What a society. I’m so proud to be a member of it.
Today in the Pain Dealer, Regina Brett wrote a beautiful column (mark that one, OK? you may never again hear me describe a PD column as beautiful) about the unfortunate person who hung himself a few weeks ago at Legacy Village.
Here is the original story:
Lyndhurst — Cedar Road motorists, including children being driven to school, saw a body hanging from a tree near Legacy Village this morning.
A white male apparently killed himself. His body was taken to the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office.
The Plain Dealer does not publish the names of suicide victims who are not public figures.
One woman who saw the Lyndhurst police cars, an ambulance and the body described the scene. It “looked so lonely and sad.”
I’m sure that if I saw the scene, I would have described it with exactly those same words.
Some time ago during the dustup over the Wide Open Blog, the Pain Dealer blocked my user account to comment on stories. I e-mailed the two people responsible and never received a reply. To this day, I have no idea what I wrote that could have been mistrued as objectionable.
But when I read the comments on the PD stories such as this one, I’m amazed at the kind of comments the PD allows.
For this story, some morally and humanity-challenged people replied:
Posted by zebra69 on 02/13/08 at 2:37PM
you might say he hung around to the end so to speak . Wonder if anybody is going to sue the guys estate for the traumatic stress they are under from the guy hanging around ??? Where are the ambulance chasers ????
Posted by supeball1 on 02/13/08 at 2:46PM
My questions is…why was he hanging out at legacy Village anyways?
Posted by sec513 on 02/13/08 at 2:53PM
Too bad I didn’t go to the gym this morning. I could have called the tipline!
I’ll bet he was depressed with all this global warming in Cleveland.
Posted by iceraker on 02/13/08 at 3:18PM
HE WON’T DO THAT AGAIN, HANGING AROUND FOR NO GOOD REASON.
WHAT END DO YOU GET IMPALED ON? GET UP GET UP AND ON YOUR WAY LAD.
DON’T ASK DON’T TELL THATS THE MOTTO. THE SERVICE NO NO ……….
Posted by rainie on 02/13/08 at 4:48PM
Posted by Spunkmeister on 02/14/08 at 3:19AM
Posted by supeball1 on 02/14/08 at 11:27AM
It is so very sad that some of you feel that you have the right to mock him and you did not even know him.l He was my tender hearted brother who has been batteling the drug and alcohol demons all of his adult life. The last 2 weeks have been very hard on him. The sad thing is he was released from a mental facility just over a week ago because his insurance would not let him stay. He has a family that loves him dearly and will miss him. I know he felt he had no other place to turn. The demons that he was fighting finally won. I am sorry for all of you that drove by and saw him. Believe when I saw he would not have wanted that for any of you. He was not making a statement he just wanted it to be over. I thank all of you that are praying for him. And for all of you that mock him what a sorry lonely life you must live. It must be nice to live in a world where nothing bad ever happens. I pray that you can continue to live in that rose colored world.
HeavyHeart57 my deepest sympahthies go out to you and your family.
I was traveling to work and I past the good sheppard church and the new temple every day. I live near cedar and green. I had returned home from the gym at 7:45am and I did not notice him there, when I drove by and I always look because the police set up radar there. I went home and showered and was heading back toward the mall and there was a squad car in front of me he turned into the church and he did not turn to clock and I looked over and saw your brother. It was surreal. He was wearing a carhart Jacket, and all I could think about was here was this young guy probably a tradesman struggling to take care of himself and his family and had failed and had given up hope. I was so messed up at work , I had to leave for awhile. I am usually very hard on people who talk about suicide as an option for solving their problems. But I could not get this image of your brother out of my head. I did not make one sale that day. I had been searching the net for some answers for who he was and what was so bad that he went out like this.
I am a combat veteran of the Iraq war Ist Armored division 3rd armored brigade 35th battilion. And I have seen death many times over. I even had a soilder next to me get blown up and smelled his burning flesh. But none of that affected me like seeing your brother. Maybe because I am older and more mature. I kept thinking does have children? Are they same age as mine? do they play on the same t-ball team here in the S.E.L.? How is his wife, and other family member coping. I am truly sorry for your loss. And to all the low life who have made some of the most ignorant comments I think I have ever heard. Crawl back into the hole whence you came.
And then a pastor wrote:
Heavyheart,
I am the priest and pastor at the church where your brother died. We have not known how to contact you. I hope you see this message.
Your brother and your family have been in our prayers and thoughts since his body was discovered. If there are any questions I can answer for you or any other way we can help, please call our church and ask to speak to me.
It is impossible to know what was going on in your brother’s heart, mind, and spirit that night. But whatever it was, as a Christian congregation, we believe that the mercy, grace, and healing of Jesus Christ is greater beyond measure. May your brother be received into the arms of God’s mercy, and may you and your family find confidence in God’s goodness and strength to meet the days to come.
The Rev. Brad Purdom
And then the dead man’s brother again:
I am compelled to leave this message for all of you who have expressed your thoughts and prayers for my brother. They were, greatly appreciated by my family members and have helped us through this extremely difficult time.
As my sister Heavyheart expressed, my brother would be the first to apologize for any discomfort he caused those of you which saw him. I can assure you that there was not any intent of a statement by his choice of location he chose to end his battle. In knowing his personal thoughts, and beliefs I am sure the location chosen was only because of the proximity of two houses of the Lord.
For those of you who have wondered about him, I can tell you that he did not leave behind a wife, or children. He did leave behind siblings and a father who loved him, and did all they could to help him. He is with his mother now, who also loved him very much. My brother grew tired of a long battle he tried to win against emotional, and substance abuse. My brother simply was tired of the fight. He was a very strong willed man, and extremely kind person both of which worked against him in the end. The inability to surrender, and the shame he carried because of that became too much of a burden for him. We all have our Crosses to carry, my brothers just became to large for him ,and I cannot judge him for that.
