Entry tags:
Goodbye, Bart.
I write this on World Suicide Prevention Day.
“Like a wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we were, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.”
― Harlan Ellison
On Monday, Bart, a friend of mine from high school days took his own life. It took him until Wednesday afternoon to finish dying, but he was gone as soon as the bullet hit his brain.
The night he killed himself, he was home with his family, watching TV & drinking. At some point, he got up, said "Well, I'm going to go kill myself now," and someone said something like "Yeah right"...and then everyone heard the shot from his room a few minutes after that. There were workmen in the house; contractors doing some sort of work. They arrived in the room first and didn't allow the family in. But the bullet didn't leave an exit wound, it stayed inside his head, and there was no mess.
Bart's body was taken to the hospital where it stayed on life support until Wednesday afternoon. The heart beat on, the lungs took in breath for an hour or so more, and then finally his body stilled and he was pronounced dead at 5:05 PM CST on September 9, 2015.
(I don't know why these details are so important for me to write; but they are satisfying in the same way I suppose it was seen as proper and right that a man's loved ones should wash and dress his corpse, presenting it to Death neat and tidy and all ready to go, back in olden times. These facts, numbers, and words will be here long after Bart and I are gone to dust. I want you to know them. They are important, somehow.)
We hadn't been in touch for a while; we were 'facebook friends' for a while but when another mutual friend mentioned his suicide, I went to Bart's facebook page and saw that we had gotten unfriended at some point. I don't know if it was a FB 'glitch' or if he unfriended me or if I had unfriended him at some point for whatever reasons...I don't know. I don't remember. (This is why it's important to write things down. All the small things. They are important, somehow.)
Bart was beautiful, in the way that only a trueborn redhead can be. Not the orange carrot top hair with teenage bad skin and spotty freckles all over, but dark auburn red hair, with perfect soft pale skin and deep red-brown-green eyes, the color of a still forest pool all full of Autumn leaves at the bottom. He was incredibly beautiful. Incandescent. A fire and a destructive power you knew would hurt if you got too close.
At the same time, he was loud and funny and just bigger than life....one from the John Belushi, John Candy, Chris Farley archetype, with a little Bill Hicks thrown in for good measure. Bart never stopped moving, never stopped smiling, never stopped making everyone around him laugh. Nobody could drop the F Bomb like Bart. He was so intelligent and quick witted. I had a mad crush on him in school but I could always sense that destructive darkness under the surface and kept a little distance because of it. (Looking back, I wish I'd had the courage to love him as much as I wanted to. But my mind has always been a stern guardian of my heart, to its great detriment....and, I think, mine.)
I remember we were in a play together my senior year, his junior. A Midsummer Night's Dream. I was Moth, a minor fairy with a couple of my close girlfriends as Cobweb and Pease-Blossom & he was Snug, one of the Rude Mechanicals, the lion. One night he came to the show high on something and having a bad trip. He was hot and sweating, his eyes were big as saucers, he was shaking....and so me and my fairy friends sat backstage with him and hugged him and held him and he sat with his head in my lap and I petted his long soft red hair until he stopped shaking and then it was his cue to be on and as usual he took the stage and stole the show.
Later on, Bart and Mike and I all got involved in the Rocky Horror 'cast' scene, Bart and Mike in San Antonio, me in Austin. I was Columbia once in San Antonio, to Bart's Eddie. If you've never attempted to re-enact Little Nell's dancing scenes, you probably don't know this, but she was apparently the only professional dancer in the movie's cast...and her dancing is hard to reproduce if you're not a professional dancer. The night of that performance, I was a clumsy mess, and I had forgotten my moves, but Bart rescued me. He grabbed me and said "Just go with it!" and somehow made us both look great. He was such a wonderful actor. It was a whirlwind. It was amazing. He was so goddamn beautiful. (and if you think he couldn't possibly be beautiful because he was fat...well, you can fuck right off. Bart was a beautiful person, inside and out.)
I dated Mike T., one of his very best friends for a while in high school and we stayed together for a little while after I went on to college, eventually broke up, but remained friends, keeping in touch intermittently over time. Yesterday, Mike reminded me that they met for the first time in my car, when Bart ran up to my car out of nowhere and jumped in. I used to give everyone rides home after school. Such fun. Mike and Bart became best friends pretty much instantly. Bart had that effect on people. He just had this big, friendly, goofy, open-hearted personality that drew you in.
