I found out today that a kid I went to high school with, and whom I’d seen now and again since we graduated, killed himself two days ago.
This is actually the second death of a classmate I’ve learned of in as many months. The first one succumbed to a long bout of alcohol abuse, apparently. This latest death was a more blatant suicide, which is sad in and of itself. But it becomes unbearably sad when you learn he leaves four children behind, including seven-month-old twins.
When I was in high school, I had a friend who was suicidal for a while after his girlfriend killed herself by driving her car into a tree (he’d gone to her house to see her and was greeted by the police, who asked him to come identify what was left of the body). I didn’t have any idea what he was going through, or what he’d been through. And I couldn’t understand the depth of his despair. Likewise, I don’t have any clue what was going on in the life of this most recent suicide. But I do have a very, very faint inkling of just how miserable, or deluded, or sick he would have had to have been to want to never see his children again. It’s difficult for me to imagine a scenario in which Ava would be better off without me in the world. More accurately, it’s difficult to imagine never seeing her again, and it’s impossible to understand why I would ever want to put Ava through the forever pain of dealing with the fact that I’d decided to end my life rather than be with her.
Occasions like this remind me how savage and cruel life can be.