Every day in email, I get names. Names of men and women dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, and sometimes….back here at home in hospitals. Some names I never get at all…or a handful gleaned from newscasts and magazines: men who made it home physically intact, but died by their own hand, or worse, more shatteringly obvious—”by cop.” I added the names to my books…less than a half dozen. And I knew, in the back of my mind, that there were more. With each passing year, this angry buzz like a queenless hive of bees has gotten louder in my head. I search the web and get nasty suspicions and occasional stories of this or that case—but no list, no VA data.
Well, CBS News has bigger guns than I do. They wrote to all 50 states asking for suicide statistics. Then they matched the results from the 45 states that replied with records of military service. I read the line six times while my mind stubbornly told me that I was doing it wrong, HAD to be doing it wrong. In 2005, 6256 American veterans died by their own hand…..that averages 120 per week. Imagine how America would feel if THAT number was added to the casualty figures for the year at war?
Is there really any question why the VA doesn’t keep or publish such lists…doesn’t even attempt to MAKE such a list? They sort of had to have a list of active duty suicides…from about 1995 to 2007 just a bit over 2100 dead while in uniform. PSTD…it really IS a killer. These numbers sort of float in a vacume; I have not seen statistics on how many vets of other wars died by suicide; though I know it happened then, too.
But I know six thousand, two hundred and fifty six for ONE year has to be some kind of record. Six thousand, two hundred, fifty six families who had sighed with relief because their son, daughter, husband, brother, sister….their worried over beloved came home ALIVE. And then they walked into the basement to find that son hanging by the neck from a loop of garden hose? Some of them took those sons to military facilities in search of help. The VA claims no service member has been turned away—at least one was, even though he openly said he was suicidal; he was put down as #26 on a waiting list for one of 12 beds in a treatment facility for PTSD. He didn’t make the wait.
Should this not speak volumes to us? What are we asking these people to endure, to do, that they so literally and in such large numbers, cannot endure? I want to go outdoors and stand on the walk and scream until I have no more voice; I want to scoop wet ashes out of the firepit and cover the light of my own hair because nothing, nothing should shine until these deaths are acknowledged for the horror and shame that they are. I want to throw glass at stone to hear a sound that echoes the brittle shattering feeling in my chest. I want to enfold those broken men and women to my chest and carry them to some realm with answers to the pain in their heads and hearts.
I cannot imagine words of comfort to the families and friends. I don’t know what words could be even partially adequate. I want the count of the dead amended to acknowledge the true cost. And I want heads on platters…..Salome knows nothing of the dance I could do just now. I would trade any paradise of any religion to be a Valkyrie of punishing power and grace. Oh…for the wings and weapons to make those responsible pay…(Read the entire story here: http://tinyurl.com/yv9xvh)
