My old friend Rudy (not his real name) was a hell of a good guy and we had a blast together back in the day. The clubs, the beaches, the long rowdy rides in his vintage car . . .
So you can imagine my disappointment when I learned that my ol’ fun-loving buddy had gotten depressed and decided to end it all by steering his car into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer.
This old friend of mine, who never seemed to wish harm upon anyone else, had ended his life by putting another man in peril and by inflicting God only knows how much psychic trauma upon the stranger.
I never judged my old friend based on the decision to end his life — it’s not my place to judge anyone on such soul-deep matters — but it’s hard to be at peace with his chosen method.
I don’t know much about the truck driver in question, but I imagine it this way: He’s a hardworking fellow driving 70 hours a week to keep his wife and kids comfortable. Maybe he was at the end of a very long run when some stranger decided to use him as a means of permanent relief based on nothing but the fact that his rig was big enough, and going fast enough, to get the job done.
It’s hard not to imagine the horror from the perspective of the truck driver. Did he glance at my old friend’s agonized face in the split seconds before impact? Was he treated to a vivid view of the ensuing carnage as that old car exploded into a million fragments, sending gore-streaked pieces of my old friend flying off in all directions?
For Rudy, it was unquestionably a quick end to whatever misery had befallen him. For the trucker driver, though, the misery was only beginning. That up-close and personal role in another man’s suicide was quite likely the introduction to a long string of very bad dreams.
Last week, a 64-year-old local man took the same route to oblivion in Lewiston, intentionally stepping into Main Street traffic and directly into the path of a passing truck. The man driving that truck had nothing at all to do with the unknown woes of the suicidal stranger and yet — because his truck was big enough and going fast enough — was forced to play a part in that stranger’s grisly demise.
I’ll never be one to deem suicide cowardly or selfish outright — again, not my place — but I’ll also never understand why a person would want to end his own suffering by inflicting suffering upon another. There is a kind of cruelty about the tactic, and who wants his very last act, before he departs the mortal coil, to be an act of cruelty?
I had an uncle, an ex-police officer, who many years ago ran over a man who had jumped into the path of his car in an attempt at suicide. But my uncle was quick on the brakes and in the end, the stranger was badly injured but not killed in the attempt. There was no doubt relief in that for my uncle, but my mother still recalls late nights where she would hear him sobbing in his bed, unable to cast away the images of that desperate man seeking salvation under the wheels of his car.
Of course, sometimes cruelty is the name of the game.
By practice, the newspaper doesn’t report on suicides unless they transpire in a dramatic, public way. But still, over my years on the police beat, I’ve looked into several suicides and the details are always grim. We hear reports of men who shoot themselves in the head right there on their living room sofas specifically because they WANT their loved ones to find them there — what better way to punish that cheating wife than to make her walk in on the horror and by desecrating her home forever?
Suicide by its nature is complicated, messy and sad, and I don’t enjoy writing about it one bit. Best advice I can give to anyone entertaining such thoughts is to do anything BUT that. Call a friend or a hotline. Hitchhike to California or join a church. Learn to play drums or go somewhere and fish for a while. Literally, anything man.
Here’s the hotline just in case you need it. I guarantee that this one phone call will beat walking into moving traffic by a long shot.
Maine Crisis Line: 1-888-568-1112
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