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.