Suicide Ain't Painless

A month back friend and fine writer Starshine Roshell wrote a column partially based on info she requested from people she knew. Our job was to discuss couples in which you like one person and then can't stand the other half. Turns out part of my response made it to her finished article:

"In my experience, it’s best not to tell someone they married a loser,” said a guy whose sister — sadly — did just that. “He’s a blowhard know-nothing and a self-centered jerk whose favorite response in an argument is, ‘Duh!’”

Well, self-centered jerk isn't half of it. Half way through our Paris vacation, Amy and I get an email from my other brother-in-law--it says the guy I bitched about above is dead. We at first can't believe it, but call New Jersey to find out he's not just dead--he's shot himself in the basement and my poor sister, his wife, found him, too. So since December 2006 she's lost her mother, father, and husband.

But only one of them decided to do it himself.

I know you're not supposed to talk ill of the dead, but my only response is, What the fuck!? He wasn't a depressive sort, he left no note, and while the most recent job he'd been on (he ran his own construction company) was miserable according to my sister, I would assume one great joy of picking up contract after contract is you know none of them are forever. He didn't have any pressing huge health problems. We keep wondering if there's some surprise shoe waiting to drop somewhere--gambling debts he couldn't pay, who knows.

What I do know is my sister is going through hell. My bitter joke is that if my dad was still alive he'd say, "If I knew he was going to do this I'd shoot him myself."

Of course my guilt is all mixed into it, too, as we were an ocean away and it was too financially ridiculous to head back to New Jersey and cut the vacation short. Especially given my sister would be attended to by so many--her husband's kids and grandkids from his first marriage, her huge network of friends and coworkers who all showed up for the funerals for our mom and dad, even when they didn't know them at all. Sure enough, as my other brother-in-law put it, you'd think the pope had died, so many people came to the funeral home and funeral. So I'm saving my money and time to see my sister soon, and see just her, be there for here, whatever that can mean after something so senseless.