Hope can outshine the darkness of suicide

Today dozens of people participated in the annual Veterans Suicide Awareness March, an event meant not only to raise awareness of the suicide epidemic among our military veterans, but also to spread the word about how to prevent these deaths.

But suicide infects more than our veteran population. It reaches across the demographic plain to touch people of many different races, colors, creeds, genders, ages and backgrounds.

Suicide infects both young and old alike. Male and female. Black, white, brown, red or whatever combination of skin colors you happen to be. Rich and poor. The employed as well as the unemployed. Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, agnostic or atheist. The healthy as well as the ill. Able bodied and disabled.

Many times victims display warning signs, or leave evidence that they are really crying out for help. At other times, suicide can happen suddenly and without warning. This is why it is so important to be vigilant around our loved ones who are struggling emotionally with loss or to make sense of a world that seems to have been turned upside down around them.

I remember it was a mild spring day 22 years ago when I got a telephone call out of the blue from Chris, my childhood best friend. He said he was coming to visit me the next day.

I was away at college. He was living at home with his parents. We were about two hours apart by car.

I knew that Chris struggled with what was then termed Manic Depression; now known clinically as bipolar disorder.

I knew he was on medication, or was supposed to be on it. His parents had reported that they were having trouble getting Chris to take his medication regularly. Many times he skipped his doses.

I also knew that Chris was reluctant to leave his house and socialize in his condition. His dad had recently told me that they were having trouble getting him to even leave his room.

So, yes, I thought it strange that Chris would call me out of the blue like this and tell me that he was going to drive two hours for a weekend visit.

But being not quite 20 years old, and unaware of the inherent dangers that manic depression posed to its victims, no alarm bells went off in my head. I told Chris I looked forward to seeing him the next day when he arrived.

He never did.

That night I got a telephone call from his dad, who sounded frantic with worry. He said Chris had disappeared. He took his dad's pickup truck and apparently left word that he was coming up to visit me. A day early, and without my knowledge of it.

I told his dad that Chris had called me earlier that day to say he was driving over for a visit tomorrow; not today.

There was no word for the next 24 hours when finally the telephone rang and his mother was on the other end. She was sobbing and crying so uncontrollably, that I could barely make out what she said.

What I could make out sent my heart sinking through the floor.

"Chris shot himself," she said.

Later on the night before, law enforcement located Chris's pickup truck in a gravel pit. They found Chris a short distance away, a grievous rifle wound to his head, and his rifle laying next to him.

Chris was dead. My best friend, from second grade through high school, was dead.

But it wasn't an accident, and it wasn't foul play.

Chris had committed suicide.

I was in complete disbelief. I had just spoken with him the day before, only 24 hours earlier.

He didn't sound at all like a person at the end of his emotional rope. He was upbeat, cheery, bright and lively. He seemed confident in himself.

Little did I know then that these were symptoms of mania, behind which he was trying to hide from the bitter darkness of his own depression.

In hindsight, I see now that Chris's manic state was itself a warning sign. He was likely off his medication; or else what little he was taking sporadically had no effect. That, too, should have served as a warning sign.

Something inside of him had gone terribly wrong, and his mania turned out to be a mask he wore to hide what was really underneath.

His odd behavior should have tipped me off that perhaps he was trying to deceive himself and others of a deeper, more foreboding intention.

I believe he had planned his suicide. Not intricately, perhaps, but enough to make up a story to his parents and me; and to be sure he took his rifle along with him.

The evidence, as it became more clear, showed this was not wholly the result of impulsive action. Impulsivity while in the depths of emotional depression may have led him to conclude that there was no other way out for him.

But he had planned to take his own life, to put that rifle barrel against his temple and pull the trigger.

Why? I had asked myself.

I never could come up with an answer that satisfied me. Rather, I kept coming to the same conclusion that there was no rhyme or reason behind it. His illness, having gone poorly treated for who knows how long, was the primary culprit.

I realize that manic depression, or bipolar disorder, is not in everybody's story about suicide. But it is in mine.

For many military veterans -- especially those who have seen combat -- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is fairly common. And, sadly, suicidal thoughts are not all that uncommon among veterans who suffer from PTSD.

I imagine that, at some point, a vet just gets fed up with the flashbacks, the nightmares, the hallucinations, anxiety or panic attacks, and nervous breakdowns that leave them an emotional shambles.

If he or she is not receiving any help for this illness, it can literally consume them.

But there are other veterans who do not necessarily suffer from mental illness, but still choose suicide over the struggle of trying to fit back into a civilian culture that has become awkward, unfamiliar, unsupportive, even unfriendly toward them.

Being discharged from a very structured and regimented environment that provides for a person's needs at all hours of the day can be a shock to many military veterans; particularly those who have spent several years in the military, or those who have never been on their own before. These individuals either don't know how to fend for themselves, or else they have forgotten.

Either way, these vets are suddenly expected to eat, sleep, work, and make decisions all on their own time; something they had gotten used to the military doing for them.

The pressures and responsibilities thrust upon a vet who is struggling to find his or her place in a free civil society can be overwhelming.

If they don't know how to handle this stress, and they don't know where to turn, who to ask, or even how to ask for help, then their efforts at reintegration can seem hopeless.

Hope.

I've written about hope before, and a lack thereof in our culture. For some reason, it seems to be a recurring theme for me.

When life seems hopeless, and we feel helplessly alone in our suffering, we can lose our fortitude, our will to go on.

I truly feel that the key to combatting suicide is to restore hope in our own hearts, while encouraging others to find hope in theirs.

I've been hopeless before, and dangerously close to feeling like I wasn't fit to live. But by grace alone, I found hope again. Or, perhaps more accurately, hope found me.

I could see again the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel and the silver lining of the sun shining behind the storm clouds. I was reminded that even though life can seem dark and bleak at times, hope still exists in spite of that.

When a storm rolls in, it covers the land in darkness and blots out the sun. But this doesn't mean the sun has disappeared. It's still there, shining brilliantly behind the clouds. And, eventually, its intensity will burn through the storm.

Hope is like the sun. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean its not there. Eventually, its intensity, its brilliance, will burn off the heavy burden of hopelessness.

As a society, a culture, and a community, we owe it to each other to keep the spark of hope alive; especially for those who are struggling with hopelessness.

Family members need to continuously remind their loved ones of the hope that still exists in life, in them. It is up to those of us with hope to encourage those without it, and to show hope through compassion toward the hopeless.

For if hopelessness is a common denominator shared by people who commit suicide, attempt it, or contemplate it, then restoring hope may be the only cure.

From time to time, I find my mind wandering off into a different place and time, to where I was 22 years ago. I wonder, at times, if I could have done anything differently that day I last spoke with my closest childhood friend.

I know in my heart that I couldn't have, because there was much I didn't know then that I do know now. Hindsight is truly 20/20, while foresight is, well, considerably less than that.

But it doesn't keep me from wondering, from wandering into the word of what ifs, or coulda, shoulda, and woulda.

I wonder where Chris might be today had someone told him about hope before he concluded that his life was defined by hopelessness.

If you are struggling with hopelessness, and you see no way out, please be assured that hope is still there. You just have to believe it's there, and hold on a little bit longer to see it burn through the storm.