Love & Death

(Having learned that my original blog, Oberon’s Grove, will soon be shutting down, I am bringing forward some of my most-read articles from the Grove to the Glade.)

This story about the joint assisted suicide of British conductor Sir Edward Downes and his wife at a Swiss clinic was both touching and thought-provoking for me. I admire the couple’s courage and am deeply moved that they chose to die together rather than face continuing deteriorating health. Since Dmitry sent the story to me this morning I have not been able to stop thinking about it.

When I was in my darkest days (high school and the three or four years immediately after graduating) I thought often about killing myself. I managed to steal enough sleeping pills from my father’s pharmacy to do the trick, though I lacked the courage to actually take them. I kept the capsules in a place where I knew my mother would never look: in a box of opera cassettes. During the worst days I would think ‘tonight I’ll do it’ but I would come home, isolate myself with my opera recordings and eventually talk myself out of taking the pills. Two things kept me from going thru with it: the thought that either I would not die but somehow be paralyzed or disabled, or that just after I’d swallowed the pills someone would call or come to me with ‘the answer’ and it would be too late.

The other gay boy in town was more courageous; he took his father’s gun and shot himself. It was the talk of the town for days though of course the word ‘queer’ was never mentioned. My mother said the oddest thing to me: “You would never do anything like that, would you?” Well, no…dad doesn’t own a gun for one thing. My plan was to fill the bathtub, light dozens of candles, put on a recording of  ‘Casta diva‘ on endless repeat and get in the tub (fully clothed) and drift away, knowing how horrible my parents would feel when they came home and found me.

As I became more withdrawn and sullen, my parents sent me to a shrink. I went once a week and sat in his office, uncommunicative, as he kept saying in a thick German accent: “I vant to understand zee nature of your problem.” Eventually I told my parents they were wasting their money. The sessions stopped. I got more depressed.

I had flunked out of State university; I had simply not gone to the classes I had registered for, instead spending the days driving around the countryside while my parents assumed I was in class. In danger of being drafted, I enrolled at a community college. My parents found me a room in a rooming house with maid service and I stayed in the room for days on end listening to opera and going out only to buy cookies and milk. I did sometimes go to class though, because I loved my (female) math and Spanish teachers and my (male) Black Lit teacher.

One day I came out from class and it was pouring. I went into the Student Union – I’d never been in there before – to wait out the storm. A girl from my Black Lit class was there with a couple of her friends. She waved me over. It was Ann(e), the person who changed my life.

From there is was still a long road out of the closet but it was her friendship, her notion that being different was the coolest thing possible, her sense of humour and her beautiful singing voice that got me out of my shell. Thoughts of suicide were swept away. The next time I was home I dissolved the pills in boiling water and poured them down the drain – a symbolic act, since by then they were surely no longer potent.

What the joint suicide in Switzerland set me thinking about is that suicide is not for the young; whatever problems a young person might be facing there is always a path or a person that will lead you out of your darkness. Finding the way may be frustrating and things may seem hopeless but it’s worth it to hold on thru the despair. If I had given in on one of those wretched nights, all the beautiful people I have met since then, all the music I have heard, all the dancing I have seen, books I have read, beaches I have walked along, lovers I have lain with, all the poems and paintings would never have been mine. Life is always worth living for the possibilities it affords.

But for Sir Edward and his wife, suicide seems to me a beautiful ending to their long life together; with their happiness and good health in the past they made a decision to venture into the unknown on their own terms. I wish them a peaceful sleep.  

~ Oberon