First, a word about this story. I wrote it about three years ago, imagining my own suicide. This is not something I plan to do any time soon, or any time at all. It is simply a kind of speculative autobiography which, though one of my more depressing works of short fiction, was just the thing to slap some sense into me.
I do not know Uncle George. I only saw his memorial today on the Granville Bridge as I was walking home. The memorial of flowers and pictures is on the railing by the sidewalk at the highest point over the water. I really hope he didn't suffer. The two photos depict an elderly man, at least well into his seventies. He has a kind face and I suspect that he was deeply loved and perhaps didn't know it. I don't know if he is poor but I imagine that he is and likely single, because single older men who are also poor are the most likely candidates for suicide.
I don't know how much contact Uncle George had with friends or family, nor the state of his physical and mental health. I do suspect he must have suffered terribly. Sometimes suicide becomes inevitable, if the person who kills himself is sufficiently determined and has worked out a plan and has completely dedicated himself to the task. This doesn't mean that at the point of performing the act that there is no regret.
I do believe that there are preventative measures that can be taken that could save many lives. One is that our bridges be made, in effect, suicide proof, impossible to jump off of. I also see this as a challenge for all of us to reconfigure our relationships and reinvent our sense of community. Even though many of us have busy lives we all have a human obligation to open our lives to one another, especially to the most vulnerable among us. They could be family members or friends or fond acquaintances. They might also be complete strangers.
When people whom we know are poor and single and we know this about them we have an obligation to invite them into our lives, even if they might be difficult. And if they are so difficult as to be unsafe to be around or beyond our capacity to support then we still must do everything we can to help connect them to services and agencies that can offer good clinical and therapeutic support while ourselves still remaining in the picture.
Really the help and support we can offer one another is very simple. It is to make ourselves available and present and to be particularly aware of the poor and lonely among us during Christmas and also their birthdays. This is not going to be easy to do in some cases. Some people are very private, proud and because of shame secretive about their sufferings. Many of us have closets that teem, welter and fester with silent screams. I think that by simply being aware of this and to persist in reaching out will be more than enough to help us raise one another up and it could even help save a few lives.
There is no need for any of us to turn into amateur social workers. But we can, if we are willing, learn to care, and acquire the courage to reach out to others. We all have the capacity to become healers.
ONE PERFECT ROSE
I was one of the few who heard right away. There is a very good bush telegraph in our building. I was only surprised, and saddened, that it wasn’t posted in the elevator, or anywhere else in the building where you and I were neighbours for seven years. We only really got to visit once, last year, when you asked me out for coffee. I know I'm not that special. Two other patients I can't remember now joined us. I was so surprised that day to see you in the dining room during afternoon coffee break. You sat alone at a table with a cup of coffee and one of their delicious homemade cookies. I thought at first that you were a patient like me. You worked there. You smiled kindly when you saw me just as you have often greeted me in the building. I have never apologized for being often too miserable, too hobbled by depression and self-loathing, to return your warmth.
I am the first to arrive. It is a magnificent church with its white central tower and the expansive wood-panelled space lit by soaring and graceful diamond-leaded windows. You could not have chosen a better place to be remembered in. This place is filled with arches. I must be twenty minutes early. I hope you don’t mind the dress I am wearing. It is my best, a magenta wool suit. Hardly an appropriate colour for the occasion but I have nothing black. Perhaps a bit garish? I somehow think that this is the way you would want it. This is certainly a solemn, a very sad occasion. But can it not be also joyous? I know that when it’s my turn I want to be remembered with joy. I want them to throw me a party, a good old-fashioned Irish Wake, just like the one we had for my husband when he was felled by an early heart attack twenty-odd years ago, where there will be singing and dancing and drinking and laughter and fond remembrances and hearty jests and toasts raised in my name. That’s the way to be remembered. A couple of mourners have just filed in. They don’t look like they’d be members of your family though I have no idea about your family or friends. You did say last year when I asked how you were celebrating Christmas that you have no family and that you would likely spend it working where you can at least be present for the patients. Very noble and kind, even if you were being paid for it.
