There's No Such Thing As A Good-Looking Corpse

by ComputerBob

December 25, 1997

Dear Ron,

Your suicide didn't surprise me. Less than a week before you stepped in front of that freight train, I dreamed that we were all at your funeral. In fact, ever since you were fourteen, and you told me that you couldn't have a conversation with someone unless you had had a drink beforehand, I had known that suicide was a very real possibility in your life. It just seemed like almost the logical conclusion to the story of your life the way you had chosen to live it. It's kind of like I had had my ear to the track and had heard that train coming for years. In the beginning, when I tried to tell you, you didn't want to hear it. Toward the end, I think you must have known it yourself but were too terrified to talk about it. The morning that you left us, that Saturday right before Thanksgiving, 1996, I went to my regular church worship team practice. Afterward, I asked the group to pray for you. I told them that you had been arrested for DUI in Indiana three days earlier, and had just gotten back to Mom and Dad's house in Illinois Friday night. I told them I was concerned that the DUI was going to be a real turning point in your life, since, despite your abusing alcohol and drugs from age twelve on, this was the first time that you had ever been arrested. Anyway, we all prayed for you, and I went home to call you. I wanted to tell you that we all make mistakes. I wanted to tell you that I loved you. I wanted to tell you that you needed to admit that what you had done was wrong. I wanted to help you to put your life back together again.

Mom answered the phone. She was very upset. Her voice shook as she told me how she had called up the stairs to you earlier that morning, telling you that you'd have to get a job. You had lived with them for more than three months after getting your degree, and you still didn't have a job. At age thirty-three, you seemed satisfied to "retire" with Mom and Dad instead of going out and starting your own life. She had been torn between wanting to take care of you and wanting you to learn to take care of yourself. She had said things to you in anger that she regretted. That she still regrets. That she'll always regret.

You had gotten yourself cleaned up and dressed, and had then left the house in anger, glaring back at Mom when she called out, "Go with God!" to you as you walked out the door and down the sidewalk.

Mom and I talked on the phone for more than two hours that day. I told her that I was concerned that you might be suicidal. That the letter you had sent me a couple months beforehand had sounded not like someone working through the "making amends" step of AA, but like someone tying up loose ends before they leave. Mom said, "If he did that, he'd be doing it to hurt your father and me."

I tried to explain to her that you hadn't been yourself in years - that the real you had been long buried deep inside the you that the chemicals you put into your body had created. That you were in a lot of pain. That you felt an incredible amount of remorse for all the ways that you had hurt almost everyone who had made an effort to get close to you. I tried to explain to her that, despite your severe mood swings and frequent rages, the real you trapped inside yourself still loved her very much, and hated the you that you had become.

While we were still talking, she suddenly said, "Oh, Bob, I'm gonna have to call you right back. There's a policeman at the door." She said it in a nonchalant way that told me she had no idea why a policeman would be at her door on a Saturday morning. Quietly, I said, "OK" and hung up the telephone. I turned to Bonnie, who had been sitting next to me while I had talked to Mom. I could barely get the words to come out of my lips: "Bon, I think my brother's dead."

We waited for the phone to ring again.

Less than two minutes later, Mom called back. I picked up the receiver and heard her sobbing hysterically, straining to squeeze out her words: "Bob, he's gone. He stepped in front of a train and he's gone." I looked at Bonnie and nodded. She knew from looking at me what Mom had just said. Bonnie started crying. Mom explained that when she opened the front door for the police officer, that's when she saw the words "Coroner's Office" printed on his jacket. He had showed her some photos of your dead body and asked her to identify you. The engineeer of the freight train had said that you had stepped out onto the track, turned your back on the train, and had just walked down the track. All he could do was blow his whistle -- there was nothing he could do to stop the train. The coroner told Mom that your body was thrown clear of the tracks, and that you were probably dead before your feet hit the ground. I kept repeating the words, "Mom, It's not your fault. It's not your fault," and she kept telling me that, yes, it was her fault. If only she hadn't pushed you to get a job. If only she had hugged you when she and Dad had picked you up at the bus station the night before. "He did it to hurt us!" she cried as waves of grief swept over her. "Mom, I'm coming down there. I'm on my way."

Bonnie packed a suitcase for me as I made a couple of quick phone calls. Ten minutes later, I was on Interstate 94, on my way to Illinois.

I drove through two different blizzards on the way. Even though the speed limit was 55, I tried to keep my speed between 65 and 80. I figured that if a State Trooper stopped me for speeding, I would just tell him where I was going and why and he'd understand what I was doing was more important than a speed limit.

Five hours and fifty minutes later, my 400 mile trip ended. Mom and Dad came out to the driveway to greet me. Quickly, we went back into the house. The three of us hugged for a couple of minutes, with both Mom and Dad sobbing. I looked Mom in the eyes. "Ron did not do it to hurt you. He loved you. He did it to escape from his own pain. If he had wanted to hurt you, he could have shot himself in his bedroom and left you a big mess. He could have left you a suicide note, saying 'It's your fault that I'm killing myself.' He could have done it a hundred different ways if he had wanted to hurt you. He didn't want to hurt you. He just wanted to end his own pain. You did everything you could have done for him. You would have been a bad parent if you HADN'T pushed him to get a job. It's not your fault!"

