My Life With Death: Suicide & Survival

I was never great at problem-solving.

What do you do when you've lived your life and survived? Do you get a pistol and kill yourself? Do you shoot yourself in the head? If so, how do you do it? Point at your temple? Or do you shove the gun to the back of your throat, pointed up to get a good shot, to do the deed, seal the deal? 

Your arms are not long enough to hold a shotgun. Also, you don't own a shotgun.

There are many variables in something you've seen perfectly executed thousands of times, in films. In movies, most of the time, when people get killed, they get killed with a bullet. Pills are for the wealthy. And people with health insurance.

You have bleach, a box of razor blades you bought twenty years ago, at Flax, and a very sharp chef's knife. But the knife was a birthday gift, so it seems disrespectful to use it to slit your wrists. Plus, wrist slitting seems like a serious challenge, and you've never been good with details.

It's a method of problem-solving. It's a process of a set of rules. It's Wikipedia. They trick you. They teach you how to multiply numbers. They tell you that x=0. But they never call it a language or reveal that zero means nothing. Except for a vertical line.

What you want to do is: put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. Die in the bathtub, or maybe a field of gravel. Surrounded by blood: trickling, splattering, dripping. Sticky hair, messy. But not too messy—the whole point is to die with as little mess as possible, hence the bathtub. But a field doesn't require the heartache of cleanup. Death is nature. Natural. Earthy. Tangible.

Life's A Party

So is death.

I am my world. My spinning world of love and grief and memories. My world of my words. My world of my worlds.

At first, it’s a party. People come over.  They bring food and flowers and booze. They clean. They cook.  "Hey there, how's everything going with you?"? They ask because they truthfully want to know.  They carry books and ask you to go on walks.  They plan the memorial. They stay by your side on that day of celebration. Like a birthday party, a memorial celebrates a life. 

The memorial is the last phase of people gifting you their time. They must get back to their lives

How are you doing?  The soft voices that ask the caring questions evolve in tone, speed, and intonation. Topics. Conversations evolve into the talk of life—the lives of the living. 

Now. For whom do I cook?  Who do I cook with? How do I comfort others? How do I adjust to a new life without that person's existence? Have I started adjusting? 

I start feeling myriad emotions. I brush my teeth and think downward dog. I boil jasmine tea in my electric kettle. I call my doctor to make an appointment. I Organize some yarn. 

I'm new here. I navigate the unfamiliar terrain of amnesia. I knit together a semblance of connection, one stitch at a time.