The whole weekend's events and all the gossip going around kind of got me thinking and I can't say I came out better from it. In general i've found that i'm just angry. i won't get into why he would commit suicide or if he did because i don't know and his reasons are his reasons. God forbid it's some sort of foul play. Either way, the general fallout from this event has kind of just clouded my sense of what's appropriate and inappropriate. In chapel, i was angry when people were playing iPhone games instead of respecting the loss of a brother in arms at LLU. But then I can't force people to care or pay attention or cope differently. I was angry at the way random higher level school administration was handling the situation and the misinformation. I was angry that someone had to die for people to start caring about each other. i hated all the people saying all the trite and wrong things about reaching out to others and finding a way to these troubled souls. But this is just me. An angry guy.
Death has been this ugly specter that has been bothering me for a while. When i was a teen, i remember wanting to commit suicide. Apparently my life of middle school and early 90's alternative rock was hard for my mind to cope with.... i got over it, but i've always felt very willing to go. This does a number on really wanting to do anything productive when you're just waiting for death to take you. Before any of random surgeries under general anesthesia, i would write long informal wills to be found and read if i were to die. i actually still have some of them on my comp and i get a kick out of how stupid i was (and i still am). i hoped to die before any of my friends and i still try to live with the idea that i'd be willing to die for almost anyone if had to or given the opportunity. i'm not going to try and say that this is the right way to live because i have absolutely no clue what the right way is. i know that this way works for me and keeps me happy and sane when i see so much around me that would just make me sad and crazy.
i don't really understand a lot of things because i feel all this is just coming too fast and too loose. Say he did try to commit suicide, can you really stop someone intent on taking their own life if they have the means to? Can you bring them some soup or read them a Bible story to convince them otherwise? i'm not saying that there is no power in simple gestures or the Bible, but there is so much that you can never even see coming. It's not like someone who really wants to go is going to telegraph the signs so he/she can get help from some bleeding heart. I hate talking about this because it offends a part of me to assume that SOMETHING couldn't have been done to prevent this, but i don't like how there's this subconscious shifting of blame for what's happened. That's kind of how the rumors began. People wanted to know the reason. There has to be a reason. If there's a reason then that means something could've been done. If something could've been done then someone specifically could have done it. If someone could have prevented him from going then it's their fault. That's perhaps a reach, but imagine being one of the last people he spoke with. The potential unfathomable guilt that might be in the last group of people he had dinner with just minutes before he was found. i doubt they need some nonsensical talking head to reiterate that they should've been there for him to reach out to in order to prevent it. Or on his family for not seeing any signs. There's just all these undercurrents that maybe i'm just reaching way too deeply into to make any sense of it all. And maybe it's all that anger.
There have been other deaths over the last few years and it always makes me angry for some reason. It sucks. It's inevitable that we're all going at some point, but it's still unfortunate when it's so much sooner than it should be.
