Tag: Suicide

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Springtime and Suicide, by Pat Gourley

It is well documented that suicides spike in the spring and then again in the fall but less so. A popular myth is that it is the holiday season when suicide is most likely but this is simply not the case. As to why this happens in the spring is pretty much speculation with one theory being that it is all the pollen in the air that is the root of this increase. This rather sketchy theory suggests that the increase in pollen causes an increase in inflammation and this leads to irritability and suicidal ideation I guess. I would suggest that further study is needed or perhaps more Claritin. file://localhost/. https/::www.cnn.com:2016:05:16:health:suicide-rates-spike-in-spring:index.html

“Many who drive their own lives to help others often realize that they do not change what causes the need for their help.” David Buckel – from the NYT 4/14/2018

The above sentence is from the suicide note left by David Buckel the well known LGBTQ rights lawyer who self immolated himself in a Brooklyn park early on Saturday (4/14/2018) morning. I must admit I had never heard of David Buckel but he is perhaps most well know for his work on the Brandon Teena murder, a transgender person from Nebraska. Buckel was the lead attorney in a case that found a Nebraska county sheriff guilty of liable in Teena’s murder. Hilary Swank played Teena in the 1999 movie Boys Don’t Cry for which she won an Oscar.

David Buckel also was a prominent activist in several other areas of LGBTQ rights particularly in the area of marriage equality. For the past ten years however his focus was environmental issues and he was the moving force behind a major recycling/composting effort in the Brooklyn area.

Quoting further from his suicide note per the NYT:

“Pollution ravages out planet, oozing inhabitability via air, soil, water and weather …Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuel, and many die early deaths as a result – my early death by fossil fuels reflects what we are doing to ourselves.”

I have been unable to find the entire suicide note as of today but this is a further piece of the note in addition to those quotes above:

“I am David Buckel and I just killed myself by fire as a protest suicide,” read a handwritten suicide note, according to the New York Daily News. “I apologize to you for the mess.”

Despite the fact that there were 44,965-reported deaths by suicide in the United States in 2016 they often receive little press coverage and this may be out of legitimate concern for impulsive copycat action by others. The one thing that is hard for me to reconcile around David’s protest suicide is the anguish this is causing for his loved ones, co-activists and undeniably his partner of 34 years. I am not at all sure though that this pain and suffering should distract in any meaningful way from the power and perhaps even the legitimacy of his protest.

Many of us may have first heard of suicide by self-immolation by Buddhist monks in Viet Nam. Visual images of these acts were certainly a slap in the face to me to wake up to the unbelievable tragedy that war was. More recently the self-immolation again by Buddhist monks this time in Tibet as a form of protest to Chinese genocide continues. There have been at least 148 reported suicides in this manner by Tibetans since 2009.

Deaths from the potential catastrophic effects of climate change may far out strip deaths from all the wars in human history. Apparently roll backs to climate protections by the Trump administration and in particular by that selfish weasel Scott Pruitt had been causing David Buckel considerable consternation.

I do hope this raw and powerful form of protest on his part will not detract but rather enhance the legacy of this great gay hero. Though he was definitely a strong and successful proponent for issues of marriage equality and Trans rights maybe his last ten years and death are pointing us toward even more important issues facing all of humankind including the LGBTQ communities.

Though this has been perhaps the most painful piece I have written for Story Telling I’d like to close with just a few more paraphrased words from David’s suicide note, words for me personally to ponder: “Privilege is derived from the suffering of others”.

This a link to NYT article on David’s suicide – one of many I have read this past weekend and referred to in this piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/15/nyregion/david-buckel-brooklyn.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

© April 2018

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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Hunting, by Pat Gourley

