The Sad Bourdain Music-Between Suicides

On Friday I typically review the events that would be representative of having lived another week. Last week “suicide” is on my list but Saturday morning I discover I've written 1400 words. Pushing publish, without having addressed the subject, I am relieved. But that sad Bourdain music playing on CNN over and over, and over again torments me all week.

I may think of someone later, but as I write this, I cannot remember a celebrity death that has saddened me more than my imaginary friend Tony. My standard dinner party question is “Would you rather be Terry Gross or Anthony Bourdain?” Tossup. Terry Gross can get as fat as she wants vs. the traveling. I guess now maybe Terry Gross.

In my early twenties I made a very nearly successful attempt at suicide the details of which I am unable to describe. At times I find myself wishing for a permanent departure from my tormented consciousness. It is so fleeting. Marriage and my two children are the result of the botched attempt. I would never cause the sorrow to my dear ones. But there are times I do think about how much easier it would be not to be.

In “Still Alice,” Julianne Moore is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She leaves a video message to her future self but is foiled when she drops the pills. A New Yorker cartoon has a bottle of Benzodiazepine with a Post It that says “If you forget what this is for, take the whole bottle.” My mother would have begged me to assist in her in suicide if she'd known the condition she'd arrive at in her last years of life.

My mother lapsed, heedlessly I think, into dementia. Having witnessed this, I am determined not to be blindsided and hyper-conscious about my own mental acuity. Whenever I find myself disoriented, or forgetful, I panic. I can complete the online Monday through Wednesday New York Times crossword puzzles without turning on the check letter feature. Sometimes the Thursday and sometimes the Sunday. If this declines I will do one of those memory tests with a neurologist, the results of which might be a signal to start hoarding drugs. Perhaps this is flip but it is true that if there is a way that my death can be less painful for my children I would choose for them not to have to suffer my slow decline.

My own attempt was when I was in my twenties. The catalyst was finding, in the drawer of the boyfriend who was trying to dump me, photographs taken with my camera of a naked, much older, woman in my bed. She had children. I will continue the story at another time.

With regard to assisted suicide, it's about time. But it's a hard sell on behalf of people who are sentenced only to cognitively decline until natural death. I forget the name of the drug in the New Yorker cartoon. Googling “drugs suicide” I am bombarded by giant ads for hotlines and admonishments of “DON”T DO IT!” We are at present a bit more, in the parlance, woke on the subject and we learn to look for warning signs. I posit that in many situations there are no warning signs and the best that we can do is get out of our own heads enough to show folks how much we cherish them.

I would not write here now but for a friend who called and heard me slurring and called 911. Was there 911 in 1980? I answered the phone and so live a life so much richer than I'd ever imagined. I was a crestfallen fat girl in her twenties. It is so much more complicated with Bourdain or Kate Spade, both of whom, in their ways, sold happiness. Perhaps a vision of happiness comes in sharper for people who suffer from existential unhappiness. I wonder too, if in many cases there really are no signs. Many of us play our cards close to the vest.

Venting to the choir here but I wonder if we've actually arrived at dystopia? Canada, now in addition to Mexico, is our enemy. We should prostate ourselves for our leader like those happy North Koreans do theirs. And the Prime Minister of Japan is told by the most powerful person in the world that if he wants to lose his seat of office, just let millions of Mexicans into the country. And there's the political endorsement of yet another white separatist A whole bunch of new dirt on Michael Cohen. Paul Manafort in the pokey. Oh, and kids in the pokey, or at least cages, too. And of course, the Trump Foundation. I am certain there are things that I forget, all in another year-like week.

I may have said this before but I will note it again as it grows more and more disturbing. It is impossible not to see one of those rallies and not superimpose images from Triumph of the Will. America's dark age. It will never be statistically discerned to what extent Trump has been a contributing factor to a suicide but I can say that he does nothing to nurture my own will to live. Democracy could vanish from the planet. The German Jews found the rantings of a madman too ridiculous to take seriously. For his bumbling, I'm starting to wonder if Trump is smarter than it seems. His base will swallow anything. Trump continues to foment anger and victimhood, abetted by state controlled media and a retinue of fools and scoundrels.

Here it comes, the last paragraph which ties everything together and provides a message of hope but as I begin a week of vacation, I learn that words that I have written here have hurt someone who's very dear and for all my admonitions to one and all to show love, sometimes I am a hypocrite. I forget that others, in addition to the usual suspects, read the words I write here and upon pushing publish, it ceases to be personal. I write to make myself feel better and perhaps encourage a handful of readers to ponder the universe a bit differently. There's the ego thing too. I would like my obituary to note my quality as a wife, mother and friend, prowess in the kitchen, love of color and animals (except rodents) and way with words. In these times, it is even more inexcusable to forget the power of these words, even cheap jokes embedded a 1000 words into something it seems almost no one reads. It is more important to be kind than funny. While I have no aspiration to “Be Best” I do aspire to “Be Better.” And if it isn't obvious, I am grateful not to have died in 1980.