Issue 31.14
Part 2
Over the next few years, Jay’s physical and emotional pain was intense. He married a good woman named Susan. They struggled to blend their families. They wanted to make it work. They wanted to be happy. Soon after their marriage, Susan was also diagnosed with breast cancer.
When I was living in Alexandria, Virginia, with my husband and children, Jay and his boys came to visit. I knew something was wrong when we picked them up from the airport. Jay was not himself. We discovered later that his doctor had taken him off Lortab (a painkiller upon which he was dependent) and put him on methadone (a strong drug used to wean addicts from heroine).
When he went down into the underground Metro station, Jay snapped. He paced frantically and tore off his shirt. He was visibly covered in sweat. After fleeing the station, Jay refused to get into a vehicle, but rather ran the few miles to the hospital. He was not aware of what was happening or why. That day he went into pulmonary failure due to drug withdrawal. He was hospitalized for the better part of a week and released only to fly home.
At 4:00 in the morning, before Jay and his boys left, I gave him a hug. I had never hugged Jay before. I was too proud to show affection that way. But for some reason, that day I hugged him. After he left, I could not sleep. The Spirit was so strong and its message was clear, “EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY!” I thought that somehow my hug had made things better and I wondered why I hadn’t hugged him years earlier.
But everything wasn’t okay in the way I thought it would be. My dad called two days later, “Things have gotten really bad with Jay,” he said, “He’s taken his own life.” I learned that Jay had sought admission at his local hospital three desperate times only to be sent home where he shot himself with a hunting rifle.
Jay’s struggle to survive had come to an end.
It was excruciating for me. I can’t image what it was like for his boys, his wife, his parents. For years, I clung to that witness I’d received on the last day I saw him, EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY. And twelve years later, I can honestly say this is true. The boys have had difficult struggles, but they have grown into men of whom their parents would be proud.
The bishop’s words at Jay’s funeral gave me comfort at the time. Jay had not been accountable, but I sensed there was deeper significance in his words, “Suicide was not a choice he made, but rather a choice he happened onto when his pain was greater than his ability to cope.”
Just last year, I had a clarifying experience—an experience that helped me to understand suicide a little better and led me to believe that it is really an expression of the deepest human desire to survive.
My family was watching a documentary on the 9/11 terrorist attacks and for the first time, I saw footage of someone jumping from the window of one of the twin towers. All at once, I understood what Jay’s bishop had meant. The person was not jumping from the building to die, but rather to escape the intense and consuming flames. Nobody would accuse that person of being selfish or of giving up on life.
Jay was inside a figurative burning building and he happened upon an exit. His deep need to survive caused him to take it. Many who turn to suicide are in physical, emotional or spiritual pain. I don’t think they seek death. Instead, they seek escape, so that their identity and intelligence can survive.
Ever since my experience with Jay, I have felt compassion and a connection to those left in the wake of such a suicide. It is intensely agonizing for surviving loved ones. Not only do we mourn the loss of someone dear to us, but we also feel the pain of sorrow and of guilt. We wish we could have made a difference. We feel anger at their betrayal and our perception of their selfishness. We fear that all is lost. But, in my experience, if we are willing to soften our hearts, over time we realize that we are forgiven, that they were not selfish and that all is not lost.
Jay’s bishop said one other thing that has stuck with me all these years. He said, “Christ did not call Jay home in this manner. But I can testify that He did welcome him home.”
Todd Bonzo can be contacted at Metcalf Mortuary, 435-673-4221.