I lived on a farm in Northern Indiana until the age of
sixteen. Though we were as far as you could be from the toxic reality of
today’s factory farms there certainly were plenty of animals raised that met
their demise at the hands of various family and extended family members
directly or indirectly. By indirectly I mean we sold and loaded plenty of
animals into trucks that were headed for the local slaughterhouse.
I learned to kill chickens with an axe from my mother who
emphasized not letting the headless bird flop all around and spray all the
younger siblings and cousins lined up watching the slaughter with chicken blood.
I was quite good at it. This is something I cannot for the life of me imagine
myself doing today. Any backyard chickens that I might have in the future would
live to ripe old ages dying from chicken heart attacks or falling prey to a
local fox or coyote.
For whatever reason, there were no hunters in my immediate
family. There was one Uncle nearby who did some hunting but that was mostly for
rabbits and pheasants.  I can to this day
hear my aunt complaining about trying to get all the buckshot out of the poor
rabbit before cooking it. She also made a delicious rabbit gravy as I recall
and that was worth biting down on the occasional piece of buckshot missed in
the cleaning.
The closest I can remember my dad ever came to hunting was
one winter when he had hurt his back and was told, incorrectly in those days,
that bed-rest was required to heal the sprain. The bedroom had a window that
looked out over the backyard and onto a corncrib. This crib was made of fencing
that allowed the grain to thoroughly dry out and not get moldy but still exposed
the ears of corn. From that vantage point he could see rats scurrying about and
munching away on all his hard work. So, he took to shooting the varmints out
the bedroom window with a 12-gauge shotgun missing more often that not.
I myself had a very short period of attempting to hunt
rabbits around the age of 12 or 13 with a small caliber long gun I think that
was called a 410-shotgun. Despite hours of traipsing through the snow no
rabbits lost their lives at my hand.
Once we moved from Indiana to north of Chicago there was even
less hunting by folks on our neighboring farms than there had been in Indiana.
We were really only a mile or two from being Chicago suburbanites and random
gunshots not something the neighbors would have appreciated.
There was a woman name Margaret though in the farm next to
ours who I became fast friends with due in large part to our similar political
views. We loved talking politics for long hours denigrating everything
Republican. She did though have a very efficient way of killing chickens every
spring. She would tie them up and suspend them by their feet, about a dozen at a
time, from her clothesline. She would then quickly march down the line with a
sharp butcher knife severing heads cleanly and efficiently. I know this may
sound gross to you but do remember that the burger or chicken breast you enjoy
today did not get to your plate as a result of the animal committing suicide.
As I began to get in touch with my queer nature, especially
from age 16 on, anything to do with hunting or people who engaged in it really faded
from my life. I know absolutely no other queer person I am aware of today who
hunts. There is one straight man occasionally in my life who does hunt and that
is for sport not a need for food. 99.9% of the animal killing for food these
days is done in very inhumane slaughterhouses mostly by exploited immigrant
labor far from our eyes. It then appears magically in the meat sections of
grocery stores neat, tidy and wrapped in cellophane.
Harry Hay was a very adherent vegetarian for the entire 20
plus years I knew him and long before that. He was fond of saying, when asked
about whether he ever ate meat or not, that it would only be if he personally knew
the cow. This always seemed to imply also that one really should know intimately
whom they are eating and that they had done the killing and butchering
themselves.
I think this would be a splendid plan for all meat-eaters to
do their own slaughtering. I imagine this would end much of the cruel factory
farming and vastly increase the number of vegetarians and vegans. This would
then go a long way toward saving the planet by helping to reverse global
warming. Remember there is virtually nothing we as individuals can do to impact
climate change more than to refrain from eating any animal product. Hunting
these days should really only involve looking for a good sale on kale.
© 25 Sep
2016 
About the Author 
I was born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled
by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in
Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an
extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California. 
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The First Person I Came Out to, by Louis

