Why did you do it Dan?  I didn’t know you that well, but I knew you well enough to think you were okay, a good guy.   You politely smiled whenever we greeted one another and you seemed to have a certain passion for life, but now that you’re gone it’s quite apparent it was all a mask.

“How you doing Dan?” I said, and you said you were fine, but you weren’t fine.  You went off and killed yourself.  You didn’t even give anyone a chance to help.  And now your gone, nothing left for anyone to help.

I’m angry, I’m sad, I’m upset by your sudden departure.  Your family is affected, my son is affected, my family is affected, the school is affected, our church is affected, our community is affected, the world is affected….., I’m affected!  What you held in silence has been vomited out in a grand public display on everyone around you whose life you have touched.

I’m not going to write you a warmhearted eulogy about how much you’ll be missed, because you left a crater in the landscape at the school where you taught and the church where you attended.  Like someone tossed a grenade in the room  then cowardly apologized in a note to everyone you blew up for the gaping hole you left in their life.

Many thoughts are being thought right now, but nobody will speak them.  There’s a cultural etiquette in how we are supposed to discuss such things.  We’re supposed to be bigger than that, encouraging, comforting, quietly consoling one another for the loss, politically correct in how we discuss it.  Few will actually express how they actually feel.  So I’m speaking it in written form.  SHOUTING AT YOU DAN!   Perhaps I shouldn’t.

They offered counselors at the school, but how many actually spoke to them?  We have such a refined formula on how we are supposed to handle such things these day by the well-intentioned psychological intelligencia, and yet, annually, the number of suicides grow.  Just a statistic really, unless you actually happen to know one of them.

Your funeral will be well attended and the Pastor will speak well of you and we’ll all try to comfort one another with platitudes about what a great guy you were, but the anger will be forced and trampled down into the deep recesses of our soul, only to surface once in awhile causing us to feel guilty about it for feeling that way and then stuff it down again.

You short circuited the process, you cut short the gift of life to avoid the pain and discomfort of growth.   Did you ever stop and think for a moment, just a moment,  that perhaps wherever you may be going won’t be better, and perhaps you won’t finally find rest, but something worse.

From all accounts, you were a wonderful teacher, a good coach, a caring person, but you didn’t tell anyone you were hurting, silently fighting some hidden pain…., darkness.  What are we supposed to do with that?

It hurts Dan! Life hurts sometimes, but at least you’re alive.  Suicide is permanent!  At least when your alive there is hope!

I apologize to my readers for the harsh response, but perhaps what those considering suicide right now need is not warm sentiments about how much you will be missed, but a stiff rebuke like the cardiac arrest patient lying silently on the ambulance gurney needs the electric shock from the defibrillator paddles to restore their heart to beat again.

Good bye Dan!  Though I didn’t know you that well, I will miss you.