Suicide? Please Stop For A Moment

This story in the NYT about Aaron Swartz has brought into my thoughts a topic I'd really like to leave alone, suicide. I've had my own collision with this and for various reasons I've had to go back to it and I really, really don't want to.  I will do it because I don't want other people to have to know what I know about this.  I'll use words to try to tell you about something that you won't truly understand unless you're a member of the group impacted by a suicide, and honest to god, you really do not want to ever truly understand.

We're the ones you leave behind.  We're the ones who cannot sort it out, we cannot ever know your mind.  We're left with nothing but guesses, what ifs, and whys.  Maybe you think you can leave a note that'll lay it all out, it won't.  I know, for reasons I won't go into, the blackness and despair that put you here and I'll tell you that your best efforts will not explain and fix what it is you're contemplating.  You are going to break some one's heart, you are going to crush them with a weight they cannot fix.  Someone loves you, someone really does care and you are going to do to them what it is you're thinking to escape.  If you could explain yourself, if you could express what is happening you'd be working your way out of it - the results of this act will leave the survivors in the same position.  I'm going to go with the assumption that this isn't your desired end result.

I am very close to the 25th birthday of clean and sober so I have reason to know that comebacks are possible and I do mean comebacks from a bad hopeless appearing place.  There really isn't much good I can say about that person, back then, and not many others held any hope for him - but some, in the face of all evidence, did.  Those people are there and you are not in a good position to see it, any more that I was.  What you see is not what all others see and what you think and feel is not what all others do.  You are proposing to make that decision for them, whether your life counts, and you don't get to.  Your life will count to them whatever you decide and they will have to deal with that.  The people who care don't know that you believe they don't and so you don't know that they do care.  People cannot read your mind   All the science, philosophy, and empathy in the world do not grant anyone the ability to read a mind, and you can't read theirs - either.

I do not propose to judge the morality of suicide, I don't have the right to do that - for anyone other than myself.  I do have the right to talk about the consequence of it and beyond the right I have intimate knowledge.  You can tell me and yourself that my situation is different and that I just don't understand and yes, maybe I do only have bits and pieces but I have enough to tell you that in this state of mind you cannot make an informed judgement about others' depth of caring and love.  I'm just a guy typing on the internets?  Yes,  I am that and I'll tell you that a guy not given to emotional displays is sitting here typing with tears running down his cheeks and swallowing hard.  My boy wrote that he was doing a favor for angry disappointed parents and a world he couldn't function in and I'll tell you that in the face of all that anger and disappointment my heart is broken and what was broken will never, ever heal.  I won't get over it, I'll get by it - I'll keep on because that's what I have to do and what I do, but I'll carry this for my forever.

If you're not dying of some horrid terminal disease, it is not too late to do something about it.  You cannot undo a past, you cannot fix it - but the future is indeterminate, it is not fixed.  I won't say something trite like, "you can be anyone you please," but I will tell you that you are not stuck where you are.  You may not have it at the moment, but hope can be had.

Writing this hurts like hell.  I'm doing this because if I can help save one person from having the knowledge that I have it makes an awful lot of things worth something.  I have this because my son did this and if his doing it helps someone else not do it, then that is something, anyhow.  I don't have much of him now, some photographs and memories, so if this gives something back - I'll have that also, even if I don't know about it.

Please stop for a moment and give someone a chance to show you that it matters, it'll only cost you a few minutes and a little bit of risk; really not much in the face of what you're considering.  Hell, if nothing else - I'm pretty easy to find.  Just take a moment, please.

signed:
Chuck Butcher, Nick's Dad Forever

Nick Would Approve

People who knew Nick found him charming in the extreme. There is a story about a four year old Nick and motorcycles - Harleys to be accurate. First I'll show you something new to our household.



