Death of a Classmate

Yesterday, while standing in the driveway under the trees, trying to stay cool on a hot, summer day and talking with my father on a cell phone to wish him a happy father's day, my father informed me that a former schoolmate of mine, David Mayberry, had committed suicide recently.

I hadn't seen David in years but had heard about some of his early adult behavioural trends from fellow classmates, behaviours he may or may not have continued in the last few years. I know he had worked in the restaurant industry and was employed in the field by a classmate's ex-husband and/or her ex-husband's twin brother.

Would he want to be remembered? I don't know. He may have left a suicide note for family/friends to explain the decision for killing himself but that note, if it exists, will never fully explain his thinking or record the history of his life up to the decision.

I once read that all intelligent people have pondered ending their lives. I'm not sure what that means, exactly. I suppose we all know we're mortal and that one day we'll die, but before that moment we may live in agony and have no control over our faculties. At that point, from a selfish viewpoint, we may wish we were dead to prevent being a burden upon others while suffering unimaginable pain. I've certainly thought about those possibilities.

But that's more in the line of classical physical pain and suffering. What about suffering not attributed to skeletal, muscle, joint, or [non-brain] organ pain? It's a question right in line with the research I've recently conducted about the ego, the self and consciousness.

I didn't know David well. The few memories I have of him involve parties where alcohol consumption or other recreational intoxicants were available. I vaguely recollect seeing him in classroom hallways, the gymnasium and other places where we spent our daytime with schoolmates. I can't fully imagine what it was like to be David, although I could see signs of social misbehaviour starting in our "junior high" years (school grades 5 through 9).

Because I am not a medical expert, I do not have the trained perspective to analyze David's behaviour and attribute his tendencies to a particular disease or syndrome.

But I'm not here to analyze David's behaviour. Let the dead have their eternal rest free from comments by the living - David's not here to rebut my observations so anything I say about him is simply gossip and hearsay.

Instead, I want to continue my observation about the ego, the self and consciousness as seen through my eyes. David's as close to knowing a person who committed suicide as I've gotten (or may get) so I'll see myself as if I had some of David's characteristics during the next paragraph. Here goes...

"Who am I? Am I the person who's supposed to continue on the legacy of my family? Why has/have my sibling(s) succeeded in life, according to my family's and their society's definition of success, while I have not? Does that say anything about me? Do have I any friends who really care about me? If the only way I can ever try to fit in is to take legal prescription drugs, then what happens to the 'me' who really exists without taking the drugs? Why can't I be the real me and have a life of my own that provides some basic level of comfort (food, clothing, shelter, etc.)? Is there anything I can look forward to, anyone who gives me a reason to enjoy the next moment, who wants me as I am, not as modern medicine can make me to be? I can't undo all the mistakes of the past, all the illegal drugs I took to dampen my mental anguish which have reshaped me into someone who fits in even less than before. I have thought about suicide many, many times and put it off - are there any more excuses not to kill myself today? Why do I exist if I'm such a pain to myself and others? I still know how to have fun, don't I? Don't I make people laugh as well as cry? What's the point of laughing? Why does any of this matter? I'm still myself. I'm not going to change. It's never going to get better. I'll probably get worse. I'm going to die anyway so what does it matter which day I die or whether I kill myself or die 'naturally' of some disease? Better take the chance to kill myself now before I won't be able to anymore."

For all I know, David had long ago found a way to fully adjust to living and succeeding in society, happened to be dying of a disease and couldn't afford the insurance to keep himself healthy. Many possibilities exist. I wrote the last paragraph only as an exercise to see what a "self" thinks about before ending the existence of one's self physically.

I'm a not a regular participant in public, social, religious ceremonies but I do think about how one's self (or myself) finds comfort and relaxation during such ceremonies, such as replacing the belief of the ultimate power of one's self with that of another (a god, gods, nature, humanity/living things as a whole, nothing, everything, etc.). In some parts of society, we are moving away from a set of doctrinal religious beliefs and practices into one where the only thing stronger than one's self is everything/everyone else we encounter physically. During this transition, some people cling to prior belief sets because it's easy for them to grasp the old concepts taught to them by their ancestors. Others will easily move on to the next trend. Some will remain confused and move back-and-forth their whole lives.

Our belief of self changes as we grow up, rapidly forming in our early years and settling down to one form or another as we mature. A book I'm reading, "Selfless Insight," looks at brain processing of self-vs-other from both a purely biological perspective and a Zen (i.e., religious) one - I'm reading the book for the brain research and going through the Zen parts with my normal skepticism. According to brain structure studies referenced in the book, we carry a genetically-inherited duality of self-and-other to help us survive in the world. We see the world from a self perspective while also understanding that other selves see us from their self perspectives. We learn that we are not alone.

I don't know what David thought before he killed himself. He may have felt lonely. In any case, he was not alone - he existed in a word full of selves dealing with other selves. I would like to have known about his brain's balance between understanding one's self versus understanding one's self in regards to the "other" (one's non-self). Some call suicide a selfish act and in fact, that's true - one is acting upon one's physical self - but the act may actually be a sense of killing the "other" within you, thinking it's the only way to keep the "self." If so, brain research may one day make drugs or surgery possible to undo such a self/other imbalance and erase previous thoughts that keep that imbalance going, a sort of reset button for feelings of doubt and guilt, even those not erased for one who supplicates one's self to one's higher being.