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Out of the Darknessby Larry EiserService at UUCSS on August 18, 2002
Opening WordsGood morning. It's good to be alive. When I was born in 1961, my older brother, Scott, was two years old. I spent most of my childhood following him around. Our father was killed in a car accident in 1965, so Scott became my primary role model and teacher. As a kid, I tried to be just like him. Where he went, I went. What he did, I did. We shared a bunk bed (he never let me have the top bunk), a paper route, and a subscription to Sports Illustrated (to avoid the arguments, it came to our house addressed to "Scott Larry Eiser"). In our small town of St. Charles, Illinois, I was known generally as "Little Eiser" - Scott's little brother. I am not his little brother anymore. On the morning of February 14, 1990, Valentine's Day, Scott put a shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger. From that day to this, I have not talked about this much with anyone. My family does not discuss it. I thought this was just our problem and our secret. Then, I saw the numbers:
Suicide and Youth
Suicide and Depression
Shocking numbers. Surprising. Of course it's surprising, nobody talks about suicide. Nobody. So, the folks who brought us the AidsRide and the Avon Breast Cancer events, created Out of the Darkness -- a 26 mile walk through the night from Fairfax, VA to a closing sunrise ceremony on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. Last night my wife and I walked this walk. We did it for Scott. And for ourselves and our kids and the YRUU and our church and our community. We did it to add our light to the lights of 3000 others and shine it on the dark stigma that is attached to this affliction. We did it for hope and health and the joy of being alive. From Darkness Visible by William StyronMy annoyance over [the stigma attached to suicide] was so intense that I was prompted to write a short piece for the op-ed page of the Times. The argument I put forth was fairly straight-forward: the pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain. Through the healing process of time and through medical intervention or hospitalization in many cases - most people survive depression, which may be its only blessing; but to the tragic legion who are compelled to destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer… Readings from the letters of the victimsFrom Bruce, age 21:
From Greg, age 18:
Lessons from SuicideI've learned many lessons from this event.
So, that's what I've learned about me, but what have I learned about suicide? After his death, I buried myself in books and articles and research on suicide. (I was a closet Unitarian even then.) How could he do that? How could anyone? I read and thought and analyzed and discussed. If I could, I would assemble a panel of all the leading experts from all the different fields that study suicide for you. And if we asked them to give us the real answer to the question, why? What is the cause of suicide? They'd all have to shrug their shoulders and say, "we don't know." We know it has something to do with brain chemistry. We know there is a genetic role involved - there always is. We know depression plays a role - but not always. We know life events play a key role. But we really don't know. Almost no generalization about suicide has validity. A young mother succumbs to cancer at a young age. An elderly person is stricken with Alzheimer's. Those are experiences that all can relate to. We can make generalizations that will be valid. But suicide? No. It is said that happy families are all alike, but miserable families are each unique in their misery. This is true of suicide. Among the most shocking of the statistics I cited earlier is the fact that 60% of suicides suffer from major depression - but that leaves a whole lot of people who end their lives for other reasons. People often assume that every suicide victim is also a victim of depression. It's true that most are, but not all. Some make the choice out of impulse or panic. Some make that choice as the last in lifelong series of bad choices resulting from poor judgment. The experience of each victim, and his or her loved ones, is unique. So, while each individual story is compelling, what can we say about all the stories together? Well, we know of two things that all victims certainly share. One, they took the actions necessary to end their own life. The act. The act of taking a human life. But before that, there was the idea. Psychologists call this suicidal ideation. The idea that one could or should or would take one's own life. Some carry this idea in their head for years, some for only an instant. While the number of people who commit or attempt suicide is stunning, even more shocking is the number of people with suicidal ideation - those whose minds carry or have carried the idea -- and don't ever tell anybody. But how could they? To do so is, in our society, to label one's self crazy - suicidal ideation is the dividing line in psychology. That's what gets you locked up in a hospital. That's part of the stigma. There are those who think there is one answer for suicide. They seek the magic bullet from science and genetics that will be "a cure." They will be disappointed. While brain science will