Death by Blank

Expanded view of suicide and suicide math.

I’ve spent a decent amount of time thinking about death. I’ve spoken at funerals. I’ve thought about people I’ve known, how they have died. I’ve thought about people I’ve seen die in war. I’ve been in love with someone who died, and they’ll always hold a place in my heart. I’m a numbers person. Since I was young, I’ve always counted syllables in my head, trying to land in 5’s or even numbers. Language can be manipulated. Fact can be made fiction and fiction made to fact by a slip of the tongue or a misheard syllable. Words can be twisted. Numbers? Numbers are truth. Math is logic. It’s pure. 100 students will interpret a piece of fiction 100 different ways, but there is only one correct answer to a math problem. So here is my suicide math. I have attended more suicide funerals than non-suicide funerals.

My uncle Ron graduated from high school the year I was born. Ron was All-State Baseball. He was funny, he was smart. By the time I was old enough to know Ron, he was the first IT person I ever met and was an incredible softball player. He worked for Johnson Controls and had the most amazing laptop for the time. Ron let me play a skiing game on his computer for hours. Ron drove the latest model Chevy Silverado. I’m not sure if I had ever wanted to be like anyone before, but I wanted to be like Ron. Ron was married and had an awesome son. I don’t know what happened with Ron’s first marriage, but then he was married again to a woman who seemed pretty great, and they had a son, and he was awesome too. I always remember Ron being in good physical shape, but he had a few surgeries. My dad’s side of the family is incredibly athletic but has weak knees and ankles. I always thought it was so cool that Ron was left-handed, and he just looked like a natural throwing or hitting a baseball. My dad’s mother, my grandmother Wilma, but we called her Grandma Willie, developed Lou Gehrig’s Disease when I was young. I think she was diagnosed when I was 6 and died when I was 9. Lou Gehrig’s disease is a death sentence now as it was then. My grandpa Curt didn’t accept this. He drove Grandma Willie all over the country looking for the latest treatment, but nothing helped. My dad’s family took her loss very hard. She was the kindness in the family. She brought the compassion, she made the cookies, she made homemade gnuephla, which is this wonderful potato dumpling soup. Christmas dinners were huge events with so much food. I wish I had spent more time with her. I remember anytime Travis and I were at the farm, we were so busy shooting guns or driving the 3-wheeler (so dangerous), or building forts in the woods.

My Grandpa Curt was John Wayne. He wore a pistol and a cowboy hat. He had a room full of guns, and he didn’t take any shit from anyone. The legend I was told is that my grandfather tried out for the Yankees and could have pitched for their minor league team, but he chose to start a family farm with my grandmother instead. I remember baseball in the yard of Grandpa’s farm. I was batting, Grandpa Curt was pitching, and he beaned me right in the shin so hard that it left the seam marks from the ball. He just chuckled and kept on pitching.

As a teenager, I remember my brother Travis and I visiting my uncle Ron at a campsite. Ron taught us how to make Gin and Tonics. Travis and I loved to drink, but had never drank anything that tasted like a pinecone before. Ron drank in a way that we had not seen before. His complex beverage choice showed a flair, a charisma that we were unfamiliar with. Here in the middle of dusty North Dakota, we saw Ron as a man of the world.

Ron had the world by the tail, but he chose drinking over his career in IT work. Ron had a wife who clearly loved him and a young family that depended on him. Ron chose drinking over his second marriage. Ron didn’t know my wife or any of my kids when he died because I hadn’t seen him for the last 15 years. I heard stories about Ron from my dad, but I never saw him. I heard when he was in rehab again, I heard that he was sneaking bottles of vodka in rehab somehow. I heard his organs were failing. I lost track of Ron, and he died this year of complications from a long life of drinking.

