Jump
Why?
The question reverberates in my heart.
Why?
It will not let me go.
Why?
What was it that pushed you to the limit? What was it that made you jump?
Why?
So many things remind me of you but I had thought that the crying was over, that the deep intense grief was over.
We sit together in class, eager and ready to find out what the new case will be- the last before our next exam. As the first sheet is handed out, we quickly throw up potential diagnoses, not even realizing that we are about to embark on a disastrous journey. The case is about a woman who may have potentially taken a whole bottle of Tylenol in an effort to kill herself. After two hours of muddling our way through the information, we leave to read up on what we can; knowing that something is wrong and hoping that our worst fear is not confirmed.
Why did she do it?
I go home and I keep telling myself “she’s not real, it’s only on paper.” The mantra works as well as putting a band aid on a six inch gash to the knee that had only partially healed and was then reopened.
Toshi
Oh little cousin, why did you lose faith in life? We learn that this woman, this woman who is only real on paper, decided to give up because her mother died of cancer and her husband died in a car accident a week later. You, Toshi… what was your excuse?
You always wanted to be something you weren’t.
Why couldn’t you be satisfied with you? Why couldn’t you see that being Chinese wasn’t horrible? That in denying who you were and insisting you were Japanese you only made things worse. Oh little Toshi, how I wish I could have been a more supportive cousin to you.
A bottle of pills, a jump off a roof- they both accomplish the same fate.
I found myself sobbing almost uncontrollably. I couldn’t snap out of it- the thought that she had three young kids, even if she wasn’t real, that she was willing to leave them because she had lost others- it broke me. Like Toshi leaving his brother and family behind, it ripped at my heart to think that someone could lose sight that there were people in this world who loved them. In the end, when she was declared brain dead due to brain herniation I was upset, I almost callously said to just tell her brother she was dead and the plug needed to be pulled. Dear suicidal woman’s brother: just take her three young, orphaned kids and go.
Nobu…
Toshi’s younger brother, Nobu, never likes staying home anymore. His father complains that he’s always at school playing basketball but don’t you see uncle? Can’t you realize that it is at the house that Toshi and Nobu spent SO MANY afternoons together, year after year, partners in crime? I wonder how little Nobu must take it at times. His constant play companion killed himself, his older brother, the “more responsible one.” What weight must be on your shoulders now, little cousin. What weight.
Why?
And so I find myself coming full circle, unable to answer it still; unable to see the extent of the darkness that must be in one’s heart to go to such lengths. He is the Light. He is what brings joy and peace to my soul. How can anyone kill themselves when Jesus Himself came to this earth to die for our sins? To give himself over to such horrible sufferings so that we might be reconciled to Himself… and yet there are those who never see it. There are those who never realize just how much they are loved and so they give in to that darkness and some may take a gun, others some pills, still others… jump.