****Click for full size****

The town of Joseph OR is famous for scenery and bronze castings so it was reasonable that they would host a blues festival named Bronze Blues and Brews and even more reasonable that my wife and I would attend - with Nick. As we entered the park we walked past quite a few parked Harleys with their riders appropriately attired. Any time there are bikes and riders in one place throttles will be jacked and exhaust notes roar - they did. Nick was entranced and further so when I noted that I'd at one time virtually lived on a bike in N California.

While we were getting ourselves set up on a spot in the grass suitable for listening and dancing Nick managed to get stung by a yellow jacket between his fingers and tears ensued. The tears and sobs were nearly unending until he wandered off a ways. I went looking for him and found him at the beer tent surrounded by bikers in leather, dew rags, and tatts and as I led him away there was a chorus of, "See ya, Nick." As the day went on, if I needed to find Nick all I had to do was look for bikers. Leaving at the end of the festival it seemed every biker in the place knew Nick, "Hey, Nick," and variations came from most corners which made the little fellow shine.

For several years Nick could spot a Harley from our car or the street by looks or exhaust note and never confused any of the look-alikes or wanna-bes with an actual Harley. The above bike is a 1998 Super Glide 80 cubic inch Harley Davidson purchased about three days ago. Compared to the rest of my vehicles it gets great gas mileage but it is a ludicrous transportation vehicle. It is massively over powered and extremely weather limited and flatly really cool.

It's been 30 years since I was putting 30,000 miles a year on a bike and running with a ... fast crowd. Bikes have changed a lot, this bike has a lot more power per cubic inch and the handling and ride are hugely superior to anything available in my riding period. In some ways I bought this bike in honor of Nick, he'd love it, it would appeal to the looney tune portion of his character. Every time the exhaust roars I think of Nick and grin.

BTW, I own an absolute fleet of Chevrolets and now a Harley and every one of them was made in America by American labor.

Giving A Damn, Whatever You Might Have Thought

This has to be said and I will say it forcefully. There are many who scoff at the ability of the electronic communications structure to connect people in meaningful ways. My family has sustained a horridly tragic occurrence, we are in pain. Around 6 PM nearly 150 people had commented on my memoriam to my son and closing on 100 emails have come in. These people took time out of their day to read something they knew was going to make them sad and then took the time and emotional energy to write condolences. There is not a much lonelier position to be in than parents who have lost a child to suicide. People have flooded our life with care, people want my wife and myself to know that they are touched and that it matters.

If it meets some sociological thesis of yours that the internets corrupt and degrade human communication you need to read So Long My Boy and scroll through the comments and educate yourself. If this does not qualify as a high degree of humane behavior then come and see me so I can slap some sense into you.

There is nothing shallow or phony about the comfort my wife and I have taken from the expressions of caring by our fellows. It touches us and assures us of the nature of people. We will carry the memory of these people with us for a very long time, these folks have given of themselves to people they know only somewhat. They have given and they have taken us into their hearts, people have struggled to express what is beyond our ability to express - beyond the implication of the heart.

We are grateful and we are humbled. The intellect understands what has happened, the rest of the brain does not accept that, it is outside experience and it is outside of expectations - it is flatly wrong. This war between the intellect and the lizard brain hurts, imaginary scenarios keep trying to work their way into play. The what ifs, if only's, why's keep requiring pushback. There is no answer to why, if god himself came down and stated a reason it would be rejected. This is why the condolences and even the thanks hold so much meaning, they are a part of that firewall.

The funny snarky iconoclastic lefty crew from Balloon Juice is mixed together with the hard core car guys from the Novalistserve, and politicians to help with that firewall, to give. You folks should give yourselves a standing ovation, if not yourself - then your fellows. The applause should be deafening...scattering bytes like windblown butterflies.

