Letter From the Dead Delivered 6 Years Late or What I Have NOT Been Writing About
Last summer my brother's best friend, I'll call him The Martyr as that is the role he loves best, came to visit me in New York for a week. I've known The Martyr since I was 16 and thought I was such a bad ass for hanging out with college kids in my brother's artsy mountain college town, and when my brother killed himself The Martyr took it upon himself to take his place. Since that time I have struggled with a love/hate relationship with The Martyr; I resented his attempts to insinuate himself into my life as if he were my brother, but I also desperately wanted the forgiveness from him that I couldn't get from corpse fragments. There have been many times that he pushed the boundaries and made me quite uncomfortable, such as when he was helping me move to New York and told me that he told all of his co-workers that he was moving his sister to New York. I also know him to be an almost pathological liar, and my parents and I have caught him in many an untruth before. However, I welcomed him into my humble (read tiny) home, and was actually happy to have him there and to see him. We spent the week talking more honestly than we ever had before about my brother, his suicide, and many of the truly fucked up complexities surrounding his death and my experiences with him before that. I felt it was really good for me to talk through a lot of the things we talked through; it was healing.
Then he dropped a bomb on me that I have not quite been able to forgive him for. He told me that he had the suicide note. My brother's suicide note that he had stolen from his apartment before we ever got there and held on to out of protection for me and my parents. No matter his intention, which I do question, this was a grievous wrong against my family on so many levels. That was never his call to make and he had no right to steal that away from us and decide whether or not we were allowed to know of its existance. He had no right to hold onto it for 5 and a half years until he finally determined that I was evidently ready, according to his emotional scale of measurement. I can't even begin to put into words how angry and hurt I am by this. He also waited until the last night he was here to even mention it, promising he would mail it upon his return.
The Martyr did not mail the promised letter upon his return as he was almost immediately hospitalized for depression; a horrific deja-vu for me as he had called upset the night before and I did not return his call because I was still so angry - when my brother killed himself I was not speaking to him, for very justified and healthy reasons, but have wholeheartedly regretted that with every fiber of my being since. I spoke with The Martyr a few times after his release from the hospital and have had no interaction with him since. I often wondered if the note was another of his manipulative lies, and did not expect to ever recieve it.
About a month ago, I recieved an envelope in the mail with the stationary of my brother's university, where The Martyr happens to work. My stomach dropped down into my knees, and I hesitantly opened it. Inside I found a torn scrap of paper with the unmistakable illegible handwriting that could be no one else's but my brother's; I cried just to see that handwriting. The note makes no sense; it is the psychotic disconnected ramblings of a mentally ill man's brain running on overdrive. It is fragments of thoughts compiled haphazardly on a torn scrap of paper that so accurately illustrate the frantic scramble of my sick brother's mind that it is heartbreaking to read for that reason. It is heartbreaking to imagine being trapped in that brilliant mind gone haywire.
But I don't think it was intended to be a suicide note.
It begins with the line "Suicide Poem Because of What I've Done", but what follows is so disconnected that I think it was him just writing out his thoughts. A suicide note is written for an intended audience, and I don't think this was; I think this was my brother trying to relieve his tortured mind by purging his thoughts as they came onto the nearest scrap of paper he could find. I mean one of the lines reads "Tirade against ESPN", and I doubt seriously that ESPN was a factor in my brother's suicide.
Still, it is gut wrenchingly heartbreaking to read and to see. It is heartbreaking to read the first line. It is heartbreaking to read "Poem about Synge, innocent Synge". It is heartbreaking to hold in my hands a torn fragment of paper, written by a torn fragmented shell of a man who's life was such a searing hell that he will never write another illegible word again. Most of all it is heartbreaking knowing the hell it will put my parents through.
I told my parents about it as soon as The Martyr told me; to keep the information to myself would be committing the exact same crime that I condemn him for. My mother was livid with scalding rage. My father wrote him off. I remained torn and guilt ridden.
I brought the note home with me when I visited them last weekend, but selfishly could not bring myself to ruin such a wonderful weekend reunion. Ever the procrastinator, I waited until yesterday to call and finally alert them of this. I spoke with my father first, who said I shouldn't tell my mother. I responded that I could not make that decision for her and to withold this note from her would be unforgivably direspectful; it would create an unbridgeable chasm in a very close relationship that I treasure. He then requested that I wait until after the Ides of March - the anniversary of his death - because Mom was incredibly depressed and had just put our dog to sleep on Friday (which was news to me). I agreed to do this as long as he would take full responsibility for making that call; he agreed to do so. I asked him if he felt it was wrong of me to tell him and he said "No, I'm strong. I can handle anything". I told him that I worried about him because his sadness is so deep it radiates forth in giant waves. He said of course he was sad, and that he wakes up every day with an unbearable sadness but he keeps busy and that's what you do. My father never talks about feelings and just hearing him say how sad he was, hearing him admit to it, tore my gut apart.
I hung up the phone and cried for hours and hours in that weird fog place you get to when things are just too much and you shut down. I haven't wanted to really talk about this; I've avoided talking (and writing) about this with iron stubborness. This weekend it all finally hit with a surprise left jab to the ribs and I went down. Then I proceeded to get rip-roaringly wasted last night, as alcohol is always a wonderfully self-destructive way to deal with emotional stress. I got home at 6am and slept much of the day away before wandering about the apartment like a ghost for the last 3 hours.
The fog will lift, the emotional shock will pass, and I will be okay; I know this and have faith in this. It's just been a shitty hard weekend that has not been the restful respite I needed.
