12 thoughts on “Inconsiderate”

1. I was coming back from visiting a friend and was riding amtrack simply cuz there is a station right next to where I live.

   My train was delayed by almost 7 hours. I almost had to sleep on a friggen bench.

   To quote a friend “Doug is fine, He was just delayed because they had to clean a dead guy off the front of the train.”

   Another friend said “Really?” thinking my other bud was just buying time so that noone was worried. and the first friend said.

   “Well, I hope they cleaned the dead guy off of the train first.”

2. Someone can correct me on this, but my understanding is that suicide is about as common as death in an automobile accident, and perhaps some portion of auto accidents are a form of suicide. There is a huge social stigma associated with suicide that burdens surviving family members, even though major mental illness, which we believe these days to be an organic brain disorder, is a major factor, and there are a lot more surviving family members dealing with this than you may realize.

   Yeah, I too find the whole incident to be somewhat humorous that the guy lived, and I am not offended by the discussion surrounding this. But let me put it this way. If the guy whose life was saved by Mrs. McCormack’s Dodge was a family member, I would ask the McCormacks to go to the nearest Chrysler dealership and pick out whatever car they wanted.

3. Paul, I remember reading many years ago that many single car auto accidents were quite possibly suicides but it’s hard to prove one way or the other. Here’s a link to an article that discusses the topic. A quick Google search will turn up many such links.

   One of the best descriptions of suicide that I’ve ever heard is “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” There is a huge exception in my mind for people with terminal illnesses and/or severe cronic pain with little likelihood of recovery.

   Over the years, I’ve known 3 people who committed suicide. The worst was the first one, my best friend’s older sister. She killed herself when she was in her mid-20s and I was 18. She was a beautiful young woman with three young daughters. It tore her family apart, especially when some scumbag reporter got his hands on her suicide note and published it. The AP picked up the story and her family was tormented by hateful mail from all over the country.

4. My brother committed suicide last year. It was clear in retrospect he had been planning to do it for a long time — he had been socking no money away for retirement, and had run up considerable debts (mostly unpaid taxes). Chronic and refractory alcohol use didn’t help. I wouldn’t exactly call his problems temporary; he just allowed his life to become progressively more screwed up and escaped the mess with gunshot.

5. No way for a man to die. A parachute not opening – that’s the way to die, getting caught in a combine, having your nuts bit off by a Laplander. That’s the way l want to go.

6. Note to self: keep minimum safe distance from BDavis at all times.

7. My brother committed suicide last year.

   Paul, I’m very sorry to hear that. I’ve never had to experience it in my own family, and hope I never do.

8. No way for a man to die. A parachute not opening – that’s the way to die, getting caught in a combine, having your nuts bit off by a Laplander. That’s the way l want to go.

   Personally, I’d like to die in bed at age 100 – shot by the jealous husband of a 25 year old hottie.

9. Thanks, Rand. It wasn’t nearly as bad for us as it might sound, since he had maintained a distance from the rest of the family for a long time.

   The circumstances of his death are a good illustration of the selfishness of suicide. He imposed costs on others — in the case of the owner of the house he rented, very considerable repair costs — and escaped paying them via death. We ended up determining the value of his estate was less than the accumulated liabilities, and no one (family or creditors) volunteered to be executor. It’s still in limbo, and will likely never be formally closed out.

   The folks he worked with at the NASM were most kind in the aftermath, something we greatly appreciated.

10. There was a classmate back in high school that sat right next to me in a aerospace & aviation class that killed himself. He was always the class clown, cutting up, and getting into trouble. I think he always got into fights with his parents and his parents were going through a divorce as well. So, he sat on the edge of his parent’s bed and shot himself. It was disturbing for me to have someone who was there one moment and then just gone the next.

    My ex-wife is an RN nurse and says a lot people come into the intensive care units who have survived self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head. I remember one time, in only the way a nurse could, she matter of factly said, “Remember, if your gonna shoot yourself hold the gun to your temple. Don’t hold it under your chin.” I said, “Not that I’ll need it but yea, that sounds like practical advice.”

11. Paul D.:

    Major mental illness is also more prevalent than people think, and by major mental illness, I am talking about hearing voices in your head level of mental illness.

    There is also a body of perhaps anecdotal knowledge of people that have been rescued from suicide or failed in suicide attempts that if it isn’t a “voice in their head ordering them to do it”, there is some powerful impulse or compulsion involved occuring at an instant, and once someone gets over that instant, there is a feeling “omigosh, what have done?”

    Again, there is a lot of stigma associated with that and a feeling that people should somehow just get ahold of themselves, but current scientific thinking is that there is some underlying organic cause, and for a person to suffer from this is as much as a person has diabetes or a person has M.S.

    Also, where we think that arrow of causation is from letting your life go downhill and then coming apart from the mental strain, the pattern of being “difficult” with family members and others in a position to help, and the pattern of letting one’s life go downhill is characteristic of the life stories of many with major mental illness, where the life decline is a kind of slow-motion episode of that illness.

    What I am also trying to say is that the sense of self-preservation is so strong, and for a good evolutionary reason, that even if any of us were to entertain the notion of suicide out of grief, anger, or despair, it is nigh impossible to actually carry it out on account of the self-preservation instinct. On the other hand, there is perhaps some survival-of-the-tribe advantage to some form of alturism or self sacrifice, feeding yourself to the leopard so that your kin can escape, and perhaps suicide is a maladaptive application of that instinct. The impulse to suicide would have been purged from the gene pool if there wasn’t some indirect advantage for something else tied to it.

    I am sorry to hear about your loss.

12. I’m not sure how to put this but… My sister went through a long spell of crazy. She would try to kill herself about twice a year. Ending up in either a psyc ward or ICU. I never understood it but she always pulled through. Mostly because she kept thinking of her pets. She told me once that she was watching the blood drain from her arm and though, “Who is going to take care of the dogs? I can’t just force someone else to take care of them.” One life saved by midwest work ethics? I don’t know. Anyway they finally figured out that she was schizoid and got her on some drugs that seem to work… although about the same time a friend gave her a horse. She dang well knows that poor thing would be dead in a week if I tried to keep it alive. “Can’t kill myself today, got to feed the horse” works for me.

Comments are closed.