surely teach us much about suicide, I know that had any one of a thousand contingent events in my brother's life played out differently, or not at all, or in a different sequence -- his ending would have been different. Had his father not died when he was six years-old, had he made different academic or career choices, had he gotten help when he first had thoughts of suicide, had he not been sharing an apartment with a someone who kept a gun - so many contingencies, so many choices. No, science can never answer all of it. On a broader scale, I wonder about these contingent events. My family lives in a pleasant neighborhood off Layhill Road in Silver Spring. It's one of those communities - unfortunate but all to common today - where most of the neighbors hardly know each other, and those more than two or three houses away are literal strangers, they wouldn't recognize each other. We are kept apart by barriers constructed of fear, creed, ideology, ignorance - but mostly by electronic media and the maddening pace of contemporary life. Our family, because it's so large and boisterous, has knocked down some barriers and shared love with some of our neighbors, but in general, it's one of those places where people just don't know each other. And that's sad. Because the path to the heart goes through the head. To love, you have to first know the object of love. Last Tuesday evening, an extraordinary event occurred. I was at the computer around 8:00 pm (working on the 512th draft of this easy essay assignment) and the power went out in the house and stayed out until after 10:00 pm. It was an odd time for a power outage because it was a perfect, clear, balmy Summer evening. It was the magic hour - that's what the filmmakers call the hour after the sun goes below the horizon but you remain bathed in indirect, glowing light. Too early and too light to go to bed, but too late and too dark to do much of anything else. My son, aged 9, and my daughter, aged 5 and three-quarters, proposed a bike ride around the block. As we rode, I noticed that the front yards were filled with neighbors - some I knew and others I was meeting for the first time. They had all streamed outside after being unplugged. What joy to have these people - who share my little patch of land on this spinning planet -- fuss over my children. What would happen if we were all unplugged every evening during the magic hour? I'm not sure, but I bet the suicide rate would plummet. But now I've strayed too close to the line. There is no debate about suicide - there can't be a debate when no one talks about it at all. But if there were a debate, it would be on this point. One side holds and takes comfort from the idea that suicide is a disease - it comes on arbitrarily and nothing could have been done to prevent it. To believe otherwise is to blame the victim. But on the other side are those who would call that view fatalistic. We can't just throw up our hands in the face of this act, this ideation, or fail to search for all causes - genetic, chemical and personal -- that may have brought it on. It is said the unexamined life is not worth living. This is as true of a life that ends in suicide as any other way. Wait, it's even more essential. The examination might teach us something. We might learn from the choices that were made. We might find that we should know our neighbors more. Woody Allen once said he believed in only two things: Sex and Death. Those are two events in life that nobody can argue with. One is good. One is bad. They are facts that can't be nuanced or hidden. I have two more to add to his list. In addition to sex and death, I believe in suicide. I also believe in youth. The experience of youth - of encountering life with new eyes and boundless energy. Youth is the age of experimentation and challenge to authority - to push against old boundaries and limitations. If those boundaries are on a firm foundation, they remain. If not, they topple. Sometimes authority pushes back, other times the challenge reveals weaknesses that need to be addressed. It's a creative tension that exists in all societies at all times. A measure of a healthy society is how well it balances this tension. On the wall of one of the Egyptian pyramids is written, "What shall we do about our corrupt youth?" So, whether we're talking about reforming drug laws, or radical innovations in the arts, or ending the war in Vietnam, or questioning the rationality of thousands of people spending their whole lives building monuments in the desert, the big challenges to the existing order usually come from youth. Now, I am, by nature and necessity, an optimist. I object to fearmongering in all its forms. I object to those who inject irrational fears into the lives of the rest of us. To those who say the world is going to hell in a handbasket, I say you made that basket and jumped in. Come spend a day with my children and you will know the world is filled with beauty and grace and joy. To any asserted risk, whether it be child snatching or homicide or planes crashing into buildings, I always say: Keep the risk in perspective. If you are to be hurt, the odds are overwhelming that it will in a car or at the hands of someone you know. Deal with that risk. For the rest of the fears that plague most people, the risk - as