I don’t normally get too personal on this blog. I mostly write about what’s going on politically in this country, or about sports, or something trivial. Today’s post is going to be very different.
My cousin killed himself yesterday. And I’m kind of numb right now. Of course I’m sad, angry, confused, but I’m mostly numb. Beba (his name is actually Booker, named after my uncle and grandfather. The family called him Little B, but I couldn’t pronounce it as a toddler, all I could say was Beba) was 9 months older than me, and we were very close growing up, but drifted apart as we got older. We had an almost sibling like rivalry as kids, due mostly to our closeness in age and being the only grandkids until my sister was born when we were 6.
I was always jealous of B – he had a lot of “stuff” and was way cooler than me. He had Granddaddy’s name. His dad had a motorcycle and played sports with him. I was his nerdy cousin from Virginia, but whenever we visited, he didn’t seem to mind me following him around like a puppy. He played football, baseball and basketball. I played soccer. It was the 70’s and 80’s, when soccer was the sport of geeks who couldn’t play anything else. He taught me how to swing a baseball bat and how to make a lay-up.
I found out much later how much he envied me. Imagine that, he was actually jealous of me all those years – jealous of my grades, and the fact that I had a little brother and sister. Jealous that I was able to keep my room messy. One of the things I was most jealous of – his name – was a weight on him I only recently understood. My grandfather was a great man, a very important man in Charlottesville who played a huge role in the desegregation of the city’s schools. Charlottesville was one of the few places in the South that didn’t have the tremendous violence and upheaval associated with school integration thank to the work of Granddaddy. Granddaddy went to Howard. He was an Alpha. And my uncle and B had to live up to those expectations. I can’t really explain it – it’s a very Southern/Machismo thing that I can’t explain, but I can feel down the depths of my very being. And by my being the son of his daughter, I didn’t have the same weight placed upon me. B, I’m sorry. I didn’t know until I was grown what it was like for you.
As we got older, we drifted apart, as kids do. But recently, we'd been e-mailing each other and talking on the phone. He was going to teach me how to ride a motorcycle, we'd been trying to get together after work for a drink, but could never mesh our schedules.
I don’t know why he did it. Sure, there are all the tell-tale symptoms – depression, hopelessness, etc., but what makes someone take that final, ultimate step?
Several years ago, I was at the same crossroad that Beba was at yesterday. My marriage was ending, I had survived a horrific accident that nearly killed me, my finances were a mess, and I felt completely and utterly alone. I can even remember the exact day and what was going on in my head. I couldn’t afford the rent on the apartment my ex-wife and I had – 2 incomes go a lot further than. And I didn’t care. All I could think about was what a failure I was. I hated my job, my wife left me, and no one in the world could ever understand the pain I was going through. I was like I was blind and being sucked into a whirlpool. I was too proud to ask for help and decided the only way to feel better was to stop feeling. I had made up my mind that day to end it all, but luckily for me, my ex-wife called my father and told him she was worried about me. Dad called me and convinced me to drive down to his house for dinner. I never told him until last night, but he and Tara saved my life.
Of course, now I’m wondering about all the “what-ifs”. What if my uncle had been able to reach him earlier yesterday morning (he knew B was feeling bad, but of course know one knew how bad he was doing), what if I had picked up the phone and called him on Sunday to watch a football game, what if he had just taken his meds. We’ll never know.
And now we, the family, are trying to make sense of all of this. And I don’t know if we ever will.
