The Final Gift of Uncle Arnold

I was never particularly close to my great uncle; he was on a side of the family that I didn’t often interact with. So when my mother notified me last night that he had killed himself, my immediate reaction was not of grief, but of shock.

We had missed it. We had missed all the warning signs that could have tipped us off that something was terribly, terribly wrong. But hindsight is always 20/20, and there were things that we should have noticed. He was out of work and they were slipping deeper and deeper into debt. A lifelong alcoholic, his addiction worsened and he became more reclusive, not even going out to visit his sister here a few weeks ago when she flew in from Washington state. We should have stepped in. We should have all been closer. We should have done something different than what we did… which was nothing.

This is not the first time my family’s been marred by such self-destructive behavior. When I was just a little boy, my teenaged second cousin took a rifle and ended his life. I was too young to be fully aware of what was going on, of what had happened and what an impact it was having on everyone. There was some speculation that it might have been accidental. I think in times like that, it’s something to soften the pain, the incomprehensible feeling that a part of your family felt so alienated that he could off himself–and not only that, but that the person could feel so indifferent to what effect such an act would have on the surviving family. It is a pain far sharper and far more difficult to deal with than an ordinary death under ordinary circumstances. It truly is the ultimate selfish act.

It is no secret that I’ve had such thoughts and such desires in my past. I’ve wandered through some dark places when I was lost in my emotional devastation, and I’ve considered that ultimate selfish act as a possible means to an end. But with this, with all this–the effect it’s having on the rest of the family, the investigations, the autopsy, the floating rumors of possible murder instead of suicide that will probably remain regardless of the findings of the authorities–it has ultimately and definitively proven to me what horrible consequences there are to ending one’s life. And in the depths, in the deepest depths of any wretchedness I might experience, I could never willfully and intentionally inflict such harm on the people I care about. The death of my great uncle has made me realize all this. And I suppose that this realization is the greatest gift he could have ever given me.

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