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Cut Out the Bad Parts, Put Us Back Together
We didn’t know it was suicide until the priest let it slip during mass.
“Remember him for a life of love and generosity, not for one bad choice made at the very end…”
Oh, God. Murmurs ran through the socially distanced congregation. We all turned to the brand-new widow, strung out across a pew. Had she meant to keep his cause of death a secret? Would this make it worse for her? It seemed impossible that she might fracture into even more pieces; she already looked so small.
We must have known, even before the priest’s confession. Nearly all of us in attendance were in medicine or had retired from medicine; today wearing dark suits and confusion instead of our usual scrubs and certainty. We knew bodies don’t quit for no reason. We were used to knowing everything, solving problems, fixing things that broke. Here was something we couldn’t fix; broken in a way we didn’t understand. Our friend, our colleague, our mentor, was in his 50s, and healthy. And now he was gone.
Well, he was in his 50s and healthy, with back problems and decades of depression.
There was that.
Whispers heard during the viewing: “It couldn’t be that/he was happier than he’d ever been/he had so much to live for/they just built that house in the country/he wouldn’t do that to…
