36. Suicide, Fast or Slow
The Year of Paying Attention
I got a little choked up describing my funeral to Sarah, and thinking about the people I love being sad that I’m dead. I was a great guy. Then Billy called to say he’d lost interest in our group coaching enterprise. He’s no longer invited to play the guitar at my service. Fuck Billy. So my post-death plans are nicely sketched out, but what I’ll do until then is less clear.
Billy’s announcement activated some of the old tapes in my head, including favorites like “I’m a loser,” “My life is devoid of meaning,” and “Who wants to work, anyway?” That last one might warrant some attention. I was embarrassed to tell Sarah about Billy’s backing out. We were driving her paintings back to her Queens studio, after a friend had photographed them for her website. I said, “Part of me feels like I’m supposed to be doing something that looks and sounds like ‘work,’ because without that I’m afraid I’m just…”
“Retired?” she finished the sentence. “Maybe you can get out of the business of helping people,” she said. Retired. Out of the business of helping people. I was thinking about all of this as I pedaled to morning yoga. I returned my Citibike to the long rack and heard a siren, and turned to watch a police car roar through a red light and ram into a taxicab, right in the middle of the intersection I had just pedaled across. The passenger door of the police car opened, and a cop got out and leaned, dazed, against his banged-up squad car. Pedestrians ran to the cab to check on the driver. Someone leaned into the police car to check on the cop who’d caused the accident.
Everyone standing around me stood stock still, silent, staring. Nobody seemed seriously hurt. In slightly different circumstances, somebody might be unconscious, or dead. I heard another approaching siren, and continued my walk to class, pausing to send a text to Sarah, reporting what happened, telling her to be careful. Anything can happen at any time.
After class I pedaled through the treacherous streets of Manhattan without incident, and boarded the perilous Roosevelt Island tram, dangling precariously from a cable over the East River. I was alive, inadequately appreciative of my life. I had a bowl of cereal with a perfect peach cut up into it, and finished a quart of milk that should have gone bad days ago. Another miracle.
A student asked Zen master Suzuki Roshi about enlightenment. He replied, “What do you want to know for? You may not like it.”
***
I missed his call, and when I played back Jim’s message, it was about a story in the morning paper, about someone we knew. The guy and his wife had jumped from a midtown upper-story window earlier that day. “Their kids were upstairs, asleep,” Jim’s message said. We knew the father from a 12-step meeting we regularly attended. His message continued, “It all sometimes seems pretty fucking bizarre, huh, brother? Sorry about going on about this whole thing, but sometimes you gotta tell the people that you love that you love ’em. And I love you, brother. Ciao.” I went looking online and found the story. Suicide notes in the pockets of both parents. I suppressed the urge to look up the kids’ ages, and turned away from my computer screen.
I was a college freshman when I met Jim, at the Boston radio station where we both got jobs. We were buddies instantly, and spent countless hours listening to records, going to jazz clubs and getting stoned. Twenty years later, both of us now in New York, I called him at his job, to tell him that my wife had just thrown me out of my apartment, after I’d put my hands around her throat. I was chin-deep in a morass of shame and self-hatred when he answered the phone.
“How are you,” I asked him, preparing to share my news. “You know,” he said, “I think I may have to quit drinking for awhile.” There was a moment of silence. “That’s weird, Jim,“ I said. I told him I was going to a 12-step meeting in a few hours. Another pause. He said, “Really. “ Pause. “Maybe I’ll go with you.” That day Jim and I joined a 12-step program. He gave me a place to sleep until my wife let me back in the apartment. In the last twenty years of going to meetings, we got to know quite a few people who’d thought about suicide. We met men and women in church basements who’d lost parents, and children, to suicide.
Before I stopped drinking, suicide seemed like an extreme but not unthinkable solution to my problems. In meetings I heard one joke repeated: when a normal person gets a flat tire, he calls the auto club; when an alcoholic gets a flat tire, he calls the suicide prevention hotline. I called Jim back, and we talked about the suicide couple. Then we talked about how we were doing, and how our kids are doing, and our ex-wives, and our current partners.
Everybody’s all right. Jim’s wife took a bad spill in Italy. My younger daughter is still not talking to me. Jim’s pursuing some radio production work. My coaching plan just went off the rails. The good things easily outweigh the bad.
We’ve both been done with drinking for about as long as we drank. We don’t take it for granted. We know people who didn’t drink for years, and then they did, and then things went back to very bad.
Alcoholics commit suicide, fast or slow. Some lucky alcoholics find a program that prevents it. Years ago I had a funny, talented friend who’d quit. He seemed like he was doing well. He put a lot of energy into his recovery. But it wasn’t enough, and he died one Christmas Eve, apartment-sitting for a sober friend. It looked like he’d been drinking and doing drugs with somebody, somebody who split when my funny friend had a heart attack.
Jim and I said goodbye, and over the next few days, the local papers had more news about the the suicide couple, the good things they’d done, and the funds friends of theirs set up for their orphaned, young adult children. When I told Sarah about it, she was quiet for a moment, her face puzzled. “Declare bankruptcy,“ she said. Sick people don’t think straight.
Next week: Can’t Be Livin’ In The Past, Baby
