What we lived to tell

This is a hard post for me to write, but I have to tell you about my uncle Jr.

First I will tell you that Jr. was a beautiful, healthy, happy child until he was two years old and contracted Rheumatic Fever. He barely survived. Cortisone was a brand new drug and they gave him massive doses to save his life. It did, but we have to wonder what it did to his developing brain.

Nothing was known at the time about the effects of steroids on emotions. If you are reading this and have ever had to take a steroid for allergies, arthritis, or inflammation you know the havoc they play on your emotions.

Looking back, knowing what we know, it all seems so evident. At the time we didn't know what was wrong.

My Uncle committed suicide in 1972, at the time there was no Prozac, Paxil or Effexor. At the time all there was medieval Electroshock treatments, and horrible dungeon like facilities to warehouse the mentally ill. My mother and I talk frequently about how Jr. could have been helped by the new medications.

What prompts me to write this is last week's Post Secret website. This secret haunted me and I had to tell our story to someone.

I joined their message board community and posted. I couldn't keep my feelings inside. God was moving me to tell our story. Just as he as moved me to write this now.

Below is what I posted.

" I am so glad that you posted this card. Anyone who thinks that suicide is glamorous is sadly mistaken. My grandparents came home from the grocery store one Saturday afternoon, and found their son, inside the front door nearly dead from a gunshot wound to the head. They had walked through his blood without realizing it. Neighbors came to help clean up the blood as my grandparents loaded their son onto an ambulance. There was so much blood. Days later my mom came home and found her brother's brain matter on the side of the sofa, that had been missed. Thirty six years later she is still haunted by it. Please think of the horror for whoever would find your body and don't do it!"

Because of that post, someone sent me a private message, that they were the sender of the card. This is the message they sent me-

"thank you for replying. this is my secret. i sent that card months and months ago, maybe a year by now. i never thought it would be posted. obviously, i'm still here. sometimes the only thing still keeping me going is the thought of what my death would do to those i love. it's a hard, hard fight. but it's worth it, and you helped me see that. if what i've gone through could help one person who reads that card, it will e more than worth the struggle. thank you. <3>

Here is what I sent back-

"There was so much more that I wanted to say in that post but didn't, due to space.

I wanted to say how my grandparents NEVER got over walking in and finding their son like that.

They went in to immediate shock and had to be treated at the hospital while the doctors were unsuccessfully trying to save their son.

How my uncle's kids never got to know their dad. How my uncle didn't get to see the good things that happened to his kids growing up, the missed scouting trips, the missed graduations, the missed weddings and births of the grand kids.

The good stuff he missed because he lost hope for a minute and it cost him a lifetime.

I didn't say how my mom still misses her brother every single day, because she does.

I didn't say how my grandmother grieved every, single day for her son until the day she died-just six years later.

Her death certificate states the cause as breast cancer, but we all know it was a broken heart.

She never got over it.

I didn't say how my grandfather could never say that Jr. committed suicide, it was always "did what he did."

He never got over it.

I didn't say that my grandparents really died that day with him. All that was left was a shell. They were able to find a little joy with us grand kids but it was all bittersweet.

The main thing I didn't say was that my uncle kept breathing for thirty-six hours with no blood pressure and no brain activity.

Our family sees this as proof that he did want to live after all. The ramifications go on. I could write forever about what growing up under that specter was like, it wasn't pretty.

But that is one of my main points-life isn't pretty, but you hitch up your pants and tell yourself that tomorrow will be better. BECAUSE IT WILL!

My uncle committed suicide in 1972. Paxil, Prozac, and Effexor weren't invented until around 1990. There was no help for depression then, other than the medieval electric shock and horrible institutions. But there is help now, all you have to do is ask. There is nothing wrong with needing help. All you have to do is ask."

I don't know if the sender of the message to me is really the person who sent that card but whoever did message me, does understand the horror of the act. I haven't heard back from the person, I doubt that I ever will.

So maybe if one person can see what I wrote and realize the horror of suicide, that my uncle will not have died in vain. We miss him every day. EVERY DAY.

I have to tell you one more thing, at the time of my uncle's death, he didn't have a job and was having a terrible time finding one. Things were hard at our house. My granddaddy's work schedule was down to three days per week. Money was tight. My uncle's wife left him and took their two children. His daughter was not yet two and his son was five months old. She signed up for food stamps and welfare, so the county sheriff came and arrested him for non-support.

They locked him in a jail that was from the Civil War era. It was a dark, damp, stinking, nasty dungeon. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. My granddaddy was able to bail him out using the title to our home.

Saturday morning came and when my grandparents were leaving to go to the store, my uncle gave my grandmother a little store list. He wanted some razors,shaving cream, a few other things, not much, but my granddaddy made some type of hateful remark about hadn't he cost him enough money already this week. My uncle felt like a burden.

The week after his burial, THE WEEK AFTER, he received a job offer from the State Department of Highways.
A JOB OFFER!
IF ONLY he had held on another week his problems would have been so much lighter!
A WEEK!!!!

I have so much more that I want to write about the aftermath.

If you come by from google and see this, and are considering ending it, please for the love of all that is holy, call someone, call 1-800-SUICIDE, go for a walk, pet a dog or a cat, but please think of what you will leave behind.

Whether you know or not YOU ARE PRECIOUS TO SOMEONE. I KNOW THAT YOU ARE PRECIOUS TO GOD AND HE WOULDN'T WANT YOU TO KILL YOURSELF.