Tomorrow I will probably return to writing about innocous and inane boring subjects, such as my bladder.
Then he dropped a bomb on me that I have not quite been able to forgive him for. He told me that he had the suicide note. My brother's suicide note that he had stolen from his apartment before we ever got there and held on to out of protection for me and my parents. No matter his intention, which I do question, this was a grievous wrong against my family on so many levels. That was never his call to make and he had no right to steal that away from us and decide whether or not we were allowed to know of its existance. He had no right to hold onto it for 5 and a half years until he finally determined that I was evidently ready, according to his emotional scale of measurement. I can't even begin to put into words how angry and hurt I am by this. He also waited until the last night he was here to even mention it, promising he would mail it upon his return.
The Martyr did not mail the promised letter upon his return as he was almost immediately hospitalized for depression; a horrific deja-vu for me as he had called upset the night before and I did not return his call because I was still so angry - when my brother killed himself I was not speaking to him, for very justified and healthy reasons, but have wholeheartedly regretted that with every fiber of my being since. I spoke with The Martyr a few times after his release from the hospital and have had no interaction with him since. I often wondered if the note was another of his manipulative lies, and did not expect to ever recieve it.
About a month ago, I recieved an envelope in the mail with the stationary of my brother's university, where The Martyr happens to work. My stomach dropped down into my knees, and I hesitantly opened it. Inside I found a torn scrap of paper with the unmistakable illegible handwriting that could be no one else's but my brother's; I cried just to see that handwriting. The note makes no sense; it is the psychotic disconnected ramblings of a mentally ill man's brain running on overdrive. It is fragments of thoughts compiled haphazardly on a torn scrap of paper that so accurately illustrate the frantic scramble of my sick brother's mind that it is heartbreaking to read for that reason. It is heartbreaking to imagine being trapped in that brilliant mind gone haywire.
But I don't think it was intended to be a suicide note.
It begins with the line "Suicide Poem Because of What I've Done", but what follows is so disconnected that I think it was him just writing out his thoughts. A suicide note is written for an intended audience, and I don't think this was; I think this was my brother trying to relieve his tortured mind by purging his thoughts as they came onto the nearest scrap of paper he could find. I mean one of the lines reads "Tirade against ESPN", and I doubt seriously that ESPN was a factor in my brother's suicide.
Still, it is gut wrenchingly heartbreaking to read and to see. It is heartbreaking to read the first line. It is heartbreaking to read "Poem about Synge, innocent Synge". It is heartbreaking to hold in my hands a torn fragment of paper, written by a torn fragmented shell of a man who's life was such a searing hell that he will never write another illegible word again. Most of all it is heartbreaking knowing the hell it will put my parents through.
I told my parents about it as soon as The Martyr told me; to keep the information to myself would be committing the exact same crime that I condemn him for. My mother was livid with scalding rage. My father wrote him off. I remained torn and guilt ridden.
I brought the note home with me when I visited them last weekend, but selfishly could not bring myself to ruin such a wonderful weekend reunion. Ever the procrastinator, I waited until yesterday to call and finally alert them of this. I spoke with my father first, who said I shouldn't tell my mother. I responded that I could not make that decision for her and to withold this note from her would be unforgivably direspectful; it would create an unbridgeable chasm in a very close relationship that I treasure. He then requested that I wait until after the Ides of March - the anniversary of his death - because Mom was incredibly depressed and had just put our dog to sleep on Friday (which was news to me). I agreed to do this as long as he would take full responsibility for making that call; he agreed to do so. I asked him if he felt it was wrong of me to tell him and he said "No, I'm strong. I can handle anything". I told him that I worried about him because his sadness is so deep it radiates forth in giant waves. He said of course he was sad, and that he wakes up every day with an unbearable sadness but he keeps busy and that's what you do. My father never talks about feelings and just hearing him say how sad he was, hearing him admit to it, tore my gut apart.
I hung up the phone and cried for hours and hours in that weird fog place you get to when things are just too much and you shut down. I haven't wanted to really talk about this; I've avoided talking (and writing) about this with iron stubborness. This weekend it all finally hit with a surprise left jab to the ribs and I went down. Then I proceeded to get rip-roaringly wasted last night, as alcohol is always a wonderfully self-destructive way to deal with emotional stress. I got home at 6am and slept much of the day away before wandering about the apartment like a ghost for the last 3 hours.
The fog will lift, the emotional shock will pass, and I will be okay; I know this and have faith in this. It's just been a shitty hard weekend that has not been the restful respite I needed.
Tomorrow I will probably return to writing about innocous and inane boring subjects, such as my bladder.
posted by Le Synge Bleu at 6:17 PM
3 Comments:
Wow. That's deep. Thank you for having the courage to share this very personal experience. I commend you for your strength in dealing with such a difficult thing. Having recently lost a brother, I feel like I can connect with where you are coming from. Keep your head up and keep those lines of communication open w/your family.
peace,
swandad
Oh Synge.
Oh, Synge, what a horribly difficult weekend. The Martyr had NO RIGHT to keep that from you, whether or not it was intended as a suicide note. People do so much damage to each other in the name of "protecting" one another.
Does the title of the poem about you give you any of the forgiveness you sought? He obviously wasn't blaming you at that point, despite the mental illness that had totally taken over his brain.
I'm thinking of you, and I'm here if you ever want to talk this through. Or if you just want to talk about your bladder.
--sarachkah
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