Posts Tagged ‘suicide’

For the second time since the Wall Street debacle really got rolling down the excrement slicked slope, I read about a family found dead in their home.  The first time, they were due to be evicted for lack of paying on the mortgage; this time the parents didn’t wait that long.  Both parents had been fired from their job at a health care giant and they went home, planned to kill their children and themselves.  And they did it. Seven bodies and emailed murder-suicide notes.

I am sure some parts of America would like to think it is just a Southern California phenomenon…..that is where both of these tragedies unfolded.  I am sure millions take comfort from the psycho-babble in the news articles: “Americans tend to over-identify with their jobs; they don’t develop other parts of their personalities and when the job goes, they go with it.”  Really?

I call that kind of thing “whistling in the dark” and it is effective as putting a band-aide on a severed artery.  People might kill themselves out of that kind of imbalanced identification with corporate dronedom, but parents don’t murder their children because they had to turn in their logo polo shirt.  I am not a mental health professional, nor do I play one online, but I have more than a passing acqauintaince with suicidal thoughts and people.  My father committed suicide.  My brother attempted suicide.  In my youth, it was my “ace in the hole” for if my life was too untenable.  It was my connection to other people and to job and duty that pulled me from that edge.

Losing the jobs didn’t put me back there, either.  I suggest that the reality is, these parents DID develop other sides of the personality.  They developed the “My children won’t suffer and do without.” side, for instance.  They developed the “Surely there is help for us, we won’t be on the streets.” side, too.  But this latest family worked for a big health care corporation and doubtless saw people lose homes over medical bills.  They came to know that no, in fact, there really isn’t any help out there.  The states are so financially strapped that they routinely deny unemployment for the vaguest reasons, possibly even falsifying data to justify saying no. (My son, first denied unemployment because he was “imprudent” about taking a day for religious reasons, has now been told he is still denied because he is a full time student and “unavailable to work.”  Except, you see, he IS not a student—he can’t pay the tuition.)  Most families are either wide-spread, or so hard-pressed that they cannot be a safety net either.  The infrastructure is frayed and tattered, if not broken completely and America began largely espousing “If you are poor it is your own fault” when churches became more interested in contributions to pay for Mercedes for the preachers.  So the typical three sources of aid are useless: government, church, family.  I do believe a sense of failure wraps these tragic families in a constrictive grip a python would envy.

Here is what I see as the hard and bitter truth: We are alone in the dark.  There is no help but ourselves and any change coming from Washington above is going to take a very long time to trickle down.  We won’t stop family murder-suicides by branding it as a bad identification with job issue; label it correctly—desperation and despair!  And the next sunshine enema idiot whistling in my presence is going to get a chop in the chops!

(Chart from http://icasualties.org/Iraq/HostileNonHostile.aspx )

Just a word on this topic, because as I wasted time today, (stalling on housework because I am asthmatic and unmotivated) I noted those terms as search terms that bring folks to the website.  Likely that was not a satisfying experience since it is probably they found only the lists of the dead with “non-hostile incident” or “non-combat cause” named as the cause of death.

First off, for the non-military who might be curious, “non-hostile” does not mean natural causes by any means.  It merely means that the death was not caused by the enemy combatants of any sort.  The individual so killed may indeed have been shot, or beat to death, or strangled—but not by an Iraqi or Afghani enemy.

Non-combat deaths could include any number of things, from an ordinary accident to illness.  It could include suicide, although that could be listed as non-hostile as well.

Movies and television shows prepare folks to expect deaths in wartime.  But it only prepares them to expect gunshot or bombs and such as the cause.  The historical truth from time immemorial is that as many or more troops die of non-combat and non-hostile causes.  Illness used to kill literally half of any given army.  That is better now, but not eradicated as a cause of death.  Accidents are still a big killer; people get tired and make mistakes, or they get clumsy or fall asleep at the wheel.  Soldiers and Marines are not immune to exhaustion—they ARE people just like the rest of us in that regard.  Also, because the men and women at war are people, just like people anywhere else, ordinary disagreements happen.  But when they happen where people are routinely armed sometimes death is the result.  Violence between military members is not unheard of at all; in fact sexual assault has been a major problem this war.  At least one woman who is dead was probably murdered following a possible sexual assault.

It is a dangerous world in Iraq and Afghanistan, even if the enemy is no place nearby.  Keep our men and women in your hearts and prayers.  For purposes of the Labyrinth, I don’t care what caused the death; I contend they likely would be alive if they were not sent to the war—-so all the deaths are war-caused for me.  I keep all their names, I hold them all as dedicated to service of the country.  And I am dedicated to their memory.  I count them in my beads—all are precious losses to me.