A couple of years ago, I
did a story on my unsuccessful transgender friend. He/She had his male organ
removed in a premature sex change operation; he missed his organ so much that
he committed suicide. This was in the 1960’s. His name was “Romain”; well his
given name was Richard. I met him in the 7th grade. Romain was the
first person I was truly honest with. But it was more like he read me – what
they call nowadays “gaydar”.
Romain had an IQ of 160,
he was technically a genius. Geniuses see things, relationships that ordinary
people cannot. He was a year younger than I, but he had developed a significant
number of friends in West Greenwich Village, in poetry clubs and art studios,
that sort of thing. Sometimes I would tag along to meet them. So even in the 7th
grade I had a sort of reasonably gay-positive social life.
For a while I even lived
in an apartment on West 14 Street. In those days, gay men were so “unspeakable”
in the early 1960’s that we sort of did not exist. It was a kind of repression
I guess. But the positive side of not existing is that we had a certain kind of
freedom. We could cruise in Washington Square Park, and no one would notice.
Mostly if cops saw us, they would not put two and two together if two guys
winked at each other. If two men held hands, which happened occasionally, the
public would assume they were cousins from a Hispanic country.
In a word, at an early
age, I learned about the dangers transsexuals face when it comes to the
question of deciding yes or no to the surgery; I appreciated the nascent gay
culture coming alive in Greenwich Village, New York.
© 27 Apr 2016 
About
the Author 

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City,
Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker
for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally
impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s.
I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few
interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I
graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.
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Depressed, by Will Stanton

Homophobia, fear, hate, ignorance, and stupidity. Tragically, there still are hate-mongers such as Pastor Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, who publicly rants and raves that all homosexuals must be rounded up and executed. No gays should be allowed to live; “The Bible says so!” I felt sickened when I saw in November, 2015, that Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Bobby Jindal agreed to participate in one of Anderson’s hate conferences. Too many people agree with them.

Thank God, such insane hate and ignorance appears to be diminishing among younger Americans, at least among the more educated and cosmopolitan ones. Even the Supreme Court squeaked by with a five-to-four decision to treat gays equally in marriage, despite unlawful resistance by hypocritical Christians such as the Kentucky county clerk Davis, supported by Huckabee, who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

The idea that so many ignoramuses staunchly believe that personal religious delusions override the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal rights and separation of church and state is astonishing and depressing. I have noticed also that such people as that county clerk appear to have absolutely no awareness of the concepts of irony and hypocrisy – – in her case, committing adultery, having children out of wedlock with her third lover, yet having her second lover adopt the children, then marrying yet a fourth man. I suppose that none of this counts because “Jesus has forgiven her.” Many Christians ignore her transgressions.

That silver-tongued serpent Huckabee, who as a former governor, should know better than to employ his well practiced verbal skills to exacerbate the situation by lending his supposed authority to the clerk’s bogus claims. Also, those opportunistic lawyers pretending that there is legal standing to the clerk’s claims is an abuse of the Constitution and the legal system.

I hope the situation is improving in the general population, at least in the areas of the nation that are not so backward. In our time, two generations ago, otherwise even decent people, through ignorance, tended to lack understanding and acceptance of gays. There was so much fear and rejection. So many LGBT adults spent many years feeling isolated, lonely, unfulfilled, depressed. This obviously was especially hard on young people, struggling to come to terms with their own orientation and need for friendship and love.

In my hometown, there was a successful, upper-middle-class man who had built a lovely modern home in one of the better parts of town. I remember my classmate’s mother telling him to stay away from that house because a very bad man lived there. What was so evil was that the man was deeply enamored with youth and beauty, which led him into a ill-fated situation. The laws of that time still are on the books in this country that an adult may not have relations with a seventeen-year-old. Yes, I know seventeen is legal in Britain, and even sixteen is legal in France, however, not in America. He was well aware that he was risking fate entertaining seventeen-year-olds in his home.

Naturally, young guys potentially are less trust-worthy because of their immaturity and relative inexperience. So inevitably, one of them talked. The police came to the house and placed him under arrest. A court date was set, and he was released on bond.

Word rapidly spread among the townspeople about this “shockingly evil man.” The man’s whole life fell apart. He knew what his fate would be in the courts and subsequently in prison. He fell into a deep depression. He felt helpless, hopeless, and that his life had come to an end. So, he put a hose into the tailpipe of his car, turned on the engine, and committed suicide. It was reported in the newspapers, which probably satisfied the readers’ enjoyment of local scandal. I can just imagine that many people probably said, “Good riddance!”

Man feeling despair

With young people, statistically more gays commit suicide than straight kids. Remember also that teens, in general, tend to be more emotional than rational. Some emotional upsets may seem to be “the end of the world.” They may too easily think that life is just not worth living.