Just this Christmas I thought of you, and knew they would be fine because you were there with them. Maybe I might have asked you along for Christmas dinner at my sister’s but I couldn’t imagine you accepting and really what would we all talk about? And how would I possibly explain you to them? Well, you were good enough to finish your shift before going off to hang yourself. That is how you died, just three days ago. I read in the newspaper how someone early on Boxing Day morning, while it was still dark, was out for an early jog to run off his Christmas dinner, just by the water in that complex of condominium towers near where we live. There is a tree overhanging the water where you were found, swaying from the branch hanging there, bait for the crows. I hope they left your eyes alone. Crows always attack the eyes first. Why?
Why didn’t you say something? To anyone? Or maybe you did and no one heard you, we’re all so caught up with our own worries, you know. But to hang yourself at Christmas. I thought you were religious. Do you know what happens to people who kill themselves? Listen, I grew up Roman Catholic, and it was only recently when they started giving rites to suicides. You were always alone. You surely must have had friends? Even one? Why not me or anyone else in our building? We’re not worthy of you? But, no, you never invited anyone out for so much as a cup of coffee. We never invited you anywhere either. You might have asked, or simply tagged along. You would have been welcome. To me anyway, I don’t know about any of the others. They always judged you. Oh there goes Mr. Holy-Holy-Holy who’s just too good for any of us here, I heard Mike say, more than once to me in the elevator. That was just before he was hospitalized. You pushed with management to have a memorial done for him by tenants. I suppose he was there to greet you?
Well, what did you expect? You always smiled so kindly at us and there you were working your shift with ever an available ear and a kind smile, and a presence of loving support. I asked management once about why you were such a snob, of why you would never attend our special dinners we had in the building for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Well, okay, after Thanksgiving and after Christmas, and maybe it wasn’t good enough for you because you had nowhere to go on those days and the rest of us did. You could have said something. But you did and we still didn’t hear you crying.
In and out of the building, every day, on your way to and from work and sometimes we were your clients, six of us anyway having each of us stayed where you work for you to administer care to. Oh, but you were the best, you were like three psychiatrists in one and you at least seemed to care. How could you do this to us! Don’t you know that you were wanted? Needed? That we could only give you, offer you what we could, but how can you give to someone who doesn’t want, who doesn’t need? Or whose need is such a gaping, raw and running sore that he dare not reveal it anywhere anytime to anyone?
The priest is delivering your eulogy. Not many people have showed up here to say goodbye. There might be ten at the most. Here, let me count them. One…two…three…More than ten. Fourteen. Why only fourteen? Where is your family? None of these people look related to you. Are any of them your friends? The priest says that you were a local legend, a tireless advocate and defender of the poor, of the abused and mistreated, that your work in the mental health field will leave an undying legacy. Undying. Ha! Is he trying to be funny, or what! So you went to this church for a few years. You were misunderstood. People didn’t know how to take you. They would spurn your desire to reach out in friendship, but you always seemed to be offering to people friendship. And they didn’t want it? Then what, pray tell, did we want? Yes, I know you were an artist, and a damn good one, too. I suppose now all the art collectors and wheeler-dealers are soon going to swarm like buzzards and flies around your cooling corpse to see how much they can sell your art for. What? You’ve donated it to all, all your paintings to the organization that runs our building? For their overseas development and local projects to build more housing to end homelessness. Man, you were a saint, now, weren’t you?
I seem to be the only one here who is crying. Didn’t any of these people here love you? And what am I going to do with this rose here? I thought this was going to be a funeral, but it’s a memorial instead. Well, we’re told that’s what you requested. Now where the hell am I going to put this rose? Do you know how much I paid for this flower? I’m not rich, you know. Like you, I have to live in government subsidized housing. Whatever am I going to do with this rose, this beautiful, red, perfect rose that I was going to place on your casket? I’d better shut up now, they can hear me bawling. I didn’t know I could be so loud. I really ought to be discreet, to be quiet, like a cultured lady, and what could be more cultured here than this perfect rose that dangles like a bleeding metaphor from my left hand. Bleeding metaphor. You didn’t know that I was a poet, did you. That I write, and that I write well? When I get home I am going to write a poem about you, in your honour, and I will read it aloud at the memorial we are going to have in our building. We are having the memorial because I am going to organize it. I will see that you are properly remembered. People do like you, you know. We love you. You did not have to do what you did.
