all ignored? I always thought he meant an option for the other guy, though once I did send a police officer after him to make sure he was okay after he stumbled out of the bar, leaving a wake of angry customers. It makes me wonder if he was drunk when it happened.
I’m angry and I’m sad, but I’m accepting that it’s impossible to look at this in any way that makes sense to me. I can make up theories to explain it, but I can’t look into his brain. All I can do is hope that it was the right choice for him. And that he didn’t wake up somewhere else and wish he could take it back. They say that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I hope they’re wrong. I hope that wherever Ed is now, he’s more at peace than he was here with us.