In one high school, not far from where I lived, one teenager, who was straight, generally was regarded as the most popular boy in school, and with good reason. Sometimes, it appears that some people “have it all” – – extraordinary good looks, intelligence, charismatic personality, athleticism, you name it. Naturally, probably all the girls in school fawned all over him, each one hoping to be chosen as his girlfriend. Inevitably, there always is the possibility that a few boys have similar dreams, too. There was one boy who did become obsessed with his idol.

Out of desperation, the gay teen approached his idol and, best as he could, presented his case for their becoming close friends, perhaps even becoming intimate. I frankly do not know whether the straight boy truly harbored hateful feelings toward gays or, instead, if he merely was frightened of what others might think of him if he hung around this school pariah. Either way, his rejection was humiliating. The gay teen felt absolutely crushed. His despair and depression increased to the point that he felt that life was not worth living. He thought, however, that he would leave this world demonstrating to his never-to-be love the depth of his love and the worthlessness of his life without love.

Quite often when persons contemplating suicide make the final decision, they ironically lose their sense of impotence and inaction; for they now have a plan. This was the case with the gay teen. He made sure the object of his love was home, then drove over to his house. He honked his horn to draw attention. The straight boy came out onto the porch and saw him sitting in his car. Certain that his love was watching, the teen put a shotgun to his head and pulled the trigger.

That horrifying incident was so tragic. A young life lost. Yet, can you also imagine the impact of that terrible scene upon the straight kid? What did that experience do to him? It is safe to say that this trauma would remain in his memory to the end of his days. We here in this room can feel the pain of this tragic story. Unfortunately, however, there probably still are many people who might say, “Good riddance.”

Boy who feels that life is not
worth living.

© 2015

About the Author

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.

