suicide - grace grits and gardening

Today I intended to write about my weekend and the spring-like weather and how my tulips and daffodils are peeking through the soil and how one incredible thing after another happened including I got a new car! And, all these things are true.

Maybe I’ll write about them tomorrow.

But today?

Today, I sit and stare into space trying to wrap my brain around the devastating news I received just hours ago. News that a friend has died.

I attended Baylor with Craig Farrelly. He was in my wedding.

One week ago, I saw his sweet wife at my book signing in Blytheville. We briefly chatted about their recent move from Osceola to Memphis. I didn’t get a chance to ask where’s Craig? but I assumed he was somewhere inside the crowded bookstore. Craig knew everyone, and he loved to talk and laugh and was not the type to stand in a long, slow, boring line.

But I never saw him. And that was that.

Today, everything I’ve been working toward and worrying about seems inconsequential as I am reminded that life is oh so fleeting and precious and unpredictable. We have such a limited time to make a difference, to help someone, to brighten someone’s day.

To do something that matters.

To be kind to one another.

To exist.

Today, I sit and stare into space and search for an answer knowing there isn’t one. And I’m feeling smothered with friend guilt, wondering if I could have done anything. Any small thing to make a difference.

After a week of warm weather, snow is in the forecast for Northwest Arkansas, and I think about my tender tulips and daffodils barely poking through the ground, and it all seems so incredibly tragic.

RIP friend.

Musical Pairing:
James Taylor & Carly Simon, Close Your Eyes

I had one of those blah days, you know the sort, a day when everything drags along a bit out of sync. It all began with a gush of stagnant water from my front load washing machine—a frozen pipe. Luckily the pipe didn’t burst, so things could have been worse. Much worse.

The afternoon brought news of yet another short story rejection. I’ve learned to dismiss these rejections as quickly as spam—it’s all part of the roller coaster. But even so, sometimes I wonder why I bother.

There were other things about the day too. Dull, drab sort of things I won’t bore you with, but the sum of which added up to a complete waste of makeup sort of day.

That is…until I learned my friend’s long-time partner committed suicide. He lost his battle with depression.

In that split second I realized I’ve never had a bad day. Not really.

I don’t understand depression. I haven’t had to, not directly, and for that I’m thankful. As I try to wrap my hands around this horror, I think depression must be like cancer, something that takes hold, slowly eats away until the bad outweighs the good. Or maybe depression is like the weather. Something that can’t be turned on or off or controlled. It just is.

I don’t pretend to know. I only know we are all connected, and one person’s death has affected so many.

The morning after this shocking news, I watched the sun rise above the Live Oaks in our neighborhood. The glow spread extra pink, extra bright, so exuberant it seemed disrespectful. Yet the sun doesn’t comprehend life’s tragedies.

Or maybe it does.

Maybe sunrise is our most visible sign of hope.