Larry

I was in second year of university when Larry killed himself.

One night he had broken into his doctor's office, and swallowed all the pills he could find.

I remember hearing about it before Dan did, even though I thought Dan was his best friend. I was the one who told Dan. Dan said he was surprised. After all, Larry was a local hero. Other kids looked up to him. He was the best guitarist in town. He was lead guitarist for the local group. And some of the others went on to be professional, or at least semi-professional, musicians.

For my part, I did not understand Dan's surprise. After all, Larry had dropped out of high school, and was sleeping under the town bridge, or in motel rooms vacated when the summer tourists left in winter. For whatever reason, he was not working. Being our age, I figure his friends had left after high school, as Dan and I had, and there was probably almost nobody to hang out with.

That's the problem with small towns. Everyone leaves after high school. He had a girl friend; but she went off to study ECE, and took a job in Almonte. That had to be just before Larry killed himself, or just after.

I did not know Larry well. He was a quiet guy, not someone you got to know easily; and neither was I. But when I spoke to him, he had a strange intensity about him. He more or less looked me straight in the eye, one time, sitting in a rented room in the Colonial Motel, and asked me, “What's it all about?”

Most people don't do that kind of thing. Most people are content with not thinking, with the day to day and what's on TV tonight. Most people do not have such deep souls.

I don't remember if that was his exact question, and I don't remember what I answered. I would not have had an answer, at that age. I was working on it; on the same question.

But he was a deeply sincere and moral guy. He cared greatly about things. He was alive in a sense most people are not.

Sure, he did some drugs and drank; but nothing strange for his age and for that time and for that boring little town. He was no druggie, and no drunk.

So why had his family thrown him out? Why could he not find a job? Why did his family not reach out, even when he was sleeping under the bridge in the town park? It was a small town; they must have known. Didn't they give a damn?

And why was he seeing a doctor?

I suspect depression, or some other mental illness. And you have to see here too parental abuse. And probably the depression or other mental illness was caused by the parental abuse. Nothing else gets those dots to connect.

I have since met others like Larry. I have seen the same sincerity, the gentleness, the thirst for truth, and the interest in and talent for the arts. I have heard their stories, from time to time, and they tend to be the same story. Some of them have been found, as decayed corpses, behind the bushes.

I think a lot of suicides are murders by proxy.

M. Scott Peck tells of one family in which the eldest son shot himself.

His parents wrapped up the gun and gave it to their second son as his gift the next Christmas.