HYPOTHERMIA

or

The Story of My First Suicide


Why do they say ‘take their own life’? “He took his own life.” It doesn’t seem like that. If anything, it seems more like they are giving it away. That is what my father did.
He was originally from salem oregon, but i always pictured his figure walking the red plateus and rocks of santa fe, new mexico, where he did his residency in psychiatry. like some lone alien on the red sands of mars. so distant from his family back in the green rolling hills that my mothers house perched on in south ogden, or the tall timbers of the northwest coastline. that stark arid desert is where i put his ghost still. not in some sad still hotel room. not with a bottle of phenobarbital. not in the image i sometimes dream about, which is this:when i was ten, my elementary class went to the Ogden Nature Center for a field trip. we were to stay in the several run down cabins that were available for classes such as this. The building was old and smelled like neglect. Due to the fact that we would be doing hiking and snowshoeing, the counselors there had several safety films to show us, and this being the time before vhs or even really beta for that matter they showed the safety films on actual FILM, the reel ticking away as a badly cared for sound system cracked and hissed over the loudspeaker p.a. in the auditorium of the cabin. Incidentally, i remember the first vhs tape that my father brought home that we could actually RECORD ONTO, as amazing of a feat that was in those days. It cost him a fortune, but the whole family sat around the gigantic zenith consol, that had the shitty knob that broke, so you had to get the pliers out and grab the end of it to turn it, and we watched the olympic marathon footage that had originally aired at six p.m., but now thanks to technology, we could watch it any damn time we pleased, god bless it. According to the films, there were several things to be aware of and concerned with when in the woods during winter. for every precaution, there was another sad story of some unfortunate soul who had gone astray, lost in the pristine white sea of trees, doomed to a cold death. There were so many dangers, so many volitile situations to worry about. but the most frightening i still can imagine vividly. the basis of the subject was hypothermia, and the victim in question was a hunter whose name i cannot remember. but for storytellings sake we will call him David. David wandered away from the rest of his hunting buddies when he thought he spotted a ten point buck and was convinced that if he could trail after it, then he would have a real prize for his wall. the image i remember the clearest is him walking off into this abyss of snow peppered aspens, smiling and waving at his buddies for the adventure he was about to have. the announcer came on, booming over the loudspeaker, saying "IT WOULD BE THE LAST TIME HIS FRIENDS WOULD EVER SEE HIM ALIVE AGAIN."the next five minutes shows his increasing anxiety rise, wandering aimless, lost in the snowy woods, after mere footfalls, no longer caring about the deer. just trying to find his way out. with no water and no provisions, becoming more and more bewildered as the snow coninued to fall relentlessly, as snow tends to do. no longer being able to see his tracks to find his way back, and while trying to think rationally about his perdicament, he became more and more numb, his body no longer able to feel, the blood not getting to his limbs. finally realizing how dangerous his situation has become, David sits down against the base of an old oak tree to try and think, and calm himself down. while sitting there, he begins to cry. The movie explained that the lack of blood and oxygen to his brain had caused him to revert back to an simple, childlike state of mind, but even there, in the warmth of the cabin auditorium, surrounded by other little ten year olds sitting indian style on the hard, carpet floor, i was glad that the overhead flourescent lights had been shut off, feeling my own hot tears streaming down my cheeks, scared for the confused hunter. He sits there and cries and tries to think of some solution to his situation. But he has no flares, he has no food or blankets, and he is getting tired. After a few more exausting hours, there, at the base of that cold dead tree, he decides it would be a better thing to just fall asleep, numb as he is. the next scene is his hard, frozen body being found by park rangers several days later.my nightmare is always the same. my father, walking into those woods, smiling and waving at everyone. So sure of himself, and so unprepared for it all. the next five years of his life would be the slow maddening descent into psychosis. thinking that the feeling of hopelessness would subside if he just stayed busy. trying to pull himself out of his relentless sadness and the morose hood of death. and the slow inevitability of acceptance that would come.no longer able to see his tracks to find his way back.
he begins to cry and tries to think of some other solution.he decides it would be better to sleep.numb as he is.
i remember how he dissapeared that day. december thirteenth. he was gone all day, and as the sun set and the snow began to fall, our apprehension grew. We all knew about his ‘condition’. Having hushed conversations with siblings in hallways about how dad started hearing voices that weren’t really there. Every hour in his absence made him seem stranger and stranger to me. i remember that turbulant night, the wind high and the snow a flurry of shapes in the darkness. my mother continually breaking the long silences at the dinner table to say how she expected at any moment "for him to walk in, smile his odd little smile and say in a soft shy voice how he was sorry to make eveyone worry". but that didnt happen, so we stopped waiting and started trying to look for him, driving aimlessly through the city seeing if we could spot his car. At one fourty five in the morning, i was sitting in my uncles four runner, perched at the edge of the trecherous canyon road that veered off to the town of morgan, my uncle stopping and looking at me."do you really think he would be all the way out here?" he said.i stared out to the blackboard night seeing the ghosts of snowfall and said"no."we turned around, went back to my mothers house. i went to work the next day, and at two thirty in the afternoon, my aunt called to say the had found him. FOUND HIM. like a lost dog. like a pair of glasses or an old shoe. but what she should have said was FOUND HIS BODY. in a motel covered in frost. covered in ice. a body. in a hotel. My father. in morgan. just a few miles down the road from where my uncle and i turned around. i have not been up there since, but the dream that comes is one of a gentle summer night on that canyon road, and a sickening reminder frozen there still. a dirty drift of snow marking those tire treads tuning around, leaving one hunter behind.I can still see him sometimes, smiling and waving at us as he walks off into those woods.







