Understanding

Yesterday, I learned of the death of someone I did not know. I knew of him through mutual ties to a friend’s family. I’d met him, briefly, and probably saw him at various functions over the years, but had never had an in-depth conversation with the guy. Not that I remember.

He’d just turned 38 in early January. He was a veteran of the US Navy. According to the obituary, he’d served tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The obituary also said, “He was a man of God who loved serving the Lord, his family and others, always with a smile on his face. His contagious smile and laughter will be missed by many.” At the time of his death, he was employed by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, still serving his country.

The obituary did not mention the grievous, life-threatening wounds he suffered during one of his tours of duty. When an explosion wiped out most, if not all, of the other soldiers he was with at the time, his friends. It also didn’t mention the many, many surgeries and myriad other medical procedures, long, grueling periods of recovery, the physical pain he endured, and the scars. The beautiful love story that blossomed when, during one of his many hospital stays, friends of his stopped to visit with a young girl in tow. Unknown to him at the time, she’d eventually become his wife and the mother of two of his beautiful children. There was also no mention of the eventual divorce or detail about his second marriage being what blessed him with another wife,  daughter, and a son.

I have yet to see an obituary reveal the cause of death as suicide. Why is that? Suicide is not shameful. In my opinion, it is just as tragic as dying a long, slow, death from cancer or some other degenerative, fatal disease. The kind that slowly eats away at one’s physical body. Where families, friends, co-workers and others witness and have to deal with that person’s physical struggles. They can see the effect of pain on that person. They can empathize and, maybe, do things to help ease the patient’s suffering. They can offer support and friendship, do as much as they can to help, or at least take the patient’s mind off of the physical suffering.

When people die of “natural” causes, be it sudden death from a heart attack, accident, or something long and drawn out, like cancer, most of those who are left behind grieve differently than they would had it been death by suicide. They do what they need to do to wrap their minds around the loss and get on with the business of living.

People typically have a harder time accepting suicide, or dealing with it. Most people, anyway. It’s not spoken of, not at length anyway. Survivors are often treated like victims. Maybe they even feel like victims.

How often have you heard things like… That was selfish. How could he do that to his family? How could he leave his children behind? If only he’d told me he was suffering, I could have helped. Imagine the guilt his parents are struggling with. He just couldn’t handle it all anymore, he wasn’t strong enough. Etcetera, etcetera.

In my opinion, it is just another example of how ill-equipped our society is to deal with mental illness. Death by suicide is just as tragic, if not MORE tragic, than death by “natural causes.”

Why is natural deal more acceptable? Because we can see the effects of disease? Because we know what physical pain feels like, and are better equipped to understand and empathize when people are sick, injured, and/or dealing with a fatal disease?

Mental illness may be invisible, but it is also very physical. We may all be people, but we do not all have the same physical make-up. Our bodies have many, many similarities, but they also have many differences. Our muscles do not all work the same way, and neither do our brains. We think differently, we feel differently, we perceive things differently, we act and react in many different ways.

If more people understood mental illness, would it have been different? Could that young man’s life have been saved? Should it have been saved?

I cannot imagine how difficult the entire second half of his life has been. I suspect the physical suffering he endured paled in comparison to the mental anguish eating away at his psyche. How difficult it must have been to live a seemingly normal life while dealing with so many invisible, emotional hurdles.

Organized religion doesn’t necessarily help either. Suicide is considered a sin by many. But that young man “…was a man of God who loved serving the Lord.” Imagine just how bad his pain must have been for him to take his own life. To risk being condemned to Hell for all eternity.

Is suicide a bad thing? Really? Or is it a final, courageous act?

That young man was not weak. He was a hero. He fought for a very long time, physically and mentally. If he’d been wired differently, he might have lived longer.

Would you condemn someone for ending their life if you knew they’d spent the second half of their physical life on Earth suffering from pain? Should you?

If one’s physical brain is not appropriately wired to process the negative thoughts and emotions coursing through one’s brain, and there is no end in sight to the emotional pain caused by that faulty processing, how can choosing to end it be bad?

That young man will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery. He will be buried with honor, as he should be. He was courageous. He was a fighter. But he was also a human. His physical limitations were his undoing. His wiring had flaws.

I hope his children are better-equipped and, one day, able to understand how difficult life was for their heroic father. I hope the people he left behind are able to realize and rejoice in knowing his physical body may be gone, but his soul is finally free.