Thursday, July 21, 2005
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Suicide is in fashion this year
Is it just me or is taking your own life a little more common than it should be?
In March I lost a friend named Clark Stacy to this disease called suicide. I was shocked as he was popular, good looking, smart and so many other good qualities. The school was shocked, but yet not really phased. He was just a few weeks from graduation and when the students came back from spring break they heard the awful news. The institution handeled it as well as they could have...no matter how much planning you do on a "P.R." end, people's emotions and reactions can never be staged or planned. We asked why, we cried, we were angry, we cried more and then we moved on.
After my mother's death in highschool (which was not a suicide) I kept praying that the pain would never go away because I knew I would feel guilty if I allowed myself to move on no matter how supposedly healthy everyone said it would be. I was afraid that once the pain went away, it would be like she never existed and I would just be half -orphan whose life was never touched, influenced or loved by a mother.
Yesterday was July 4th, indepence day or as I called it in Highschool..."yeah America day." On the way to a famliar spot in Itasca to see fireworks (the best kept secret in the suburbs on the 4th of July) I was very near the old neighborhood I grew up in. I asked my two friends with me if they wouldn't mind if I went to go look at the old house in Bloomingdale. They said it was fine...we had plenty of time before fireworks started.
When we pulled up in front of my old house a stream of memories flooded back to me. "Mom, what is this bug with the weird horns?" "Dad, pull me behind the tractor on my cart!" Look Jeff! I'm shorter than the maple tree now!" That maple tree my mom planted the year I was born. It was a big healthy tree planed almost right in the middle of the front yard. My parents did amazing landscaping together...I think they loved each other most when they were outside in the mud making the yard look beautiful. So when we pulled up and the maple tree was only a stump and the beautiful flower garden my mom and I helped my dad maintain every year was overgrown and ugly I realized again, in one of those realization moments, that I had changed and my world had changed. My front yard was the safest place in the world to me at one point. It now looked so different that I didn't even want to keep my eyes open...I just wanted to sniff the flowers and the pines my parents planted and remember what it was like. In a moment, as my eyes were fixed shut I swore I heard little Naomi say, "Jamie, lets make mud pies and then swim in my kiddie pool!" And I thought I heard Russell and Mark yell to me to come over so we could play cops & robbers or rummycube. I could envision Aaron (who we called Arrow then later Pharoah then Aarow the Pharoah), Stephen and Vicky (who we called Perry, but I'm not sure why) in their swim suits coming back from the pool ready to explore with us.
I opened my eyes and the maple tree was still gone.
I looked over at Russell and Vicky's house and was curious to see if they still lived there... then out walks Russell. I jump out of the car and slowly walk toward him and say "Russell?" He said, "Jamie?" our faces said "Woah." He asked how I was doing and I told him I was doing well, I asked him how he was, what the "hood" was like. He said, " Oh, uh...Mark died a few weeks ago." I asked what happened and Russell told me that he was smoking rocks and he had tried to kill himself before and with the combination of other things he was taking his heart couldn't take it. My dear Mark, my heart cannot take this.
I read his obit today...even though I cried myself to sleep last night, it just became all the more real when I saw it there in black and white this morning.
I began the blame game. It's my fault, I was alwasy such a bad witness...shoving legalism down his non-saved 12 year old throat maybe turning him off to "religion" forever. I never let him just be a sinner...no back then I poked and prodded and beat that dead horse. He came to youth group for a whole summer with me despite my obvious innability to be Christ-like. He would go outside in the middle of it to smoke (at age 15 or 16). One night I told him no more smoking while we are at church, "if you do you can't come anymore!" What kind of garbage was that? That was anything but christianity! I am just sad at that person I was. I can blame myself.
I can blame the public school system. How may people have to take their own life before the good old public school system gets the hint that telling people that they descended from monkeys really destroys self worth. What a worthless existence to believe we came from sludge. To me, knowing I was created on purpose in the image of God gives me reason to believe that my life is at least worth a little something. But when you are told that your grandpa was the lead role in the Planet of the Apes it's a little hard to believe your life has value.
I can blame God, but nothing good ever comes of that, I will rather ask "why?" knowing I will never know.
I can blame forever...
