Passing

It is a slightly surreal event when someone you have known takes their own life. Suicide seems relegated to television shows and the newspaper articles than something that actually happens in reality. Much like murder, kidnapping or robbery even.

This recent Wednesday, news of a friend's passing came to me. He wasn't ever really close to me but like everyone else who received the news there was that emotionless state of grasping the concept - inappropriately called shock. Everyone had different reactions after that to deal with the news. I went into action mode, preferring to call people and arrange some kind of ceremony to mark his passing. Others became curious to discover the details of his passing. Some just became quiet and reflective.

After the initial shock reactions the world seemed to change perspectives.

For me, I kept thinking - it finally got someone. I have many friends who are unfortunately sad people. I sometimes wonder about the eternity if you added up all the hours of loneliness and misery they all endured. But there are differing levels of depression. Many just remain melancholy. Some spend nights crying, unable to move or think. Some go as far as to inflict hurt upon themselves. But that's always as far as it has gone. It finally got someone - all the safety nets failed.

I remember the boy from some aspects. He was a deep philosopher, a devout atheist, that made for hours of debate amongst the two of us. Our best conversation revolved around an unknown dead chicken on some unknown desert island and the morality of having sex with it since the act would affect no one or be known by anyone. He held strongly to his own doctrine of politics and values and I believe in his own efforts tried to do what was right in the world. The rather complex thought processes and depth of person were often masked by a jokeful, mischievous nature of cynic and funny antics. For all that, he was a very very lonely man as became evident as each of us met and tried to identify who had actually been close to him. No one I spoke to seemed to be able to really say.

I keep wondering maybe what it was like in those last weeks and those last hours for him... how absolutely dreadful it might have been. I think all of us, know in some small measure what it might have been like. I wonder about how worried his mother was. I wonder how worried his friends were. I wonder what it was like for the first person to find him...

The week was a paradigm shift for me. A sobering experience someone said. It's true. Things in life that mean things and those that mean nothing came out in sharper contrast.

Old friends, some who haven't met in a year or more reached out, contacted each other and came together. It seemed wrong, yet, it was right. On Friday, we met after dinner for a moment of silence. We said no prayer because there was no god he would have ascribed to, at least as far as we knew. We recounted the highlights of our memory of him. They were few and ragged sort of memories. It made you realise how tattered and patched the past actually becomes.

Then we went to catch up, talk and remember. We should always remember.