It’s My Life to Take, or Not

Close to forty thousand lives are lost to suicide each year. There must be a reason for this. It must be something simple. Something like… EVERYONE HAS DEPRESSION. The only difference is that some of us deal better than others.

In fact, people having depression and thoughts of suicide are not anything new. Read Hamlet’s famous soliloquy. You know the one, it starts “To be or not to be.”

Yes, I have severe depression. I’ve had it for years. I wake up every morning with disappointment; disappointment that I’ve woken up. And if I believed in the one-shot-life dogma of the Judeo-Christian religion I probably would have offed myself a long time ago. The belief that once you die you get judged to go up, down or some other more mysterious outcome causes a person to feel that death is the solution and we’ll work out the details when we get there.

I have absolutely no problem with people who commit suicide. Yes, its sad for those who are left behind but the well known truth is that everyone dies. And I strongly believe that we all have the right, whether we take advantage of that right or not, to decide when that death is going to happen. Some people may not want to know when they are going to die, but having control over that one last act is for some people, the only control over their life that they ever had.

However I am a firm believer in reincarnation. That belief that you keep doing it until you get it right. Sorta like the student in English class that keeps getting their paper handed back to them from the teacher with big red letters at the top that say “I KNOW YOU CAN DO BETTER!” It makes more sense to me to think that since even the christians teach that life is a series of lessons, there has to be more than one class. I think it’s more like you live – you get lots of life lessons – you die and get your grade for the class – then if you haven’t graduated yet, perhaps by moving on to Nirvana, you come back to the next class for more lessons.

So this philosophy is what keeps me breathing instead of “cinching up my belt around my ‘waste’.” If life sucks this bad this time, what the hell is it gonna be like the next time? I’m in no hurry to find out. To paraphrase the bard,  it’s better for me to suffer the current slings and arrows of outrageous fortune then to take arms against a sea of trouble and by opposing end them. I’m in no hurry to see what dreams may come otherwise. At least that’s what I think.

 

 

Weddings and Funerals

People have trouble remembering important dates. One of these important dates is a wedding anniversary. So some folks try to pick a wedding day on a special, easy-to-remember day. Check the number of weddings that were on July 7, 2007. Easy to remember (07-07-07) so new wives married on that day could count on their husbands remembering their anniversary and delivering on the yearly obligatory flower order and jewelry.

On top of that seven is considered a lucky number so a successful, long lasting marriage is sure to be the result. And the jewelry is only insurance.

But how ’bout someone who gets married on Friday the thirteenth?  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is that all about? My normally sensible stepson did just that a couple of years ago. Not only did the marriage last about as long as a midwestern tornado with almost as much financial damage, but his sister’s fiancé died less than a month after the ceremony. Really bad luck all around. But it did present an unusual opportunity to compare a wedding and a funeral in quick succession.

These two life altering events hold lots of similarities with each other.   First there are the side gatherings of wedding showers or wakes where people talk about the persons involved and donations are made to the cause which is probably a little better tradition than burying a pharaoh’s household slaves with him. In both cases people get dressed up, then they gather around and cry like schoolgirls at the end of term. The main ceremony is usually but not always in a church, officiated by a cleric of some sort. And afterwards it’s all about the food. Cake and catered, undersized, mystery entrees symbolizing the couple’s new life together for the wedding, and stale mystery meat sandwiches served in a church basement, I guess symbolizing death, after the funeral.

Thirty odd years ago, every month or so seemed to have a friend’s wedding scheduled. In addition, several were mine which I always showed up for, for better or worse. Now I’ve reached a time of life that I notice I’m attending more and more funerals. The last funeral I attended was a family member’s scheduled at the same time as a funeral of a work associate from long ago. In an effort to keep harmony with the people I see every day, I opted for the one for the family member. But when it’s time for mine I’ve decided I’m not going to it. I’ll be busy with other things.  That’ll show ’em.