So, thats two friends within a matter of 3+ months. What is going on?
In March I lost a friend named Clark Stacy to this disease called suicide. I was shocked as he was popular, good looking, smart and so many other good qualities. The school was shocked, but yet not really phased. He was just a few weeks from graduation and when the students came back from spring break they heard the awful news. The institution handeled it as well as they could have...no matter how much planning you do on a "P.R." end, people's emotions and reactions can never be staged or planned. We asked why, we cried, we were angry, we cried more and then we moved on.
After my mother's death in highschool (which was not a suicide) I kept praying that the pain would never go away because I knew I would feel guilty if I allowed myself to move on no matter how supposedly healthy everyone said it would be. I was afraid that once the pain went away, it would be like she never existed and I would just be half -orphan whose life was never touched, influenced or loved by a mother.
Yesterday was July 4th, indepence day or as I called it in Highschool..."yeah America day." On the way to a famliar spot in Itasca to see fireworks (the best kept secret in the suburbs on the 4th of July) I was very near the old neighborhood I grew up in. I asked my two friends with me if they wouldn't mind if I went to go look at the old house in Bloomingdale. They said it was fine...we had plenty of time before fireworks started.
When we pulled up in front of my old house a stream of memories flooded back to me. "Mom, what is this bug with the weird horns?" "Dad, pull me behind the tractor on my cart!" Look Jeff! I'm shorter than the maple tree now!" That maple tree my mom planted the year I was born. It was a big healthy tree planed almost right in the middle of the front yard. My parents did amazing landscaping together...I think they loved each other most when they were outside in the mud making the yard look beautiful. So when we pulled up and the maple tree was only a stump and the beautiful flower garden my mom and I helped my dad maintain every year was overgrown and ugly I realized again, in one of those realization moments, that I had changed and my world had changed. My front yard was the safest place in the world to me at one point. It now looked so different that I didn't even want to keep my eyes open...I just wanted to sniff the flowers and the pines my parents planted and remember what it was like. In a moment, as my eyes were fixed shut I swore I heard little Naomi say, "Jamie, lets make mud pies and then swim in my kiddie pool!" And I thought I heard Russell and Mark yell to me to come over so we could play cops & robbers or rummycube. I could envision Aaron (who we called Arrow then later Pharoah then Aarow the Pharoah), Stephen and Vicky (who we called Perry, but I'm not sure why) in their swim suits coming back from the pool ready to explore with us.
I opened my eyes and the maple tree was still gone.
I looked over at Russell and Vicky's house and was curious to see if they still lived there... then out walks Russell. I jump out of the car and slowly walk toward him and say "Russell?" He said, "Jamie?" our faces said "Woah." He asked how I was doing and I told him I was doing well, I asked him how he was, what the "hood" was like. He said, " Oh, uh...Mark died a few weeks ago." I asked what happened and Russell told me that he was smoking rocks and he had tried to kill himself before and with the combination of other things he was taking his heart couldn't take it. My dear Mark, my heart cannot take this.
I read his obit today...even though I cried myself to sleep last night, it just became all the more real when I saw it there in black and white this morning.
I began the blame game. It's my fault, I was alwasy such a bad witness...shoving legalism down his non-saved 12 year old throat maybe turning him off to "religion" forever. I never let him just be a sinner...no back then I poked and prodded and beat that dead horse. He came to youth group for a whole summer with me despite my obvious innability to be Christ-like. He would go outside in the middle of it to smoke (at age 15 or 16). One night I told him no more smoking while we are at church, "if you do you can't come anymore!" What kind of garbage was that? That was anything but christianity! I am just sad at that person I was. I can blame myself.
I can blame the public school system. How may people have to take their own life before the good old public school system gets the hint that telling people that they descended from monkeys really destroys self worth. What a worthless existence to believe we came from sludge. To me, knowing I was created on purpose in the image of God gives me reason to believe that my life is at least worth a little something. But when you are told that your grandpa was the lead role in the Planet of the Apes it's a little hard to believe your life has value.
I can blame God, but nothing good ever comes of that, I will rather ask "why?" knowing I will never know.
I can blame forever...
So, thats two friends within a matter of 3+ months. What is going on?
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