The Elephant in the room

he Elephant in the Room 

He was a close friend of the family.

He now reminds me very much of Ernest Hemingway.  Like Hemingway, he loved wild games 

and hunting and at the end like Hemingway he shot himself in the heart.

The grief must be unbearable. Is nobody  going to say it heroes fail from their pedestal when 

they decide to end their own Life.

My intention in this story is not to hurt him as much as to bewilder and disorient him..  There exists an unhealthy anger towards suiciders as well as hunters like him.

He had everything one could hope for, money, a trophy wine, twins boys and grandchildren.

I contacted all his closest friends. None kept in touch with him which surprised me, I mean he was pretty social.  I even reached out to his long-time ex-girlfriend and told her about the funeral arrangements and that kind of thing.

I think about him and the last minutes of his life as I walk my dog.  He drove his truck to Boyd Park, parked and phoned his ex-business partner. He said:

“I am going to kill myself, I can’t go on living like this anymore. Tell my wife and sons I’m sorry!”

His ex-business partner was shaking and in panic tried to calm him down and tried to stall him by talking and talking to  talking to him and buying time:

“No matter what I do things do not improve, no matter how strong I am, no matter how bravely I try to face the world, the world erodes away at it all.  Part of me fights against it so hard, but it’s like you are throwing punches at the fog, the world just shifts into a new way of wearing you down. I decided I can’t  stay tough forever. I’m only human.

“Hold on I am coming, I am on my way on my way, we can talk about it” His ex-business partner and friend pleaded in despair.

“No, things will never get better and I want relief from this unending pain” 

After that, he hung up the phone, got out of his truck, must have first untied his shoelace and

then he pointed the gun to his heart and pulled the trigger and just a few seconds later he was free from his pain.

His ex-business partner had called the police.  The police arrived seven minutes later and he was already dead.  His wife had also been following him at his every move on her cell had rushed to the scene hoping to reach him on time but it was too late. She saw him lying down beside his truck without any vital signs.

Here is my problem, for the last 50 years of my life I have zero memories that don’t entangle in him. My family and I shared everything with him. We told each other everything. There was nothing we were embarrassed or ashamed to tell each other about because we knew we still loved each other, with everyone else there was a bit of a facade but with him and my family, there was none. 

 We knew he had been suffering for months As he closed down his auto shop business and finally started his retirement he began to get depressed, and he stopped going hunting his other lifetime passion. Although he took regular vacations with his wife and spent some time in his other home in Arizona he felt lost, lost without his auto shop business his main purpose of living and felt worse when he could no longer go hunting. This is a man who toned lines and rules, to make problems go away with a phone to well-placed sources but if you have ever been depressed you know that it is more than just being sad and down. It dominates your whole existence. He couldn’t do anything, He couldn’t eat, concentrate or otherwise, function It was the inability to create meaningfulness to in the suffering that comes from depression. and though he had sought clinical help and was medicated he was not better.

Most people who commit suicide are depressed and depression is a disease that can be fatal.

 What triggers this irrevocable step varies from person to person. Suicide may stem from intense falling of anger, despair, hopelessness, or panic. Sometimes it’s carried out under the sway of highly distorted and psychotic ideas. Many suicides are impulsive.

Here is what Harvard has to say about depression specifically:

“It is often said that depression results from a chemical imbalance, but the figure of speech doesn’t capture how complex the disease is. Research suggests that depression doesn’t spring from simply having too much or too little of certain brain chemicals, rather, there are many possible causes of depression including faulty mood regulations by the brain's genetic vulnerability and stressful life events, it is believed that several of these forces, interact to bring on depression.”

One psychologist in the Washington Post explains”

Unlike everyday sadness clinical depression is never a normal response to stress or trauma, it’s a serious medical illness that is associated with significant impairment to function in major areas of our life in relationships, at home and at work.”

Pain, sorrow, loneliness, self-loathing, guilt and occasional bouts where you are so far gone that you are just numb. Life, death it’s all the same after a while. You lose the one thing that most people might have had at one point: hope.

We were late, and although we saw the signs, we were unable to prevent the irrevocable outcome.

My family with his family are grieving. It is a particularly intense and painful time. 

People have suggested we travel. They have suggested we visit places we loved together. A kindness on their part but we have chosen to stay home. I’m not certain I know why.  There isn’t much that is clear about the days immediately after his death. We brought him to his burial as it is customary.  If I am honest I tried to avoid thinking about him. Some things have happened to me here. How could it not, his gesture shook our entire beings. He had been bound, he and I by moments and people for a long time. 

On the day of his wake at the funeral home, I had leaned over his casket and it was hard not to be more curious about him He had been a good-looking man though less so now, He looked tired. Very tired. He was always so friendly and smiling at people but now he seemed to say:

“I don’t give any f’s”.

I thought about something he had told me once before going hunting and killing an animal:

“After I pause for a minute, think about the life I have taken, get ready for the arduous task of field dressing, the carcass, carrying out of the woods, skinning and butchering it.”

That is it,I thought, there is much more to do but keep going.

I always thought that killing animals for sport or recreation was unethical and cruel even if the meat is consumed and I always let him know how I felt. Hunting can disrupt the natural balance of the system and threaten vulnerable and endangered species, and always been thought that hurting methods can cause significant animal suffering, especially with a not-fatal wounding. I have told him in anger.

“I suggest “ he replied “ the cure for your anger is for the inflicted to spend a day in the field, close to the Earth, connected to nature, doing something for the soul. One thing he said “The majority erroneous view is that “humans hunt for the joy of killing” The vast majority of hunters go afield for the joy of hunting and killing for the most part, the act of taking a precious life, brings in a flood of mixed feelings. Speaking about himself as a hunter he said the killing was actually anti-climatic even a little sad. The joy of hunting is being with nature, being alone in the woods in the frosty mornings, understanding how animals live, moving in their natural environment and using stealth, knowledge and to get close to a normally weary animal. He also enjoyed the camaraderie of hunting camp, sharing skills and lessons of the hunt with fellow hunters.  When he told me this I asked him a complete. sensible follow-up question

“But couldn’t you do all these things and let the animal live?”

“It is a good question,”  said he

“Well of course I could” 

So why if he really found the killing part anticlimactic and sad why do ti?

One reason he said, is that the meat he hunted, wild game, is much healthier than factory-farmed meat bought out of the supermarket. Further, he was kinder to the animals he ate than someone who ordered steak or chicken sandwiches or a rack of smoked pork ribs in a restaurant. The non-hunter may not have killed the animal himself he used to say but he down sure paid someone else to do it and the horrific conditions in modern factory farms are crueller than hunting and shooting an animal that lived in his natural environment. Further, he believed that hunting was beneficial to the wildlife population. In North America he used to say f for example there are way too many deers.

For these and other reasons while he generally felt sad upon killing an animal he didn't feel he’d done anything wrong.

“I suppose you don’t feel you have done anything wrong by doing away with yourself’” were my last thought before they closed the casket.. 

“I had a friend” It might also have been “I have”  and it was hard to remember how to hold an awareness of the time I saw his face for the last time..