Addendum 1: Phenobarbital was first introduced as an epileptic medication
in 1912. At the time it was known as Luminal, and was used for anticonvulsant
activity. An average recommended dose consists of anywhere between 15 to
40 milligrams for an average adult. 45 milligrams and above proves toxic.
Phenobarbital has been a real hit with the suicidal crowd ever since it first
came onto the market.

Addendum 2: It gained its greatest notoriety in 1997 when Marshall Applewhite
and his followers at the Heaven’s Gate Compound in Rancho, Santa Fe, donned
their jump suits, white Nike tennis shoes and ate bowl after bowl of applesauce
that had been laced with Phenobarbital.

Addendum 3: As a trusted physician, my father had written himself a prescription
for the drug sometime in November. He had then admitted to my mother that he had
the drugs and had been thinking of using them. After she had convinced him to flush
them down the toilet, and had stood over him, watching him do it, she tried in vain to
have him commited. Later that month, he wrote a second prescription. This one he kept.

Addendum 4: According to the book Final Exit, a handbook on euthanasia and assisted
suicide by Derek Humphrys, head of the Hemlock Society, known for their unorthodox methods, Phenobarbital is the most commonly used drug in suicides.

I Sing The Stupid Defeatist

>

(this is an apology)


You died and I really wanted it to mean something profound to me. I wanted to feel as if these are the hardships I endure in my life and this is something I have to learn how to live with. But that isn’t real. And just because you killed yourself doesn’t mean I have to feel sorry for you. That is some sick selfish fantasy I have acquired to feel more normal with this information. Of course I have to be devastated. I can’t just own up to the idea that it made me feel awkward and I didn’t want to talk to your friends about it. Even my admission right now feels like it is for irony’s sake and not because I truly want to make amends. I remembered walking down to the coffee shop that day, and it was so cold outside that my fingers were actually in pain from the frigid air. It was such a dreary, depressing morning that it seemed appropriate that some tragedy had taken place. It felt like the low, black clouds knew what had happened, and were bowing their heads in reverence. I envied them. I envied the clouds and the rain and those who had been a good enough friend to you to be truly affected. I remembered feeling helpless and stupid at your funeral. My suit fit weird and I met your parents. I bet you never thought that I would meet your parents. But there I was, right in line with everyone else. Probably the only dry eyes in the place. It’s not that I am callous or bitter, it is that I was watching it to take it all in. The THEATRE OF LIFE. I know, it sounds like I am a total sociopath. You know something? I have always wondered about that. I don’t know what it feels like to be inside anyone else’s head, so how do I know if I am anywhere near normal?

