Assignment America: Secrets of the dead

NEW YORK, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- When someone kills himself, as my friend did last week, everyone becomes a cheap philosopher. The survivors feel they've been cheated somehow and that some sort of words are needed that will restore the universe to its rightful order -- even if that means blaming the dead.

And so we hear that suicide is a coward's act, that suicide is unfair to the loved ones left behind, that suicide is an act of selfish revenge, or -- if softer explanations are desired -- that we can never know the real reasons (not always true -- I pretty much know the reasons), or -- if blaming yourself feels better than blaming the dead -- that suicide is a failure of those who loved him, that it's evidence of a tortured misunderstood soul.

For many, suicide is simply embarrassing. Something about it makes you want to avert your eyes -- including the people who are paid NOT to avert their eyes. My friend's hometown newspaper, which had celebrated his exploits in life, chose to be silent about his death. A reporter explained that the policy of the paper is to ignore suicides unless they're of such monumental news importance that it's impossible NOT to report them.

How journalism has changed. There was a time when it was assumed that a suicide is EXACTLY the kind of news story that the public wants to read about. Among other things, it's a ready-made mystery story.

Here's Lafcadio Hearn writing about suicide in the New Orleans Item in 1880:

"The American reporter almost always details the circumstance of the act itself in some such manner as:

"'Placed a small silver-mounted Smith & Wesson to his temple and fired';

"Or, 'The weapon used by the deceased was a fine Lafancheux. The ball ranged downward through the heart and death was instantaneous';

"Or, 'Beside the deceased was lying a Webbly revolver, about .48 calibre';

"Or, 'The unfortunate man placed the muzzle of a navy Colt in his mouth and fired';

"Or, 'The revolver used was a fine English Trantor.'

"Yet odd as it may appear to give such importance to the description of the weapon used, it is really a matter in which the public are interested, and the reporter is quite right in reporting it as he does. People who hear of a man shooting himself, and who know anything about revolvers or pistols, feel considerable curiosity to know whether the act of self-destruction was committed with 'a small single-barreled steel pistol' or 'a pistol of the bulldog pattern,' or 'a Derringer' or a 'Remington revolver,' etc. For a country in which so large a number of people own firearms, each man of experience has a special affection for some one variety of revolver or pistol, respect for several others, and contempt for a large number. The good taste of the man who shoots himself with a $75 Trantor will be appreciated years after his death; the memory of a man who uses a Colt will be respected; the foreigner who uses a French or Belgian revolver to kill himself will be spoken of with an approving nod; but the wretch who shoots himself with 'a small single-barreled steel pistol' or a $4 revolver bought for $1 at a pawn shop, will soon be forgotten, or even if remembered will be spoken of with contempt. There is an aristocracy even in suicide. And there is an artistic taste in the choice of weapons."

In other words, no two suicides are alike. Each has its particular meaning, determined by the inner drama of the actor.

My friend chose hanging. That pretty much destroys the "cry for help" theory, since a secure noose and a sturdy beam all but rule out last-minute interventions. I think it also rules out the "cowardly act" theory, except in the most general sense, because that last moment is bound to be full of real terror and only an act of will can overcome it. You don't have to call it a brave act, but you can at least admit it takes intestinal fortitude.

Suicide is also, alas, a mundane act in many respects. There are about 30,000 successful American suicides per year, and that number hardly varies from year to year. (It trends slightly upward to keep pace with population increases.) It's the eighth-leading cause of death and is so common that you have to add together all the homicides AND deaths from AIDS to equal that number.

There's an urban myth that people tend to kill themselves during the holidays. Actually, statistics show the reverse. December is the least suicidal month, with the highest being April, June and July. My friend killed himself during low season.

According to the Church of Euthanasia, the safest and most surefire method of killing yourself is to inhale pure helium for 15 minutes -- yet this is perhaps the LEAST popular method. Perhaps it lacks drama. Perhaps, if we're honest about all the hundreds of reasons people commit suicide, it's important to many that the act itself be spectacular.

In the United States, most people kill themselves with guns (57 percent), although this is not true in the rest of the world. In the United Kingdom poison is No. 1. In Australia it's hanging. In Israel and parts of Asia it's burning, usually by dousing yourself with gasoline or kerosene. Other popular forms are inhaling motor vehicle exhaust, cutting or stabbing yourself, jumping, drowning, and -- way down the list -- electrocution or throwing yourself in front of a train.

All of these methods are messy. All would seem to indicate a desire to make certain. The only one that can be dismissed as a possible "gesture" or "cry for help" is cutting the wrists. Everything else is a clear decisive message that this person chose death over life.

If we're going to be honest about this, we have to admit that there ARE people who freely choose death over life. They're not insane. They may not even be depressed. It can't all be ascribed to a single rash moment when they made a mistake.

There is a moment that the eastern Orthodox mystics talk about -- when a man gets to "the end of himself." It's a moment when the man understands emotionally that the words of Solomon are true and that everything in the world is vain and without meaning. In the annals of the church, this is the moment when the person turns to God.

But for the moment to have any meaning, is also has to be the time when the man considers his own death. The mystics see suicide at this moment as inevitable. It's not considered a valid conversion unless the man realizes that, without God, he would kill himself. He either kills his physical self or he kills his mental self, but the death has to happen. One way leads to sainthood, the other to being forgotten entirely. This is why the Eastern Church tends to go easier on suicides than the West. It's two sides of the same coin.

My friend got to the end of himself. Frustrated professionally, frustrated in love, with many things taken away from him that should have been rightfully his, he saw the world as cruel and cold. He was correct. He chose to simply end the warfare rather than confront what must have seemed like a new warfare in the spirit.

To say that the moment of suicide is a supremely spiritual point in a man's life -- perhaps the most important one -- is to give the lie to all the platitudes spoken at funerals and the tut-tutting of onlookers afterwards. To see the suicide as pathetic, as most people do, is to fail to confront the idea that he may have reached a moment in time in which his mind, far from being clouded, was more clear than it had ever been.

I agree with Lafcadio Hearn, that suicide can have meaning and dignity, in spite of its tragedy. Brave but selfish acts, in any other context, would be applauded by the world. Perhaps the reason the world averts its eyes in this case is that the real reasons are too hard to bear. For us, not for him.

(John Bloom writes a number of columns for UPI and may be contacted at [email protected] or through his Web site at joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221.)