It’s going to be like an Irish wake. Like one, but not the real goods, I’m afraid. They don’t allow alcohol in the community living room of our building. But afterward, I’ll invite whoever will come up into my little apartment, because I have squirrelled away a nice big bottle of Johnny Walker. Not exactly Irish but it will have to do. And I will send you off the way we sent off Malcolm, all seated or standing, telling stories about what a great guy he was, about the time he rescued that little dog from the house fire over on Dumfries Street. Of how children really loved him. We never got to have kids together, Mac and I. It was already too late and I don’t think I’d ever be a fit mother. Not after everything that happened after his dying and all, with the depression, the hospitalization the sui…Wait a minute, I’m not supposed to be thinking of that. I didn’t try to hang myself. I used pills. They got me just in time. Then I tried again, then a third time and…Thank God it’s been a few years since I’ve even thought of it. I still don’t like walking over bridges. It’s the temptation to jump. I always go by bus, and then maybe do a little bit of a walk after, just for some exercise. You used to, I remember, enjoy walking on the bridge. Were you ever tempted to jump?
Malcolm was a good husband, at times a great husband. Ten years together and he never cheated, never hit me, never even raised his voice at me. We went everywhere together. We were soulmates. We were in love. You might have been a worthy successor, had I felt worthy of you. But I don’t think you would have been interested in a sick old woman like me. Apart from your kindness and charity you really didn’t seem to be interested, not in me anyway, and I don’t think in anyone, really. You were democraticly kind.
It was Malcolm’s twin brother, Bart, who drove me home after the wake. I didn’t want him to at first. Dammit, they were identical. Sure I could tell the difference between them, but this was too soon. I really wanted to take the bus, but he insisted. I was in no shape for public transit, he says. Come on with me. I should not have invited him in for a drink afterward. But what could I do. He had lost his brother. He was also in mourning, and I saw him weep at his brother’s funeral. Those boys were so close, so tight together, inseparable, and at times I really resented them both for it, but I gave them their space. Bart had been there with him long before me. They had shared the same womb together, been split from the same ovum. In a way they were each other. Thank God he knew when to go home. He had good common sense, Bart did. He was not going to jump into bed with his recently widowed sister-in-law. And I think that I knew as well as he did that it would never be the same as it was with Mac. And things would never be the same between us. I didn’t want to hurt Mary, his wife either. Not that I cared about her one way or the other. She was okay, I guess, but just a little bit too materialistic for my style. They’re still together. They have grandchildren. I just saw them at their annual open house for Boxing Day. Their big fancy house was just swarming with relatives, in-laws, friends and kids and the noise and the music and the food and the fun! They are too good to invite me every year and I still try to go if I'm feeling up to it. It’s the only time we ever see each other.
Now we are filing up to kneel at the altar rail to receive communion. Well, why not? I believe in God, and yes, I believe that you are with him now, even if you seemed in a hurry to get there. What do I do with the rose? I don’t need to ask. It dangles between the limp fingers of my left hand, too perfect to be alive, too perfect to be real. Now it is my turn to kneel and I have to cup open my hands to receive the host, just like I did at my first communion when I was just a young girl, so smart and elegant in my white organdy dress and the little gauze white veil I wore on my head, like a little virgin bride of the god. The acrid and sanctifying taste of the wine still lingers in my mouth as I leave behind me at the altar this perfect rose and I return to my pew hoping that God will receive this offering, hoping and knowing that he has received you, and hoping that one day you and I will meet, face to face, without any veil between us.
No comments:
Post a Comment