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Lonely Places, by Gillian

The
recent hundred-year anniversary of the beginning of WW1 started me thinking
about how war, above any other single cause, creates lonely places of the soul.
After all, the very essence of the armed services is to nullify that; to create
a sense of belonging and total commitment to your military comrades. To a
considerable extent, I’m sure it succeeds. But at the same time it still leaves
ample room for lonely places. Did that man hanging on the barbed wire of no
man’s land in agony, screaming for one of his buddies to shoot him, feel less
alone and lonely in his terrible circumstances simply because he had
buddies? I cannot imagine so. Did that 
tail gunner of the Second World War, huddling cold and frightened in his
rear turret, not feel impossible alone?
But,
sadly, it is not just the combatants who inhabit such lonely places. It is
also, very often, the survivors, and certainly the people who love the ones who
died or returned as shattered pieces of their former selves, to occupy their
own lonely places. We only have to hear that someone is a Vietnam Vet to
immediately conjure up a vision, alas all too frequently correct, of someone
with  …. well, let’s just say, a
vulnerable psyche. The estimate of total American Vietnam Vet suicides is
currently about 100,000; approaching double the number of Americans killed
during the twenty-some years of that seemingly endless, fruitless, war. Right
there are 100,000 vacated lonely places. And of course it’s not just the
veterans of that war who inhabit places so lonely that eventually they have to
take the only way out they can find. The U.S. right now suffers an average of
22 Veteran suicides each day, most of the younger ones having returned
from Iraq or Afghanistan with battered bodies accompanied by memories dark
enough to extinguish the light in their eyes, and their souls. 22 more lonely
places available every day, and no shortage of new tenants.
World
War 1, was a terrible war that was supposed to end all wars and instead gave
birth to the next, already half grown. Whole villages became lonely places.
They had lost an entire generation of men in two minutes “going over the
top,”, leaving only women, old men, and children, to struggle on. Children
dying before their parents is not the natural order of things, and creates
empty spaces so tight that they can squeeze the real life from those held in
their grip, leaving only empty shells to carry on. Consider that awful story of
the Sullivans from Waterloo, Iowa; all five sons died in action when their
light cruiser, USS Juneau, was sunk, (incidentally, one week after I was born,)
on November 13th, 1942. How on earth did their parents and only sister cope
with that one?
Several
years ago I spent some weeks in Hungary. A Jewish friend in Denver had given me
the address of her cousin in Budapest, and I arranged a visit. This poor woman
had lost her husband and their only daughter, thirteen at the time, in
Auschwitz, but somehow survived, herself. She showed me the numbers on her arm,
and talked of nothing but her child, proudly, sadly, showing me photos of this
shyly smiling young girl. I had never met a Concentration Camp survivor before,
nor anyone who had lost their family in one. I felt physically sick but bravely
sat with her for two hours, hearing every nightmare of this family’s holocaust
as if it had just happened the week before. That was how she talked of it, and
I’m sure that’s how it felt to her. She had not lived since then, but simply
drifted on through that huge empty place of the lonely soul, going through the
motions.
One
of my own, personal, lonely places, and I suspect most of us have many of them
we can topple into at any unexpected moment, is the one I can get sucked into
when I find myself forced to confront Man’s constant inhumanity to Man. It’s
not only war as such, but any of the endless violence thrust upon us by
nations, religions, and ideologies. On 9/11/2001 I sat, along with most
Americans and half the world, with my eyes gazing at the TV, somehow mentally
and physically unable to detach myself. The one horror which burned itself into
my brain, out of that entire day of horror, was two people who jumped, holding
hands, from the hundred-and-somethingth floor, to certain death below. I wish
the TV channel had not shown it, but it did. I wish I hadn’t seen it, but I
did. It recurs in my protesting memory, and tosses me into my own lonely space,
even as I involuntarily contemplate theirs. Can you be anywhere but in a lonely
space when you decide to opt for the quick clean death ahead rather than the
slow, painful, dirty one fast encroaching from behind? How much comfort did you
get from the warmth, the perhaps firm grip, of that other hand? Did these two
people, a man and a woman, know each other? Were they friends? Workmates? Or
passing strangers? I have no doubt I could find the answers on the Web, but I
don’t want to know. Those two share my lonely place way too much as it is. They
estimate about 200 people jumped that day, but the only other image that stayed
with me, though not to revisit as often as the hand-holding couple, was a woman
alone, holding down her skirt as she fell. I felt an alarming bubble of
hysterical laughter and tears rising in me, but in the end did neither. To
paraphrase Abraham lincoln, perhaps I hurt too much to laugh but was too old to
cry. No, I doubt I will ever be too old to cry; in fact I seem to do it more
easily and with greater frequency. And perhaps that’s good. At least it’s
better than being, as I was that day, lost in my lonely place, too numb to do
either.
In
May of 2014, the 9/11 Museum opened. It occupies a subterranean space below and
within the very foundations of the World Trade Towers. That sounds a bit creepy
to me. Then I read that hanging on one wall is a huge photograph of people
jumping from the burning building, propelled by billowing black smoke. Why?
Talk about creepy. Why is it there? These people have loved ones, we
presume. Do we have no reverence, no respect, for the dead or for those who
remain? I feel my lonely place approaching. It rattles along in the form of an
old railroad car; doubtless it contains doomed Jews et al. My lonely
place has much of Auschwitz within it. I know for sure that I will never visit
that 9/11 museum. I did visit Auschwitz, and it was awful, but still there’s
the buffer of time. I hadn’t, unlike 9/11, watched it live on TV. I breath
deeply and feel my biggest, deepest, lonely place, pass on by. No, I won’t be
visiting that museum. There are times when those lonely places can only be
fought off with a big double dose of denial.
© August 2014
About the Author 

 I
was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to
the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the
Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised
four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting
myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25
years.
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Mushrooms by Ricky

