Slipping Out The Last Door

On Monday morning, the phone rang early. It was my eighty-two year old father and he was clearly upset. My brother John's landlord had called to report that John's apartment seemed to have been abandoned. The furniture, dishes, books, etc. were all there, the door unlocked, the rent unpaid. Alex, the landlord had last seen my brother on July 1st when he paid his rent.

Now the apartment was intact, but my brother was nowhere. The landlord found scads of partially completed job applications scattered around the apartment. He only found my dad's phone number by chance. Alex found it on an application. On most of them, he'd listed his ex-wife's parents as his next of kin. His cell phone was in the charger and his wallet was on the kitchen table. His car had also disappeared. I called the local police and filed an official Missing Persons Report. The two female detectives I talked to were friendly, sympathetic and very professional. Completely unlike anything on television.

The first official question was "when did you last see your brother?" The truth was
I haven't seen my brother in over two years.  It was my father who'd last heard news of him. Two friends--a couple, called to say that he'd tried to kill himself with an overdose of pills. He'd been found in time, in the backyard garden of a neighbor. Now he was in a local psych ward. He refused to talk to me when I got through to the ward. The nurse said he was too ashamed. We heard nothing after that. I thought about trying to track him down but I didn't.

My brother always seemed a bit off. He laughed too loud, he angered too easily. His emotions were always right on the edge. His reasoning for his actions was always off kilter. He grew pot in his closet as a teenager. My parents threw him out. He had a terrible motorcycle accident just as he'd been accepted to a good college. His admission to Rochester Institute of Technology and his journey to campus was disastrous. He couldn't  maneuver his wheelchair across the wintry campus and he dropped out soon after. I doubt he ever asked for help from anyone at the school. I'm sure he never considered delaying his admission for a year to take time to recover from his accident. He just slipped out the door.

He was hobbled by the wheelchair and then by his crutches. It was embarrassing to be with him out in public. He snarled angrily at anyone who got in the way of his chair. After a second or third operation to remove the pins in his leg, he traveled to Missouri to make a new life. He got a job working in the same hospital where I toiled as a clerk to pay for school. I think he probably felt comfortable in hospitals by then. He met a nice young woman, married and then came out of the closet. He'd had a good corporate job with GM for years but that seemed to dissolve quickly after he ended his marriage. His luck changed for a time. He met a nice guy, they bought a cute fixer-upper to live in and they celebrated their partnership in a civil union with a huge party that both our parents attended. A year of so later, Mike dropped dead of a massive heart attack in Home Depot. John sold the house slipped away from from Detroit and Mike's loving family for a corporate gig with Comcast in Atlanta.

That job disappeared almost as soon as he relocated to Atlanta. There were layoffs and he lost a job that he'd barely had. He slipped from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale on the advice of a flight attendant he met in a bar. He took a job with Home Depot in the electrical department. I saw him regularly when I flew down once a month or so to visit a boyfriend. He was still a bit odd. He talked fast and his fantastic ideas came in rapid succession. They were nutty. I remember him once explaining in excruciating detail his plan to solve the parking problem in Manhattan. Apparently, alternate side parking was inadequate. I'm pretty sure he'd never been to New York City at the time.

He was fired from Home Depot. He got into a squabble with some co-workers over some minor violations he'd allegedly committed. Things like not wearing his vest and not greeting customers quickly enough. He'd made a few friends but he'd also managed to make himself widely disliked. He'd complain to me about his uneducated co-workers, mocking their grammar and their clothing. I've no doubt he was vocal in his disdain. He decided to submit a letter of resignation to his boss, "knowing" that it would not be accepted and that these petty allegations would disappear. He was sure that his boss would realize how invaluable he was in the electrical department. Instead, the boss readily accepted John's resignation. He'd played chicken with his livelihood and lost, so he slipped out that door.

His first suicide attempt followed shortly afterward. He'd been evicted from his apartment and was living in the garage of some friends, sleeping on the floor. On Monday, the landlord told me that an ambulance had taken him to the hospital in mid-June but he didn't know why. I think it was probably another suicide attempt.

This time I am guessing he succeeded. He loved the beach and I wonder if he didn't walk into the waves last weekend. If he did, I can't condemn him. I hope he didn't,  but when you leave your wallet and your cell phone behind, it seems pretty clear that you've chosen an early exit.

PS--The rate of suicide for Boomers is climbing rapidly in this country. [See A Rise in Suicide Among Boomers] And this more recent lament from a daughter grieving over her elderly father's choice to end his life..[Quality of Life Over Quantity] Of the 250 comments from readers, at least 95% laud the father's choice and express their willingness to do the same. I suspect there's an epidemic coming...