Case in point: I may be the only person who sits at an intersection when a light turns green, wondering if it is really green, OR if I have finally lost my mind and I just think it has turned green, and I will speed out into oncoming traffic, killing myself and taking several other perfectly sane people with me.

Listen, according to the DSM 4 diagnostics manual, sociopaths lack moral sense, control of impulses, they don’t learn from mistakes and have little to no empathy for others. That feels like where my head was. I think for a while there, the only thing that was really keeping me from going crazy was the fear that I was going crazy, if that makes any sense. Then you went and died, and maybe your death wrecked me because I was already on my way there myself, and seeing someone else do it first made me feel like the second kid to show up to school with an ALF lunchbox. You know, like, we each had our own independent motivation for doing it, but you just got yours out there quicker, so now if I do it, I was totally copying you, or its because I was secretly in love with you, or we had some death pact, or there was some Shakespearean-like betrayal.

The reality is that I couldn’t deal with the association. I hate that part the worst. Did you think about that? It isn’t ever just “Man, Carl looked really happy in these pictures. He sure did love going fishing!” It’s “Man, Carl looked really happy in these pictures. He sure did love going fishing! I wonder if he was thinking about hanging himself in the bathroom with the telephone cord when this picture of him was taken. Do you think he knew how much weight the light fixture could hold when we went out to eat that one night? Maybe he had tested it with the garbage can and found out that it started to seem to lose its integrity at one hundred and eighty five pounds and that’s why he didn’t want to get dessert even though they had his favorite because then he would have weighed too much to successfully hang himself and hey, what if he had gotten dessert that night and the death by chocolate fudgarama he would have eaten would have boosted his blood sugar, thereby raising the level of serotonin in his brain, and as we all know, high levels of serotonin affects impulse control. He would have thought more about the consequences and he would have weighed too much anyhow! Why didn’t he eat that fucking fudgarama?!?!”

See, when someone kills themselves, they have cast a stigma across their entire life. Every memory of the person is now accompanied with an image of their cold blue body in a vacant hotel room, the slits hatched down the wrists, and blood strewn across bathroom tile, the body swinging from the end of a clothsline. These grotesque visions come barking at the heels of the loving memory of the person, like rabid dogs. It’s almost impossible to separate the two.

I used to have this dream where I am in the old house where I grew up as a kid. My stepfather is there, and everything is fine. But then I remember that he is supposed to be dead, and then everyone else remembers too. Then he remembers, and he starts panicking, crying that he doesn’t want to have to be dead again. I would wake up to the bright blue horror of five a.m., and know that he was still out there somewhere, in the ground.

I’m not mad. I don’t even have a right to be. And maybe just as two humans on this planet that happened to cross paths I can mourn for you without it seeming forced or selfish. Is that alright? You killed yourself, and no one knew why. Least of all one who took time to write it all down. Maybe that’s what changed my mind. Lord knows I don’t want a bunch of fucking ass hole acquaintances showing up to my funeral and blubbering to my mother just because I had a bad week and decided to check out.

Sorry. I don’t know that. Just shooting my mouth off.

I wrote an ending to this piece about the precious nature of life. Something about stars, or birds, or those unattainable moments that keep life moving. Those things we should hold so dear. But I know that. Anyone still alive knows that, even if for just minutes at a time. So I erased it, and I will dignify my goodbye for you without wrapping this up in a cute analogy, or without reading a fucking Robert Frost poem, or without mentioning God, or the Celestial Kingdom. Instead I will just say that you are dead, and many will not sleep tonight due to that.

Cholking on the Cold Dead Husk of Good Intentions.

So this is my first post on this blog site. If people find this and choose to read it, that is great, if not, no matter. I am in the process of taking years and years worth of prose that I have been working on, reworking, and posting it here, if for nothing else to see what kind of response I get and be impressed with how cool it looks with all the cute little graphics you can use here.

well. that is it. enjoy.

sherlock.