The World Above

Image provided by author. Original photographer unknown.

I got the call 46 minutes ago. My friend is dead.

I won’t say how he ended his life. I don’t feel that details would be respectful.

With suicide, no one is to blame. Our desire to be mad at someone, to grab them by the shoulders and demand answers — it won’t be satisfied.

I’m not mad at his family.

I’m not mad at his friends.

I’m a little mad at his company, but he was so much more than his work.

I’m mad at Grant, but whenever I try to explain my anger I find that I’m holding him to logic. There is no logic in the dark pit that is depression.

It’s a place that words cannot reach.

We call down below, pleading into the dark, standing from where we can see the full sky and feel the warmth of sunshine. We insist that things look better up here, we beg those we love to take our hand and come out. But our messages rarely if ever make it to the bottom of that pit. And perhaps they can’t come out. Maybe it’s not that simple.

I would be mad at Grant, but I know something of what it’s like to be down there. Perhaps I was not down as far. Or maybe I wasn’t down there so long that I had forgotten the world above in all its brightness and color.