As for those of you, who mocked him. My brother also had a very “twisted” sense of humor. Although inappropriate, we know that your comments are based on ignorance, and truthfully pray that you can continue to live life without having such personal tragedy touch you. If you think this type of thing cannot happen to you, think again. This disease knows no boundries, and has no compassion.
Indeed, indeed.
If I could have been allowed to post in the PD’s comments site I would have written the brother that I wished I had had the chance to be his friend for just five minutes. Because I know where he had been. And while it may seem incredible to many people, sometimes all that is needed to stop a suicide is for someone, anyone, to put an arm around the afflicted person’s shoulders and say “you know, you ain’t so bad, in fact I kinda like you.”
I know it sounds crazy, but its true. Just one small human act of kindness can stop a suicide in many cases.
If we were to be honest about our society, we’d have to admit that we’re not exactly welcoming to the different or the people I call the misfits. And that’s a label I use to describe myself and I use it with pride.
Why do so many Americans self-medicate? Why don’t we face the truth about our capitalist dog-eat-dog society? There are so many misfits in our society who have nowhere to turn and no one to understand them.
They believe they are crazy when, in many cases, they are, in fact, far too sane for this world. They have this ‘crazy’ belief that maybe their maker didn’t put them on this earth to spend their entire lives working to eke out an existence for a society that treats people like so many disposable widgets - and to work to make a select few fantastically wealthy.
We see our society and its glorification of obscene wealth and violence and we wonder what we did to deserve a world such as this for ourselves and our children?
Many of us have worked very very hard to change that world for the better. For our efforts, many of us have been brutalized. After awhile, we get tired of fighting.
I am always reminded of Mitch Snyder. Does that name ring a bell? It should. Think back to the 1980s.
Mitch Snyder was a tireless advocate for the homeless in this country. He was very active at street level, helping people wherever he found them and marshaling others in the effort to help the homeless.
He also carried his advocacy to Capitol Hill and to many media outlets.
Noting that many of the homeless were Vietnam War veterans with substance abuse problems, he tried his hardest to hold up a mirror to America in the age of Reagan greed.
And America by and large didn’t want to look. People ridiculed Mitch Snyder.
In fact I can still remember all the times that Robert Novak jeered and sneered Snyder on CNN’s Crossfire.
And one day, it just got to be too much for Snyder and he hung himself in a homeless shelter over the Fourth of July holiday 1990.
And no one outside a small circle of friends really gave a damn. And America continued to pour its national treasure into war making and well-heeled financial types stepped over the homeless from Wall Street to Euclid Avenue.
At least Snyder has a Wikipedia page to let people know he was here and he did his damnednest.
I also remember a Channel 5 news item on a man who committed suicide back in the mid-1990s. If I remember correctly, he ran a bicycle repair shop and his wife had several children and she had just become pregnant with yet another one. Maybe they didn’t believe in contraception, I have no idea. But the poor guy killed himself.
And I remember the Channel 5 news crew talking to some people in the neighborhood and many of them basically said many of the same things the PD commenters said about the guy being a ‘coward’ and why should anyone feel sorry for him? I remember very well one guy said to the reporter “if you can’t hack it you need to pick up your marbles and go home.”
They may have forgotten about that man, but, because of those heartless comments, I never did.
Several years ago when living in Normal, Illinois, a few houses down from where I lived, a carpenter hung himself in his garage. He was a hard working man whose truck I had seen in his driveway all the time. From what I understand when I went to check it out on the police sheets (I was a reported then) he had failed to get a contract he had counted on to save his business and it was just too much for him.
And then the house and the truck was sold and all traces of this man disappeared from South University Street.
And then there was my cousin who was also dealing with both substance abuse and heat from the jackals he was buying drugs from. Seeing no way out, he also took his life.
His father, a hard working man who built the shelves for my bookstore, has never recovered from the blow.
And that’s part of why I posted all the comments from the PD page here. The PD page may disappear but I wanted to put the man’s brother’s comments here to, in some small way, memorialize a tortured soul whom we are all probably less for not knowing. I want someone to give a damn for this person. I want people to understand something very basic: YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE FROM DEPRESSION AND SUICIDE.
Is that clear? It doesn’t matter how rich or successful you are, how well you think you’re doing in the Matrix, someday it could happen to you or someone you love.
And if its someone you love, are you going to remain true to your conservative American code and tell that person that all they need is a kick in the ass and they need to stop being so selfish and pick themselves up by their own bootstraps and get their shit together?
Because if you do, I hope you’re as comfortable saying those things to a gravestone.
By the way Ms. Brett, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You may have saved some lives today.
3 responses so far ↓
Jill // March 9, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Keith, I’ve met people who truly have never known what it is to feel hopeless. I believe that those are the people who are most likely to say that people who commit suicide are cowardly. Heroism has nothing to do with it.
Thanks for this excellent post.
kegbot1 // March 10, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Jill — thanks. I wish more people understood. In many cases I think some people just find it ‘fun’ to jeer people they think are inferior for whatever reason.
K // March 10, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Of course they jeer and point and make monkey noises in general. They are terrified that they might do the same, given the right set of circumstances. In fact, I’d bet that the ones who point and hoot the most are the ones who are, regardless of what they realize, most likely to go down the same path.
It is not sadism that causes such a reaction. Why would it be? The dead are beyond pain and embarrassment and insecurity. It is Fear. Absolute terror and the realization that they could do the same.
It is whistling in the dark. Pity them in their terror.
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