So Long, My Boy

Nicholas Andrew Butcher died tonight. He was my son and I loved him, he was a good kid who lost his way. He lost his way enough that tonight in the county jail he took his life. At 3:00 AM the police knocked on our door and brought us the news. Two distressed cops and a chaplin came to my door to tell me that our son had committed suicide. It wasn't a long conversation, there was no need for them to have to watch my wife fall apart and there was nothing anyone could do to comfort her and my grief was bone deep enough that an outsider was no more than an annoyance.

Nick started his life as one of those people who charm you with no particular effort on his part. Things stopped working out for him by the time he went to school, school was a struggle and outside his interest. He couldn't stick with things long, even things he was good at. By age seven he could burn me out of a ball glove and throw accurately, a pitching standout in the making. A couple years of baseball and he no longer cared about it, he kept at it a bit longer, I think to please us, and quit. By the time he quit he was no longer a desirable team mate because he just didn't care. Much of Nick's childhood was like that, things he liked and was good at stopped mattering. Drag racing entranced him for a season and then he wanted nothing to do with it. It became the ordinary course of events that short term interest was followed by disinterest of a fundamental nature.

By high school he had started to get into trouble, pissant stuff, but sufficient until he finally stole my wife's car and cracked it up. That launched a couple years of trouble and involvement with the courts and juvenile department. He pulled himself together enough to get a GED and he enlisted in the Oregon National Guard. We went to his graduation in Columbus GA and I spoke to his Drill Instructor who allowed that Nick had been a stand out after a rough start. Allowed is the proper word, DIs aren't nannies and their job isn't reassuring parents. He moved over to the Portland area and got a decent job and quickly moved up and true to pattern lost interest in it and his girl friend and walked back into troubles. When they got deep enough he moved back home.

This is a small enough town that you become known and if you become known for troubles, you will be watched. Nick couldn't seem to keep away from things that would cause him troubles. He's been in the county jail for the last two months awaiting trial, and it seemed that there wasn't anything against him and he insisted that this he hadn't done. Despite practice Nick wasn't a good liar, it seemed as though the part that lied was always in conflict with the part that knew better, whatever; he was no good at it. Nick's pattern was to do well and get tired of it and make bad decisions mostly involving the easy way out.

Tonight he made another one of those decisions. It's no one's fault, not the jail or anyone else, he just made another one of those Nick decisions. I'm sure that he didn't consider that despite our disappointment and anger with him that this would break our hearts. It does. Now an hour later as I type this tears have finally started to run down my cheeks. My boy is gone and it hurts. I kept hoping he would find his way back, that my pal would win out in the end. There are inumerable good memories of the kid I loved and now that's what I have. I choose to let the bad stuff fade and to keep alive pictures like the 4 year old lugging his toy gun throught the woods trying to sneak and still keep up with Dad on an elk hunt and his pride in learning woods craft and ability to spot animals no human should be have been able to. Squatting in the back yard catching for him in fear of being broken if a pitch got away and his absolute laughing pleasure when I had to pull the glove off and rub a badly stung hand.

In a couple hours I have to start calling my parents and sister in Michigan and tell them. My mother is not going to take this well. She's too old to have this kind of news, that her grandson has preceded her. It certainly is something no parent ever wants, to outlive their child. I have now done that and it is wrong on so many levels of experience that an explanation would only have meaning to some one who already sadly knows.

I share this with you because it is the only monument he will have beyond a small family. His friends are not the sort to carry anything forward from this, from his life and death. There will be no funeral or services, they are for the living and the only ones who would find it meaningful don't need it or the pressure to travel long distances to commemorate something this sadly pointless. He knew that my own life had been a mess and that I'd started over again right before he was born and that there is such a thing as a come back. He decided to do what he did, and that's how that is going to have to be. He'll have no more failures to deal with, but there is so much that he will have lost out on. We'll deal with this, because we have to deal with it but it will never be right. He almost made it twenty one years, almost.

So long my boy.

(Because this keeps getting accessed I'm adding a 1/25/11 postscript - you should read this, also:

Giving a damn whatever you might think as a response to the folks who've spent time on this post.