Mike called me from the hospital yesterday afternoon when they had taken Bart's body off of life support, and he was finishing dying. I was thinking about that night backstage while we were talking, as I looked out the window of my workplace and my eyes traced the path of squirrels running around in the oak tree while Mike's warm and familiar voice rambled on. I don't remember the whole conversation; I think we were both mostly trying to keep it light and friendly, but we touched lightly on the hard and sad reasons for Bart leaving us.....he was an alcoholic. He had drunk himself nearly to death a couple of times recently. He was struggling with darkness. He had cared for his sick father for a long time. His father had dementia and was terribly abusive there at the end. I gather the real abuse was not just during his last days but all throughout Bart's life, but more overtly when his father's mind had left him.
It seemed that Bart held himself together while he was care-giving but spun out after his dad died in 2012, becoming more depressed and alcoholic after his father's passing, instead of getting better once the pressure of caregiving and the misery of daily abuse was gone. (Why do we go on to abuse ourselves harder and worse once our abusers are gone from our lives? It's a pattern I've noted in myself and others over the years. It takes a lot to overcome those feelings of deserving and almost needing to be hurt and mistreated.)
During this whole conversation, as my eyes followed the squirrels and my ears took in Mike's fuzzy voice, I pictured in my mind that night in the dusty darkness of backstage at the Roosevelt auditorium, Bart's big frightened eyes staring up at me, the heat coming off his sweating back through his lion costume as we fairies soothed him and petted him and let him know it was OK. It's just a bad trip, Bart, it's not real, you're OK. It's going to be OK. We're here with you.
We hung up, or the call was dropped, and Mike texted me to say he'd call later. I texted Mike a few minutes later, at 5:05, just by way of strange coincidence exactly the time of Bart's Official Death, thanking him for being there in the hospital with Bart to support his other best friend ('The Three Musketeers') and Bart's family.
As promised, Mike called me back yesterday evening and we talked some more. We agreed it was eerie, but fitting, that things began and ended with the three of us, just like that. Me and Mike in my car all those years ago, Bart jumping in and becoming Mike's insta-best friend for life....us talking on the phone and then me texting Mike just as Bart's body finished its fight to live....what twisted little bookends.
It seems that Bart's mom and siblings were not there for him while he was taking care of his dad....and that they weren't there for him at the end.....had maybe never been there though a lifetime of being the middle child, the M. Bart Junior, the target of their dad's abuse...but he had been on a self destructive trip for a few years at this point, and as awful as it seems....I can understand burning out on caring more about a person than he seemed to care about himself. Why take this suicide joke seriously when there had been so many others? Maybe they were tired of his shit.
I'm trying hard not to think badly of his family...but from everything I can see, he was hurting for so long. They are just a few of many who just didn't see it clearly and didn't do anything to try and help....myself included. Or maybe they did. I don't know. I'm making a lot of assumptions at this point. Second guessing. Woulda coulda shoulda mighta...these must all fall into his grave with a final acceptance of what is.
Bart didn't make his final decision in an attempt to hurt anyone or disrespect his family & friends or anything like that...he was out of cope and just couldn't think of another way to deal with his pain. I'm not mad at him. At least not right now.
Bart is not hurting anymore. The pain he could no longer bear alone, that no one could help him bear, has been diffused into the Universe--a small sharp piece into everyone who loved him, for us to carry with us until our own end.
The pain is a reminder that I'm alive, a reminder that he was loved. A beautiful heartbreak. A scar to treasure. A reminder that someday it will be me. One more piece of my illusion of immortality chipped away.
One last note, about Crows:
I got the news of Bart's suicide Tuesday afternoon via post on Mike's Facebook. At that point I thought it was a done deal, that he was gone.
On Wednesday morning I got up to get ready for work and there was the unaccustomed and unprecedented sound of crows calling to each other in my back yard, the feeders empty of the usual assortment of cardinals, chickadees, finches, and the odd squirrel.
Then I got to work and got more details from various friends' texts and FB posts, that his body was still on life support but the family planned to remove life support soon. I spent the day at work, crying and wishing I had known there was still some part of him to touch and bid farewell, so I could be there. Texts and phone call with Mike. Bart's legal death at 5:05 PM
When I got home yesterday evening, the feeders were still empty and the crows were still outside, calling from the trees somewhere across the creek from my back yard.
This morning, the crows were gone and we were back to the usual cardinals and such at the feeders.
Bart was a fan of Game of Thrones, and listed his profession on Facebook as "Ranger at Nights Watch". A Crow.
I would like to think of the crows as one last touch, a dramatic flourish to show Bart on his way onward.
