My mind has been blown away.
Right now I feel like crying, but I can't.
I got home from work Monday night and got onto Facebook. I noticed that someone had added me to a friends "group." I went to check it out and it was a group to remember the man who was my favorite teacher of all time and a great family friend. He was found dead in his home Monday morning after he didn't show up to work at the school he was teaching at now. He apparently committed suicide with a gun.
Out of all the teachers I ever had, he had the most profound effect on my life. I think I took five classes under him, and he was a coach at the school. Over the years, we had become close. He was fun to be around and made learning history/government fun. He also was the only teacher I ever had a crush on.
One of the funnest things about him was he was totally paranoid about several things. Really I shouldn't see that as a positive because in the end, it could have actually been the paranoia that lead to the suicide. Anyways, he was determined that communists or Nazis were out to kill him. To him, everything was a conspiracy. If we ever wanted to get out of doing a daily lesson, we could bring up President Kennedy's assassination, and he'd spend the entire hour going off about how it was a huge major conspiracy.
Sometimes for fun, he'd show us old episodes of "Seinfield" and "Saturday Night Live," which were his favorite TV shows, and each winter, we'd watch the movie "It's a Wonderful Life," which he felt taught a great lesson for life.
He'd always talk about how the men in his family never lived to be 50 years old. They all died young. He would always say his life was already more than half over. He was in his early 40s, so I wonder if he started getting paranoid that his life was about to end.
I haven't heard if there was a suicide note or not. I'm not sure I want to know what's in the note if there was one, but I wonder what led him to the decision to kill himself.
I loved that man for so many reasons. I think of him often. I had told all my friends and coworkers about him. I'm going to miss him so much.
I am begging all of you...
If you are considering suicide, please get help. Even if you think no one loves you, you're wrong. If you feel like you're all alone, you're wrong. Someone somewhere cares about you, someone loves you. You've touched the life of someone who will miss you if you're gone. Suicide is never the answer. It's a permanent solution to temporary problems, and the rippling effects of a suicide are far-reaching and can hurt many many people.
Or, if you are a family member, friend, or coworker to someone who you think may be suicidal, please don't wait until it's too late. Help them now.
4 comments:
He sounds like a real character. I am sorry he is gone. Excellent post.
Oh what a huge loss to his students. My heart goes out to you Jennifer xx
Indeed.
I'm sorry to hear about this, and I'm sorry for your loss.
Remember that those wise words go for you as well-if you're struggling, we are here, too.
The baseball player Mickey Mantle always used to say that part of the reason he drank so much was that men in his family died young, so he wanted to pack as much living as he could into the years he had.
Of course, as he aged, medicine got better, and he wound up outliving his father by decades, eventually using the throwaway line, "If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself."
Oh, how horrible. I am very sorry you lost someone you cared about, and in such a traumatic way. Awful. It does sound like he was struggling with psychoses - who knows what might have triggered his final desire to get out. Your message, "You think you are alone, you are not" is an important one.
Adventures in Anxiety Land
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