I really admired my dad’s side of the family when I was growing up. They all seemed so strong and capable. The family began to collapse after my grandma died in 1991. My dad divorced my mom and had a pretty epic battle with alcoholism, theft, and the legal system. My aunt Lynae was the runner-up in the Mrs Basketball competition for the whole state of North Dakota. I remember cheering her on at a big tournament and thinking it was incredible that she was this good at basketball. Lynae was married with young children when she chose drinking over her family. She is still struggling with alcoholism today. My aunt Diane was the strong one in the family. She was the one who held it all together. She planned the holiday get-togethers, cooked the meals, and genuinely brought joy to the events. Diane owned her own business, but there was a pending legal decision that would bring shame to her name and business. Diane took her own life on the family farm in 2007 while I was deployed in Iraq. My grandpa Curt, remarried his high school sweetheart and eventually passed away in 2008. Each one of these stories was an opportunity for my dad’s family to get closer to each other, but instead they struggled with their emotions, and they argued over what would happen next. Grandpa Curt built his farm to pass it along through generations. After he moved out, the farm has been quiet; all of the land was sold or leased.

Part of my suicide math is that I’ve expanded the category of suicide. If your actions and disregard for your health or safety killed you, then you killed yourself; that’s suicide in my book. Overdosed on pills? Suicide. Taken drugs that you thought were something else and died? Suicide. Drove 100+ MPH on a motorcycle and lost control? Suicide. Had so much alcohol at a party that you died? Suicide. Drunk Driving crash? Suicide. Received crucial guidance to improve your diet and exercise more, but you ate whatever you felt like and created a permanent butt mark on your couch until you died? Suicide. Smoked cigarettes long after you received a lung cancer diagnosis so everyone treating you had to smell your ashtray aroma? Suicide.

That event didn’t kill them. They died in 1000 moments where they felt less-than and didn’t tell anyone. They died in the moments they were alone and needed someone to talk to. They died during the times they needed someone to tell them to straighten out their lives, but the people they surrounded themselves with would agree with everything they did. They died in the moments they were betrayed by someone they loved. They died in the moments they were scorned by someone they respected. Suicide is death by 1000 deaths. By the time someone goes through with the act of suicide, they have wished they were dead 1000 times. Not acting on a suicidal thought requires some mental strength and belief in yourself. You can make the right decision today, but what about a weaker version of you? Would a weaker you be able to redirect, reframe, or repurpose a thought as dark as your own death? Think about the things in your life that are making you weaker. Addictions? Obsessions? Burnout? Doomscrolling? Jealousy? Hatred? We need our mental strength today more than ever.

It’s easy to mourn those who succumbed to instant suicide. We understand that something happened, and they made an instantaneous and drastic decision, maybe premeditated, maybe not. They saw something in themselves that they didn’t like and didn’t think that they could fix. We also have to spend time in the space of those engaged in slow suicide. Something happened to these people, too, but their decision wasn’t about violence towards oneself; it was about disrespecting oneself. You don’t make a decision that you will drink every day for the rest of your life until it kills you. You make a decision to drink because there is something about you that you don’t like, and you don’t think you can fix it. Nobody makes a decision to have heart disease. We lose respect for ourselves, then we disrespect our minds, bodies, and souls, until they give out like broken appliances. When you know what is going to kill you, you sleep with the fear of the thing, a black hole at the foot of your bed. You know one day you’ll slip so far in that you’ll never get out. It could ruin you, but maybe you can just keep it on the edge of your life, just dip your toes in from time to time. A tamed tiger in your living room, teeth sharp, but he’s not hungry today, he’s harmless, he’s trustworthy, until the day he isn’t.

Every time you ingest alcohol, your body becomes a little bit worse at filtering out this poison from your system. The weakened filter is your liver, and when it misses toxins, they end up in your blood and in your brain. Each time you use alcohol, you become a little bit worse at making decisions. Eventually, even life and death do not offer you a clear choice.

I believe in you. I believe the world is better with you in it. I believe the part of you that you hide from the world is the most beautiful part. If you allow people to see you, they will accept you, they will believe in you, and they will show up for you in ways that you can’t imagine today. Open up, be yourself, be unique, tell your story, let your beauty shine.

Find a way to accept yourself or the only stories about you will be written after you’re gone.

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