"And Now His Watch Is Ended"
“Like a wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we were, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.”
― Harlan Ellison
On Monday, Bart, a friend of mine from high school days took his own life. It took him until Wednesday afternoon to finish dying, but he was gone as soon as the bullet hit his brain.
The night he killed himself, he was home with his family, watching TV & drinking. At some point, he got up, said "Well, I'm going to go kill myself now," and someone said something like "Yeah right"...and then everyone heard the shot from his room a few minutes after that. There were workmen in the house; contractors doing some sort of work. They arrived in the room first and didn't allow the family in. But the bullet didn't leave an exit wound, it stayed inside his head, and there was no mess.
Bart's body was taken to the hospital where it stayed on life support until Wednesday afternoon. The heart beat on, the lungs took in breath for an hour or so more, and then finally his body stilled and he was pronounced dead at 5:05 PM CST on September 9, 2015.
(I don't know why these details are so important for me to write; but they are satisfying in the same way I suppose it was seen as proper and right that a man's loved ones should wash and dress his corpse, presenting it to Death neat and tidy and all ready to go, back in olden times. These facts, numbers, and words will be here long after Bart and I are gone to dust. I want you to know them. They are important, somehow.)
We hadn't been in touch for a while; we were 'facebook friends' for a while but when another mutual friend mentioned his suicide, I went to Bart's facebook page and saw that we had gotten unfriended at some point. I don't know if it was a FB 'glitch' or if he unfriended me or if I had unfriended him at some point for whatever reasons...I don't know. I don't remember. (This is why it's important to write things down. All the small things. They are important, somehow.)
Bart was beautiful, in the way that only a trueborn redhead can be. Not the orange carrot top hair with teenage bad skin and spotty freckles all over, but dark auburn red hair, with perfect soft pale skin and deep red-brown-green eyes, the color of a still forest pool all full of Autumn leaves at the bottom. He was incredibly beautiful. Incandescent. A fire and a destructive power you knew would hurt if you got too close.
At the same time, he was loud and funny and just bigger than life....one from the John Belushi, John Candy, Chris Farley archetype, with a little Bill Hicks thrown in for good measure. Bart never stopped moving, never stopped smiling, never stopped making everyone around him laugh. Nobody could drop the F Bomb like Bart. He was so intelligent and quick witted. I had a mad crush on him in school but I could always sense that destructive darkness under the surface and kept a little distance because of it. (Looking back, I wish I'd had the courage to love him as much as I wanted to. But my mind has always been a stern guardian of my heart, to its great detriment....and, I think, mine.)
I remember we were in a play together my senior year, his junior. A Midsummer Night's Dream. I was Moth, a minor fairy with a couple of my close girlfriends as Cobweb and Pease-Blossom & he was Snug, one of the Rude Mechanicals, the lion. One night he came to the show high on something and having a bad trip. He was hot and sweating, his eyes were big as saucers, he was shaking....and so me and my fairy friends sat backstage with him and hugged him and held him and he sat with his head in my lap and I petted his long soft red hair until he stopped shaking and then it was his cue to be on and as usual he took the stage and stole the show.
Later on, Bart and Mike and I all got involved in the Rocky Horror 'cast' scene, Bart and Mike in San Antonio, me in Austin. I was Columbia once in San Antonio, to Bart's Eddie. If you've never attempted to re-enact Little Nell's dancing scenes, you probably don't know this, but she was apparently the only professional dancer in the movie's cast...and her dancing is hard to reproduce if you're not a professional dancer. The night of that performance, I was a clumsy mess, and I had forgotten my moves, but Bart rescued me. He grabbed me and said "Just go with it!" and somehow made us both look great. He was such a wonderful actor. It was a whirlwind. It was amazing. He was so goddamn beautiful. (and if you think he couldn't possibly be beautiful because he was fat...well, you can fuck right off. Bart was a beautiful person, inside and out.)
I dated Mike T., one of his very best friends for a while in high school and we stayed together for a little while after I went on to college, eventually broke up, but remained friends, keeping in touch intermittently over time. Yesterday, Mike reminded me that they met for the first time in my car, when Bart ran up to my car out of nowhere and jumped in. I used to give everyone rides home after school. Such fun. Mike and Bart became best friends pretty much instantly. Bart had that effect on people. He just had this big, friendly, goofy, open-hearted personality that drew you in.