"I wish I could believe that," she sobbed.

Sunday morning, I started making phone calls to tell all of Mom and Dad's friends, and all of our relatives what had happened. Each time I would explain it to one of them, it felt like a little piece of something inside of me died. One person said, "It must be horrible, having to call people and tell them that your little brother is dead." I explained, "The reason I'm making the calls is that the only thing I can think of that would be more horrible would be to have to call people and tell them that your son is dead." Dad wanted Uncle Emil, Uncle Harold, and Uncle Maurice to know, but he just couldn't bring himself to call them, so I did it. The coroner's office called to say that they had finished the autopsy and that your body had been sent to the funeral home.

So Dad, Uncle Frank and I went to the funeral home to make the necessary arrangements. You know how Uncle Frank was always real strong. Well, sitting in the funeral director's office, he looked really old and really tired. When they asked if we'd like to view your body, Dad said he would. He said he would feel better if he could see that you had shaved and cleaned up before you left home. If you had, then maybe he could tell himself that you hadn't left home that morning, planning to kill yourself. No, you had been on your way to Crossroads shopping center to find a job when a train came by and, in your depressed state of mind, you had impulsively stepped in front of it. I told Dad that I would go with him to view your body. Dad asked Uncle Frank if he'd like to join us. Uncle Frank, God bless him, slowly leaned forward and rested his forehead on the corner of the funeral director's desk. "Dick, I'm not as strong as I used to be."

After we signed all the papers and made all the arrangements, Uncle Frank hugged us and left. The funeral director took Dad and me downstairs to a small room, empty except for some sort of long table on which your body lay, covered to your chin with a white sheet. The top of your head was a patchwork quilt of long red scabs, the back of your head sunk into a white pillow so far that I wondered if the back of your skull might be missing. You had a couple of small cuts on your face. Your left eyelid was open about an eighth of an inch. You looked like a rubber mannequin of yourself. I stayed a few feet away as Dad leaned over and put one hand on your chest, looking into your inanimate face. "Ron, I'm so sorry I failed you as a father," he sobbed. "I'm sorry that I wasn't there for you. I'm so sorry." He repeated his words as he tried to regain his composure. After a few minutes, he turned to leave. I leaned over and, with one finger, gently and carefully pushed closed your cold eyelid.

You know, the guy who made up the saying, "Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse" was a liar. There's no such thing as a good-looking corpse.

After your memorial service, everybody went through all your stuff, deciding who got your stereo, your CDs, your clothes, your army medals, your electric razor, and anything else they could find. I didn't want any of it, except for one thing. The one thing I wanted, no one else even noticed, let alone wanted. I took the sock monkey doll that Grandma had made for you about 25 years ago. It's sitting on the church pew in my living room, its hand-stitched ears a silent witness to every conversation - a constant reminder of happier times with you.

It's really strange, seeing photos of you, knowing that we'll never have any new photos of you. Knowing you'll never get any older. Knowing that you no longer have any say as to how your life will influence other people. Knowing that a couple of pounds ashes sitting in a decorative stone box in Dad's closet is all that's left of the little brother that I loved from the day he was born. Coming to the sad realization that a part of me is actually relieved that I don't have to worry about you any more.

As of this writing, it's been over a year. It's been an extremely difficult time for all of us. I know you didn't think about this beforehand, but, you should know that, by killing yourself, you escaped the pain you were feeling, but you left it all to the rest of us to deal with. I understand how it drove you to what you thought was the only option left to you. I understand how horrible it must have felt to carry it alone. Even with all of us sharing it now, it is often almost overpowering. Mom and Dad are doing better, after months and months of love from friends and relatives and help from both a grief support group and from counseling sessions.

Me, I still haven't had a good cry about losing you. At your memorial service, I didn't allow myself to cry because Mom and Dad were both so utterly without hope that I wanted to stay strong and stable to be able to help them. Maybe I'm still trying to be strong for them. That's why I'm with them in Illinois this Christmas, instead at home with Bonnie. It was her idea that I drive down to spend the week with them. Holidays are still a very difficult time for them, though they're learning to stop blaming themselves and each other for your death. No, I haven't had a good cry yet. Maybe that's why I'm writing this at 1:00AM on Christmas Day, 1997, instead of sleeping upstairs, in the bedroom that you and I shared for so many years. Maybe if I keep writing, I'll learn to understand you a little better; to know you a little better than I did when you were still here; and maybe that will help me to know myself a little better.

Anyway, I want you to know that, despite how it all turned out, I'm glad you were my little brother. I still love you.

Love,

Bob

UPDATE: The suicide of a loved one is something that you learn to live with, but you never really "get over." While the nails have been removed, the nail holes remain. My eulogy for my little brother, is called My Brother, My Sidekick, My Baby. One year after his suicide, I wrote a letter to him called There's No Such Thing As A Good-Looking Corpse. Two years after his suicide, I wrote a cautionary tale for children about him, titled My Little Brother, Ten years after his suicide, when I finally felt like I understood both his life and his death a little better, I wrote Rest In Peace,