Wednesday, September 6, 2006

Our friend Bri

Today marks the one year anniversary of one of my friends committing suicide. I miss him. I still have some left over anger at him for doing it though. But I'm mostly sad for his girlfriend who is also a friend. Another friend, H Ditty and I have let her know we're available for her tonight if she wants to do anything, even if it's just to hang out and commiserate.

It was very surreal, that night. H Ditty had been at work and called me up to go online and see when our friend had last logged onto the fantasy football site. While doing that he got a call back from our other friend, JW saying that the girlfriend, CW, had found him out in the garage.

The cops went onto his computer to see what they could find and found that he had been researching on how to do it for some time. He finally decided on using the gas grill in the car, car in the closed garage trick. He had found that doing that was actually faster than just sitting in your car in the closed garage with it running trick.

What I still have some anger over is the gas grill. CW, who already takes things very personally and accepts guilt when she shouldn't had asked for a gas grill for her birthday which was the very next week. So of course she was blaming herself that night. I kept telling her to stop doing that, I know she felt she had to but it was his choice and he was going to do it one way or the other. It was just bad luck that during his research he found the gas grill would be better for his plans. I don't know if she's let that go or not, I haven't asked and I won't unless she brings it up herself.

I don't know what all was in his letter, at least he left one, but I do know that he said he was tired of being angry all the time and that she shouldn't blame herself. So that's the other reason I'm still a little angry with him, if he was tired of it, go get help there's all kinds of help out there. But of course there was more to it and I have never been in that situation so I don't know what it's like.

I can't even begin to imagine it, I'm one of the few lucky ones I guess. Even as a teenager I never wanted to kill myself. I only know a few people who are like me, most everyone I know has thought about it one time or another. I mean, I've said I wish I were dead before, but that's exaggeration talking when I've been embarrassed. But I've never meant it and I've never fantasized about it. I'm also lucky in that I don't suffer from any form of depression.

Obviously my friend had. Anger is a symptom of depression and more than likely that's what he was and not actually angry.

They had just been at our house two days before for the football draft and cookout. He had been laughing and having a good time, he had done a real job of drafting his team. That was one of the first questions I asked, did he draft like he should have or did he do it willy nilly. H Ditty said his team was one of the better ones, he did a really good job of it. He had been loving towards CW and even joking around with another friend that he had had a falling out with a little over a year earlier.

When I asked her if there had been any signs that we might have missed she said there were only a couple that in hindsight seemed odd. He had been more loving, more touchy feely than he had ever been before. They had been getting along a lot more than they had been lately. And the day of he was wearing jeans instead of shorts, normally he wore shorts to work. But it was Sept. so she thought maybe he was just changing to cooler weather clothes. Other than that there was nothing. She chalked them getting along better to him accepting things more, maturing. We're all in our young to mid 30's he was in his mid 20's.

During the wake and the few weeks after, different people were saying what they remembered about him. Many said all they could picture was him in the coffin. I'm lucky, the first image that comes to mind is of a happy time. We're all playing asshole (drinking game for those of you who don't know) and he's the asshole. The friend that he had the falling out with (but at this time hadn't happened yet) is sitting next to him. He's dealing the cards and every time he deals to the fall out friend he tosses his cards to the floor. Of course, fall out friend didn't like it but I found it highly amusing. The second image is him sitting at a table leaning in on one elbow with his hand near his mouth and his other moving around a lot as he's talking, laughing his goofy laugh. That's what I kept hearing for weeks afterward, his laugh and his favorite way to begin a sentence.

A year later and I still hear them. I hope I always will.

We miss you Bri, always will.

No media quote, just a regular one today: "The thing is, is..." - our friend, rest in peace

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was just catching up on my reading, when I saw this. I am very sorry for your loss. It is so hard to understand, and there are no answers, really. I hope all of his friends are healing.

Katrina said...

Thanks for your kind words.

It's extremely hard to understand. We kept going over and over as I'm sure everyone does, the questions of why did he do it and what could we have done to prevent it.

We'll never know all the answers as to why, even with the note, there's no way of knowing everything. And I've come to the conclusion there's nothing we could have done to prevent it. He wanted to do it so even if this time had been prevented he would have done it another day.