          Why are mushrooms and
children so different yet still in the same Kingdom?  Why are children and mushrooms so alike but
not in the same Phylum?  Does it really
matter?  Yes, it does.
Similarity #1:  Mushrooms are Fungi which thrive in dark and damp places
often sticking their heads up into the sunlight to examine the world above the
soil and to scatter their spore.  Kids
stay in the shadow of their parents, then ever so slowly peer or venture out
into the world beyond their home seeking greater light and knowledge.  Adolescent male children prematurely scatter
their “spore”.
          Similarity
#2:  Mushrooms feed upon
smelly decomposing organic compounds predominantly in the dark.  Children are kept “in the dark” about many
things and accuse their parents of feeding them smelly decomposing organic
compounds.  Yet some parents do “feed”
their children’s minds a steady diet of “BS”, by continually espousing concepts
of bigotry, hate, and homophobia.
Parents unwisely keep their
children “in the dark” to protect them from information which theoretically might hurt or damage the child
or which is too embarrassing for the parent to talk about.  Not talking about sexual matters early enough,
but waiting until the child has already obtained a rudimentary knowledge which
is often wrong and incomplete is not good for the child.  Thus, a child who feels “different” for some reason
has no one with which to discuss their feelings, because the parent has closed
or not opened the door to such information or discussion.  This has a disastrous impact on the child’s
mental health, life, and is hazardous to their adult future.
Parents often struggle with
and wonder why their children don’t remain active in the parent’s church in
which the children have been raised since birth.  I suspect that years of lying and supporting
the myths of Santa Claus and Elves, the egg-laying Easter Bunny, the Sand Man,
Frosty the Snowman, and the Boogeyman finally carried over to the stories of
Jesus.
Parents keep forgetting that
children are NOT STUPID.  They are smart,
cunning, and bear considerable watching. 
Continually lying to them, even if it is a white lie like Santa Claus is
not setting a good example.  There must
be a discussion early on in a child’s life of the difference between a fictional
Santa and a real Jesus – a wise parent will ponder and prepare for that discussion very carefully
or be forced to admit that they
don’t know if Jesus is or was real.
Difference #1: 
Mushrooms
are Fungi.  Children are not Fungi.
Difference #2: 
People
eat mushrooms for flavor or recreational purposes.  Mushrooms only eat people after the coffin is
sealed, and often for the same reasons.
One day at our dinner table,
we were eating spaghetti with the sauce provided by a jar of Prego. 
This particular version of Prego
contained small pieces of mushrooms. 
Partway through the meal, my oldest daughter (7) proudly announced to
everyone that in school she had learned that mushrooms are poisonous and she
would not eat them anymore.  Instantly,
her sister (5) and brother (3) stated that they would not eat them either.  No matter how their mother and I explained
only some mushrooms were poisonous and they had been eating mushrooms in the
spaghetti sauce their whole lives and not died; no argument or fact could or
ever did change their minds or behavior. 
Sometimes, children really can be less smart than a parent wants to
believe.
What is the point?  The two questions that opened the mushroom memory
story are totally irrelevant to my point except as a literary device to get you
to read this post.  The question of “does
it really matter” is important.  It
matters because too many youths are still killing themselves over sexual
orientation bullying and parental homophobia. 
THIS MUST STOP!!!  Open and honest
dialog between parent and child must begin before age 5 and continue throughout
their lives.
So called Christian
ministers who preach hatred and homophobic sermons ARE NOT CHRISTIANS and
should be discharged and shunned until they repent and teach correct Christian
doctrine.  In my opinion, these ministers
could be prosecuted for some form of “breach of the peace” or “inciting
violence”.  They definitely are causing
discord and not preaching Jesus’ Gospel of love and harmony.
I am someone who believes that
every life matters. 
Every youth suicide represents a lost national treasure.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is
a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away
by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to
know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
– Poet John Donnes, 1624.

© 8
December 2013 

About the Author  

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in
Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach.  Just
prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on
their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my
parents divorced.
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later
in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California,
graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force,
I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until
her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11
terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be
therapeutic.
My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com.

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Anger by Pat Gourley

It was often noted in my teens and twenties in particular that I had quite the Irish temper. This seems to have greatly diminished over the years and now is an emotion I rarely indulge in. Much of the anger I have expressed over the years has really been not much more that self-indulgent bravado. Often the sort of flash in the pan display that passes quickly usually followed by regret and at times an appropriate apology.

There have however been at least two instances in my life where my anger was sustained and in one of those seems at times to persist to this day. Both of these involve the suicides of two people close to me, one professionally and the other a dear friend of many decades. Today I will address the suicide of a co-worker from over twenty years ago. The other death will be the focus of an upcoming piece.

