One year ago today, in the early afternoon, I was on the Ohio in the Bremerton shipyard. I was thinking of staying late again when Rui called asking me to come home as soon as possible. I knew it was serious. Ideas started flowing, yet I thought there was a chance that this was very good news. I stopped by my XO’s office and dropped a hint that Rui could be expecting. He was excited for me, and my heart pounded all the way home.
I opened the door, and saw Rui’s face covered in tears and her eyes swollen. She was not smiling. “I have to let you know…that Bobby killed himself this morning.”
I kept my heart solid like a rock. Before distracting emotions could take hold, I needed to know: How? Where? Why? What were the first things I needed to do? First I called my mom. She could barely speak, so the call was short enough to get the names and numbers of the neighbors who had found him. I called them next.
What followed became a twisted journey down a rabbit hole. The couple concerned were “proud” to have had him choose their apartment as the place to end his life. They had already “taken care of” most of everything, including the crime scene, his apartment, his suicide note, and his cell phone and laptop, having kept most of it away from the police. Bobby had somehow got into their apartment, unlocked their gun safe and ammo locker, assembled the weapon, and ended his life with a shot to his right temple in their shower. He had never touched a gun in his life. “But you know, he was just so smart, he could figure out anything.”
I was ready to rip these people in half, but as the Chicago detective told me, in the end, it was Bobby’s choice. The rest was not worth fighting. It was time to get friends together and mourn.
But I knew I could only feel better once I understood. He always wanted to understand himself as well. If we could just understand it, we could help other people with the same problems.
There was more to be angry at. I knew why he killed himself. I had lived almost the same life he did. I knew the demons that tore up his mind and all his days unbearable. I knew how he tried everything he could to make it all go away, leaving the “last resort” truly for last. And I suppose it just happens that one day you’re very seriously thinking of ending the pain, and you go all the way through with it. It was the second time he tried, with the first having been almost ten years before.
There were no sudden warning signs. We had been talking over the phone once every three weeks or so. That was more than we had talked in college. Life was getting better for him. He had a decent job with very good friends, both new and old. He was constantly engaged with the outside world. He was close to literally hundreds of people. Yet, he thought he was a failure. He was on the verge of trying something new — leaving Chicago, going to another big city, and starting all over again. None of his friends or family outside Chicago suspected anything so serious. He didn’t give us a chance to save him.
All throughout the process of going through his belongings, calling banks and credit card companies, talking with the police, and setting up two funeral services, I kept my heart stone and my brain logical. But I broke down and my heart melted into a puddle as I was singing “Amazing Grace” at the first service.
How do you explain brotherhood? I shared a bedroom with for half my life. We played with the same neighbors, and did karate, baseball, and cub scouts together until he went to middle school. He was too cool for me after that, so he spent most of the time picking on me in front of his friends. He made me join Theater in high school, so we did both a play and a musical together — he as a popular senior and me as a nerdy freshman. We had traveled a fifth of the world together. We suffered many days cooped up in our hairy aunt’s apartment in Bydgoszcz. We shared so many millions of memories together that no one else can understand. That’s what brotherhood is.
I didn’t like him most of the time. I didn’t like being picked on. It reminded me of how much I didn’t like myself. The biggest reason I went to VMI and joined the Navy was to “outgrow” him and become permanently proud of myself — but as he constantly reminded me, he would always be my big brother.
We were so much the same. At some point in high school, I realized he also despised himself. Maybe he admitted it to me. I remember Adam pointed it out to me about myself, rather harshly, but it suddenly made sense. Regardless, I also realized he was trying very hard to change himself. He wanted to become “permanently proud” — achieve a self-confidence that couldn’t be shaken. He wanted to act and make people laugh. He wanted to earn respect from all the people that didn’t matter.
If only he knew how much everyone around him loved him for exactly who he was. When you live for loving others, you’ll gather friends of the utmost devotion. In his suicide note, he asked for no funeral — probably because he pictured there would be fewer than a dozen people. He didn’t realize at the Chicago one alone, the massive hall was standing room only and went out the door. If he knew how much star power he had, he would never have ended his life. He already had what he was looking for.
It’s no one’s fault, and it doesn’t matter now. What’s done is past, and those of us who live with his flame in our hearts go forth to make our lives better. The real lesson here is to burn with love and show it to each other every day. Yes — Bobby did it for all of us, and all his friends did that for him, too. We can’t understand why it didn’t reach him.
With horror, I felt like it could have been me. And…it was me. Part of me was lost.
Do you want a clinical name for a mood disorder? Don’t bother. Know that whatever it was, it was there from our earliest memories. Bobby survived with a heart-wrenching mental illness for 30 years. We understand mental illness at a pathetic level, and our treatment and reactions are neolithic. We’ll understand later.
Again — the real lesson is to live for love. Love yourself and love everyone else, even if they’re terrible to you. And soak up the love that others give you. Believe in it, and know that nothing else matters as much as your friends and family. Continue to live well, and rejoice in what you have. Shine for the whole world.
bubbacow 