Editor’s Note: Marlow brings back some memories from a quarter century ago. Not good ones. We all share them, though. Last night there was the monthly gathering of the tribe down in Old Town at the Sonoma Cellars wine bar. Our missing comrades could have been there had they made other choices.

– Vic
April 21, 2017

What It Was Wasn’t Exactly Clear

Coastal Empire

I came across an early 1990’s funeral card for one of our nation’s active duty Navy spooks. He was one of a series of wonderful people who shockingly suicided themselves during a short period of time.

We survivors thought we were smart, but there was so much we didn’t know then. The causes and effects did not start to become clear until much much later. All we had for many years was the sadness.

As our bodies aged and fact-filled, prowling minds relaxed, we dropped the filters of what we were, and so began to see beyond the anguish more clearly and deeply.

four of our best died by their own hand

in the 90s to get away,

and we who they left behind

never quite understood

how strongly they

wanted to

get away

from it

all

They were senior officers in their mid-forties, when they finished themselves off. There’d be no more morning coffee sipping, office politics, Christmas parties, birthdays, and payments on new cars and bills for electricity, gas, water — the whole enchilada of necessities.

They were really likeable and smart guys, married with children. I wondered if they had concluded the world was senseless only to discover that this awareness almost gave it some sense. You know what I mean – sort of an optimistic pessimism. Did their choice came down to “kill myself or love myself?”

In the end they had nothing, and they found out that having nothing was too difficult. It was an unbearable burden. If only there’d been some gentler road in between. To those left behind, they had other choices. They only saw one.

It took a long time to first see that.

They had no more interest. In anything. They had no idea how to escape. We blind mice still had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that we didn’t understand. Maybe we were lacking. It was possible. They just wanted to get away. But there was no place to go. Suicide? Jesus Christ. The color in their eyes went back into the ocean, as they drove over the sea cliff edge.

Copyright © 2017 From My Isle Seat/Bukowski
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