Even this anger, at a tragic death, certainly seems to have a quality of indignant rage – ‘how could you do this to me’ which in some respects seems quite silly since they are the ones who are dead, but then so much of my life has always really been about me.

This first suicide involved a psychiatric nurse who worked in the AIDS Clinic at Denver Health in the early 1990’s. She was a lesbian woman who on the surface seemed very strong and as put together as anyone I knew. Unbeknownst to me, but not to several others in her life, she purchased a handgun I believe in late 1992, saying she feared for her safety around the passage by referendum of Amendment Two by the voters of Colorado which read as follows:

Neither the State of Colorado, through any of its branches or departments, nor any of its agencies, political subdivisions, municipalities or school districts, shall enact, adopt or enforce any statute, regulation, ordinance or policy whereby homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships shall constitute or otherwise be the basis of or entitle any person or class of persons to have or claim any minority status, quota preferences, protected status or claim of discrimination. This Section of the Constitution shall be in all respects self-executing.

I thought after the fact that if I had known about her gun purchase and the stated reason for it I would certainly have confronted it for the bullshit it turned out to be. Even back then I was sort of the resident out radical queer in an AIDS Clinic no less a place full of ACT Up members in 1992 and I would have said “oh honey all they are doing is finally being honest about how they hate us”. The statewide vote on the referendum was something like 53% in favor of literally codifying discrimination across the board based solely on sexual preference and 47% opposed. We were simply being put on notice to a fact that had always been the reality. This was of course challenged in court and overturned eventually by the United States Supreme Court in the case Evans vs. Romer in 1996.

I would in hindsight have been right to call her on this purchase since she used the gun along with some alcohol and prescribed medications as lubrication to drive up to St. Mary’s Glacier in early January of 1993 and blow her brains out. I would hope I would have insisted on a better reason, than homophobes run amok, for buying a lethal weapon by a person who was in many instances a very out and proud queer woman.

You must remember this was in 1993 and the peak of the AIDS nightmare. So many of our clients were valiantly struggling to often just stay alive for one more day and this crazy-ass women who I loved and admired, in excellent physical health as far as we knew, goes and kills herself. It was a great blow to many of my staff and her clinic patients to whom she provided psychotherapy. It was difficult for me to even speak her name for many months but we did finally put up a plaque in her memory when our own unbelievably raw feelings subsided and perhaps I personally better appreciated whatever the mental anguish she was suffering from. There were apparently major relationship issues in her life and perhaps these involved anger on her part or maybe it was simply an overwhelming depression made worse by well intentioned use of psychiatric medicines that unfortunately proved to be disinhibiting in the long run and maybe even direct facilitators in pulling the trigger. Suicides seem to often to be impulsively facilitated in our society by the criminally easy access to guns along with alcohol and certain psychotropic medications most often legally prescribed.

My feelings around suicides of people in my life are not however universal and do not always involve anger. In those days in particular end of life decisions to speed the dying process along by many suffering terribly from the ravages of AIDS were not uncommon. For those unfamiliar with this time and its nearly unbearable realities I would encourage you to see the current HBO movie version of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, visually at least it is much more riveting and intensely in your face than the play ever was.

The best suicides as I recall from those days were well thought out and often involved much support from lovers, family and friends. The act was rarely impulsive, rarely to my knowledge involved a gun and rarely if ever done in isolation. News of these passing when they would reach the clinic often invoked great sadness and sometimes a sense of relief but no anger.

If this is to be an act with integrity it seems to me it should never occur as a result of subterfuge and certainly not as an expression of anger toward others or one’s self. That itself seems to be a very angry last dance that certainly does not affect in any positive fashion others in your life, many of who may care deeply about you. It strikes me as not only very angry but selfish. I appreciate that deep depression can often set the stage but a common caveat about suicide is that it is mostly the choice when one is coming out of depression.

As mentioned above I will again explore suicide in a future piece, one by a dear friend of many decades and my own personal feelings about it. Most days I tend to take a Buddhist approach that suicide will only result in another reincarnation something to be avoided and continued samsara on the wheel of death and rebirth, which could go very wrong with one perhaps returning as a banana slug.


June, 2014

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.