A Passing

This Saturday marks the one year passing of a friend and coworker's death. He committed suicide. I'm not really sure how he did it, I'm not even sure if it matters. I know that sometimes I wonder because I guess I wonder if it will somehow help me to understand why he did it.

He was recently married. Seriously. He had been married what, 12 days?? 12 days. They had gone on a holiday for a week and then returned to work on the Monday. By Thursday he was in our boss' office telling him he was stressed out, he couldn't handle what was going on. Which, was understandable. We were all stressed. I mean, we were preparing to host thousands of athletes from around the work in less than two months. We had way too small a budget, not enough staff, and were trying to make miracles happen. But where some people thrive on this sort of stress, others falter. I guess he faltered.

Our boss assured him we would assign help to him. He wasn't sure how it would be done but that he would make sure it happened. Of course, this wasn't about the job. We gather it was about his entire life because generally these things are not only about one stressful piece in the puzzle of life but rather a perfect storm of multiple things. Perhaps this was the straw that broke the camels back, but perhaps there were thigns we didn't really know about. To be honest, we were "just his coworkers" so it's not like we ended up getting answers to questions we so desperately needed answers to. It was and still is awful.

I use quotations around "just his coworkers" because as any one working an event knows, working as part of such a close knit team on something so huge means really becoming a family. So while maybe his flesh and blood family didn't understand how close we all were, we definitely were close. I spent a lot of my time speaking with this friend, getting to know him and understand him. Sure, he drove me absolutely bonkers at times but he was still a part of my work family and I understand where he came from.

Anyway, our boss sent him home to try to relax. Told him we'd work it out. Less than 24 hours later he went missing never to be seen alive again.

Searches were organized, tearful pleas were made. In early July a body was found in an area where we thought he may have gone. We weren't told about this at the time. It was the Sunday before our massive event started that we found out for sure that he had killed himself. I received an email from a family member. I was sitting at a stoplight at an intersection when it came through. It was a long light so I started reading it realizing that the sender was a family member of his. I was very fortunate in that I was less than five minutes away from the office (yes it was Sunday but realize we were a week away from things really getting going). (To clarify, the event was to start in just under two weeks but realize that an event unofficially starts a week earlier.)

I managed to get myself to the office with tears streaming down my cheeks. There were only a couple people in the office when I got there which was a relief. And those people had already heard. I went to my desk and cried. I was grateful to know the outcome but just couldn't believe that this was happening. That someone so full of life was gone. That he couldn't handle whatever struggles he was facing even though he fully seemed on the outside to be someone who could handle anything and everything life threw at him. He was newly married for goodness sake!

It's been nearly a year and I still haven't fully come to terms with it. 90% of the time I'm fine. But when I think about it I just can't understand. I've grieved the death of a loved one before but always a death where it was easy to reconcile in your head. Older relatives, individuals with a degenerative illness that was terminal etc. Never someone so young and so....well, not sick. Not sick in a way that can be diagnosed with concrete tests. No, depression and all mental illnesses are much different than that. And it's hard to really reconcile that. I feel anger, sadness, disbelief, confused, and a whole myriad of other feelings. The grief process, as I have found, is completely different when someone commits suicide. When someone chooses to end their own life. And my feelings are felt all at once, just to add to the confusion. And I don't think it needs to be explained but none of these emotions is straight forward on its own either. The anger is anger towards him, towards myself, towards a system and society that fails men more often than woman (boys don't cry afterall....), anger towards him for doing this to his family, his work family, his brand new wife. Sadness that he didn't think we could help, sadness that his wife lost her husband so soon, sadness that his parents had to bury their son, disbelief that he isn't here, that I know someone who was hurting this bad, that he left us all, confused that this has all happened, that he couldn't find his way out. I could go on and on.

We found out after his death was confirmed that he had left a note. I still don't know what the note said, I know nothing. I wonder if that would even make a difference. Probably not. I would probably be just as confused as ever.

What I do know is that this weekend I will be mourning the loss of such a great individual. I will be praying in my own way that this won't happen every again and that we can find a better way to reach out to individuals who are feeling this way and help them find their way out of it. And I will be praying that I NEVER know another person who feels so lost, so confused, that they don't feel they can reach out to me or anyone else for help.

This weekend, I will be taking time to reflect on all that has happened and try to find a way to make a difference.