A Quiet and Candid Conversation
How could I forget my first up-close experience with suicide? I was in middle school and at Wednesday night catechism class at the Catholic church. The teacher informed us that Father Clarence passed away by suicide. It seemed to me that no one else seemed to care. But I remember trying to hide my tears. Father Clarence was the one who brought an actual telephone (cord and all) up to the pulpit one morning to show us how God was calling. He was also the one who took my sister and I and two of our friends on a day trip to a popular tourist cave a couple years before. He was kind, simple, and genuine. Why would somebody so dear as Father Clarence crawl into the trunk of a car with a garden hose to end his life by carbon monoxide poisoning?
And then about 6 years later, it was one of our field assistants in the marching band. He was the one that was always having the most fun and singing the loudest whenever there was a group to entertain. One year we came back to marching practice before the fall semester began. We did not have to wonder very long why he was not there. The announcement was made and then all too quickly, we began practice. No more said.
These are just two stories. And I could go on telling stories about people I love and people I knew, but none of them are merely stories. They are lives, not much different from our own, except that they were brought to the brink of chaos and lost in a final moment of desperation.
And yet, when it is all over, we go about our daily business as though nothing has happened. We resume our daily routines as though it was some anomaly that will never happen again. How can we ignore the stories when statistics scream about the suicide rates in our country and the excessively high suicide rates in Wyoming? How can we ignore the tragedies when our very own families have experienced suicide’s deadly hand? How can we ignore the real pain when we too have been to that brink of chaos but somehow found deliverance? How can we ignore the need when young people, middle aged people, old people, all kinds of people in our very own communities need hope today in their time of desperation?
We don’t need to shout these stories out loud on the roof tops of our town or have a gaudy parade to show that we care. But we do need to have a quiet and candid conversation. We need to talk together and help each other with our losses. We all have lost someone. We need to prepare together to give hope. As I write this, there are many more individuals struggling with life and needing hope and, yes, their lives depend on it. Will you join me for a quiet and candid conversation about suicide?
“O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Romans 7:24