The First Time

Suicide is something I’m not sure I will ever understand.  Intellectually, I understand the whys of it, but emotionally,  well that’s something altogether different.  I’ve known quite a few people who have chosen this exit path.  All in all, there have been about fifteen to twenty suicides among friends and family.  As a lot of my readers know, two of these have been my brothers.  Each of these tragedies has left its mark.  This week another friend also chose this route.  It made me think of the first suicide I was aware of.

The first time I encountered a suicide, I was about five years old.  I think it was the summer before I began kindergarten.  I didn’t know what it meant for someone to die but I knew it was a very sad thing.  My father’s uncle had died a few months before and for the first time in my life, I had seen my father cry for the uncle who took his father’s place when his father ran off before my dad was born.  My dad’s tears meant that dying was something horrible.  So when my oldest brother, Carlos, came home and told my mom that his good friend Tommy had died and that he had killed himself, I knew the emotions; I knew it was a very bad thing that had happened.  I remember how my mother, who had been making tortillas for our dinner, turned absolutely white then had to sit in the chair at the table.  She cried and cried and kept asking “Why?  Why?  What could be so bad in his life that he would kill himself?  Why?”  She kept asking Carlos if he was sure it was true.  She sent my brother to Maio’s Market on the corner to get the evening paper.  Later, when my dad got home from work, my mom, still shaking and having  trouble keeping from crying, told him what had happened.  They talked about how unbelievable it was; how Tommy had always seemed to be such a happy-go-lucky kid; how incredulous it was that he would take his own life.

I remember how my mom took care of her kitchen radio after that.  She always had before but after Tommy died, she took special care of it.  She didn’t let anyone touch it and she refused to clean the greasy fingerprints that Tommy had left on it the last time he had been at our house.  You see, my mom’s radio kept her company in the kitchen where she spent most of her day preparing meals or cleaning up after meals for her family of nine.  She would sing along with the radio and listen to talk shows and the news on it.  It was her lifeline to the world outside of our house.  So when the radio broke, she was more than sad.  My dad wasn’t able to fix it so she had no radio.  When Tommy was over one day, he asked my mom why the radio wasn’t on.  She told him it was broken.  Tommy took it apart to fix it and he did!  My mom was very grateful and wanted to pay him but she had no money that day.  Mom told Tommy that the next time he came over she would have a treat for him.  He said it was okay, she didn’t have to pay him.  He smiled at her through his black framed glasses, clearly proud of himself.  Mom hugged Tommy and thanked him before he got on his bike and rode home.

Mom never got to pay Tommy.  A week after he fixed her radio, Tommy hung himself in his parents’ garage.  He was thirteen.