measured by real numbers -- is so small that it's not worth thinking about. I've gained comfort from this perspective. But it is under attack. Because in addition to sex and death and youth, I also believe in suicide. In the fact of it. And the fact of it's alarming numbers - especially among our youth. Those numbers ask the question: What kind of society have we built when the leading cause of death among our youth (except for accidents) is suicide? I can't rationalize or explain that one away. This is a challenge that the existing authority must listen to and address. Our youth are telling us we are doing something seriously wrong. We must heed this challenge. Somehow. The main reason that religions exist is to provide meaning. The meaning of life. The reason for living. But religion is as stupefied in the face of suicide as is science. For centuries, Christianity taught that suicide was a mortal sin, for which the victim's soul would be cast into hell for all eternity. One who kills himself in madness is the moral equivalent of one who kills for personal gain. That's a pretty good foundation on which to build a stigma. At the outset, I should have said, thank you for coming. I really mean that. Who comes to hear someone talk … about suicide? Until it grabbed me by the throat, I certainly never talked or thought about it an instant beyond what was forced on me. That's how a stigma works. Morrie Schwartz, the dying hero of Tuesdays with Morrie said: "Death ends a life but not a relationship." True, isn't it? But I wish old Morrie were still around so I could ask him, "But what about suicide? What the hell does that do to the relationship?" Because of the stigma, the act of suicide becomes the start and end point of any discussion or consideration of the victim. As though the big and small events of the life lived were somehow tragic all along, or at least have to be considered in the light of the tragic end. So we tend to not conjure up the life at all, or try not to, or don't get the joy from those thoughts that we should. The tentacles of the stigma run everywhere. For those left behind, there is guilt. What should I have done to prevent this? Blame. What should you or he or she have done? Fear. I share his gene pool, will I or my children have to face this madness? Ultimately, the stigma of suicide rests on the "otherness" of it. For the living, there is the sense that suicide is something that could not touch me. We need to drop that idea. Most of us spend a fair portion of each day talking about homicide. Some days it seems the sole purpose of the commercial media is to tell us who was killed. If it bleeds it leads. Over a million people in this metropolitan area will enjoy some grace and beauty this day, but the only thing they'll talk about tonight - through their TV news - is the one or two (or ten) who were killed by someone else. Whether it's news or entertainment, individual or group, homicide is always the hot topic. A suicide, on the other hand, is not news -- unless the victim also commits a homicide just before the suicide. Or is famous. Or really interferes with the evening commute. A simple suicide, done in the bathroom or the bedroom is not news at all. It gets only a small-type death notice in the newspaper, and often the cause of death is omitted. No one wants to talk about it or hear about it. That's how we got to the point of having these staggering statistics that catch everybody by surprise -- such as the fact that your risk of death at the hand of another is substantially less than the risk of death by your own hand. As Styron writes, death by suicide is no more deserving of an unwitting conspiracy of silence than death by cancer. All sing from the same hymnal when it comes to cancer - early detection saves lives. But for suicide, there is immediate, lasting, stony silence. The silence allows the otherness, the darkness, to continue. Most people live with certain knowledge that suicide has nothing to do with me. In light of the statistics alone, this certainty is itself a form of madness. Suicide is all around us. Almost everyone here has lost a cherished friend or relative to suicide. Many here have or have had suicidal ideation. Our beautiful center quilt here was dedicated to a victim of suicide - but many members here didn't even know that. The silence prevents us from gaining lessons from suicide. Albert Camus wrote: "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy." Now, the philosophers have filled libraries addressing that question but the answer has to be accepted as axiomatic - not just for all people but all living things - yes! Life is worth living! I do think about suicide. All the time. I don't think about doing it, or wanting to do it. I think about how much I don't. I think about how much my brother has missed; how much I would miss. It's not scary or morbid. My brother's life and death present me with a daily affirmation of Camus' question. And my answer is always an unqualified, YES! Life is most definitely worth living! If that answer ever changed, then I would know , as Baudelaire wrote, that "I have felt the wind of the wing of madness." And I'll know it early. And I will get help. Without hesitation or fear or shame or stigma. And so can you. Thank you for coming. Be well. Be kind. |