So, I need to download some ____, and Spirit Prison seems as good a place as any. It's ugly ____ involving suicide, so if that's going to be upsetting, please stop reading.
I meet lots of interesting people boardgaming. That's a feature, not a bug. Some become friends.
One friend is a young guy named D. D's the same age as my oldest son -- 30ish. We met at a boardgame night as his church. We've been friends for several years, often playing Magic and Yu-gi-oh. The latter is his passion. We've also played D&D together with my two youngest sons for a couple of years. He's an odd guy, with maybe a touch of Asperger's. Or more like a couple of touches. He'll talk my ear off about the new deck he's constructed or his latest duels, but he's very guarded with his emotions. He's also one of the kindest and dependable folks I've ever met. If I had an emergency and needed another set of hands, he'd be on my short list to call.
At one D&D session at my house, D brought a guest who was interested in seeing how the game worked. Her name was A. She was about his age -- very pleasant and a little quiet. After watching, she expressed some interest in playing. I told D she was welcome to come hang out during our games and, if she was really interested, she'd be welcome to play. D told me that they'd been friends for about 10 years.
I continued to run into A every once in a while. D brought her to the boardgame pub where I hang out to play on a couple of occasions. She was always very pleasant but fairly quiet.
On Father's Day, I got a call from D. I hadn't expected to hear from him because I knew he was visiting his father. He was not his usual upbeat, breezy self. I asked him what was up, and he told me that A had died the day before. I asked him what had happened, and he explained that she had committed suicide. He'd just found out from a friend, and he didn't know anything more than that. He sounded overwhelmed and bewildered. We talked for a bit, then he said he needed to get back to watching a movie with his dad.
The next day, I came down with some kind of cold thing, which sent my cough from hell into overdrive. I was down for a few days. I didn't talk to D, but we texted back and forth a bit. He sent me the date and time for A's service. I knew he was starting a new job that week and he'd be busy, but he texted me photos of his new classroom. It was his first teaching job, and he was pretty excited.
Yesterday, I was finally back to feeling reasonably human. After work, I headed for the game pub for a bi-weekly session of Dragonfire with some friends. The gal in our group was L, the wife of one of owners. As we started to play, a friend of L's came in, grabbed a beer, and sat down with us. After a bit, it became clear that something was bothering the friend. I mean really bothering. She would start a conversation, then apologize for interrupting the game. We kept assuring her that she wasn't bothering us -- that we would always ____ about this and that as we played. We went through this cycle a few times, until she started to talk about having seen something that she couldn't get out of her head. It was a scene she kept playing over and over -- she just couldn't stop. And then she told us what she'd seen.
She works as a server in a nice little restaurant in a nice little suburb that sits right on Puget Sound. Several nights before, she'd been waiting tables on the outdoor patio, when she noticed a young couple having an argument at one of the tables. The loud, yelling kind of argument. She caught the woman's eye, and told us that she looked defeated -- absolutely done. At some point, the woman got up from the table and began running toward the railroad tracks and an oncoming train. The man started yelling at her to stop. Another ran toward her to stop her. But she reached the tracks, laid down, and extended her head over the near rail. The man arrived a second too late. He began to scream that he was covered in blood.
I don't think I can describe the face of L's friend as she told this story. She kept saying how bad she felt for the man and other customers. She kept saying that she'd be fine. And she kept saying that she couldn't get the image out of her head -- the defeated look of the woman just before she ran for the tracks. She wasn't fine. She was in shock.
Now, L is a trauma survivor -- she was almost fatally injured in a mass shooting several years back. So, lots of trauma therapy. She also volunteers for a crisis hot line. So, she was very good with her friend. The friend finally said she didn't want to interrupt any more and abruptly headed for the door. L chased her down, gave her a huge hug, and talked to her some more. I think her friend will have some very good support, and some encouragement to get some therapy.
As I drove home that night, I was still haunted by the friend's face as she told her story. Tears would well up in her eyes, but she said she hadn't cried. She was haunted by what she had seen, and in pain over how to even feel about it. I thought how odd it was that I'd been touched by two suicides in 10 days or so, and thought about all the other people who had been touched: my friend D, L's friend, the restaurant diners and employees who witnessed the suicide. L had said that suicide sends out lots of ripples, and I realized what she meant.
Then I realized, it wasn't two suicides in 10 days. It was two suicides the same weekend. Actually, two suicides the same day. And then I realized that it was probably only one suicide. And maybe I hadn't heard from D for a few days, not because he was busy, but because he was struggling with the horror of how his close friend had ended her life. Up until that point, I knew in my head that A was gone. But only after hearing L's friend describe what had happened did the sheer awfulness of what had happened hit home.
I got home and texted D -- hey, how are you doing? He texted right back: not so good. I arranged to pick him up after work the next day, and we went to a big park and took a long walk. I told him of what I had learned the night before (not in gory detail) and he confirmed that the woman had been A. He was feeling bad that he'd been out of town at his dad's the night it happened. He knew, in his head, that he couldn't have done anything. But he couldn't stop wondering.
We walked and talked. About Yu-gi-oh. About A. About video games. About A. She had a ____ life in lots of ways. At the end, too many bad things ganged up on her and she was "just done." He's good sometimes. He's down sometimes. He said, "I've accepted that everyone is going to die sometime. But they're not supposed to die when they're 33." He's trying to provide support for the rest of their circle of friends, while at the same time struggling to make some kind of sense -- any kind of sense -- about what happened to his friend.
He's got a pretty good support network, especially a pastor he is close with and cousin who lives in the area. I'm less worried about him after spending a few hours talking. He'll get through, but I suspect there are going to be scars.
That's all I've got. I'm okay. I'm haunted by the face of L's friend and by the pain on D's face as he tries to process it all. I imagine how lost and hopeless A must have felt in those last seconds. I've never lost a friend or family member to suicide. And I hope I never do -- even though I wasn't close to A, her death has affected me more than I'd ever expected. I have just a little taste of how devastating it must be to lose someone close to suicide.
I wish I had gotten to know A just a little better. I wish she'd had a chance to play D&D with us. I think she'd have liked that.
And, uh, be kind to yourself everybody. And to someone else if you have kindness to spare. Especially if maybe the someone else is close to feeling just done.
_________________ “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
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