Mike called me from the hospital yesterday afternoon when they had taken Bart's body off of life support, and he was finishing dying. I was thinking about that night backstage while we were talking, as I looked out the window of my workplace and my eyes traced the path of squirrels running around in the oak tree while Mike's warm and familiar voice rambled on. I don't remember the whole conversation; I think we were both mostly trying to keep it light and friendly, but we touched lightly on the hard and sad reasons for Bart leaving us.....he was an alcoholic. He had drunk himself nearly to death a couple of times recently. He was struggling with darkness. He had cared for his sick father for a long time. His father had dementia and was terribly abusive there at the end. I gather the real abuse was not just during his last days but all throughout Bart's life, but more overtly when his father's mind had left him.
It seemed that Bart held himself together while he was care-giving but spun out after his dad died in 2012, becoming more depressed and alcoholic after his father's passing, instead of getting better once the pressure of caregiving and the misery of daily abuse was gone. (Why do we go on to abuse ourselves harder and worse once our abusers are gone from our lives? It's a pattern I've noted in myself and others over the years. It takes a lot to overcome those feelings of deserving and almost needing to be hurt and mistreated.)
During this whole conversation, as my eyes followed the squirrels and my ears took in Mike's fuzzy voice, I pictured in my mind that night in the dusty darkness of backstage at the Roosevelt auditorium, Bart's big frightened eyes staring up at me, the heat coming off his sweating back through his lion costume as we fairies soothed him and petted him and let him know it was OK. It's just a bad trip, Bart, it's not real, you're OK. It's going to be OK. We're here with you.
We hung up, or the call was dropped, and Mike texted me to say he'd call later. I texted Mike a few minutes later, at 5:05, just by way of strange coincidence exactly the time of Bart's Official Death, thanking him for being there in the hospital with Bart to support his other best friend ('The Three Musketeers') and Bart's family.
As promised, Mike called me back yesterday evening and we talked some more. We agreed it was eerie, but fitting, that things began and ended with the three of us, just like that. Me and Mike in my car all those years ago, Bart jumping in and becoming Mike's insta-best friend for life....us talking on the phone and then me texting Mike just as Bart's body finished its fight to live....what twisted little bookends.
It seems that Bart's mom and siblings were not there for him while he was taking care of his dad....and that they weren't there for him at the end.....had maybe never been there though a lifetime of being the middle child, the M. Bart Junior, the target of their dad's abuse...but he had been on a self destructive trip for a few years at this point, and as awful as it seems....I can understand burning out on caring more about a person than he seemed to care about himself. Why take this suicide joke seriously when there had been so many others? Maybe they were tired of his shit.
I'm trying hard not to think badly of his family...but from everything I can see, he was hurting for so long. They are just a few of many who just didn't see it clearly and didn't do anything to try and help....myself included. Or maybe they did. I don't know. I'm making a lot of assumptions at this point. Second guessing. Woulda coulda shoulda mighta...these must all fall into his grave with a final acceptance of what is.
Bart didn't make his final decision in an attempt to hurt anyone or disrespect his family & friends or anything like that...he was out of cope and just couldn't think of another way to deal with his pain. I'm not mad at him. At least not right now.
Bart is not hurting anymore. The pain he could no longer bear alone, that no one could help him bear, has been diffused into the Universe--a small sharp piece into everyone who loved him, for us to carry with us until our own end.
The pain is a reminder that I'm alive, a reminder that he was loved. A beautiful heartbreak. A scar to treasure. A reminder that someday it will be me. One more piece of my illusion of immortality chipped away.
One last note, about Crows:
I got the news of Bart's suicide Tuesday afternoon via post on Mike's Facebook. At that point I thought it was a done deal, that he was gone.
On Wednesday morning I got up to get ready for work and there was the unaccustomed and unprecedented sound of crows calling to each other in my back yard, the feeders empty of the usual assortment of cardinals, chickadees, finches, and the odd squirrel.
Then I got to work and got more details from various friends' texts and FB posts, that his body was still on life support but the family planned to remove life support soon. I spent the day at work, crying and wishing I had known there was still some part of him to touch and bid farewell, so I could be there. Texts and phone call with Mike. Bart's legal death at 5:05 PM
When I got home yesterday evening, the feeders were still empty and the crows were still outside, calling from the trees somewhere across the creek from my back yard.
This morning, the crows were gone and we were back to the usual cardinals and such at the feeders.
Bart was a fan of Game of Thrones, and listed his profession on Facebook as "Ranger at Nights Watch". A Crow.
I would like to think of the crows as one last touch, a dramatic flourish to show Bart on his way onward.
"And Now His Watch Is Ended"