LAST YEAR MORE COPS TOOK THEIR
OWN LIVES THAN DIED FROM SHOOTINGS
AND MVA’S COMBINED
EVERY 65 MINUTES SOMEWHERE IN
AMERICA A MILITARY VETERAN
COMMITS SUICIDE
TWELVE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS
TAKE THEIR OWN LIVE EVERY DAY
TWELVE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS
TAKE THEIR OWN LIVE EVERY DAY
TAGS: SUICIDE RATES AMONG VETS AND COPS,
NO ATTENTION PAID TO THEIR DEATHS,
NYPD, POPPA, VETS SUICIDE HOTLINES
(Monday
June 11, 2018 Woodside, Queens) His note was blunt, to the point, devoid of any
emotion. It read like the assembly instructions
for an IKEA furnishing except he was not putting anything together, he was
about to take his life apart. He left it
on the front passenger seat folded into a small plastic bag. He’d wrapped a towel around his head like a
turban so as to not leave too much of a mess.
His death was not reported in the news; it was a very isolated loss, his
passing mourned only by family, friends, neighbors and colleagues. His death
was but a number, a statistic that goes unnoticed and unaddressed. He was just one of the 22 military veterans who take their
own lives daily: a stark truth about the ravages of war and the national
disgrace that shatters the covenant, the sacred duty and responsibility our
Country has to provide for the well-being of all military veterans, those men
and women who served to defend and protect us.
A
society can be measured but what it values; the currency of a culture is one of
priorities, ethics, mores, and the historical norms that have shaped it. While culture can be subject to the whims and
wanderings of the day it only survives intact when a solid understructure of
tradition, a shared past remains. By
virtually any measure employed to access where our society and culture is today
the fact is undeniably harsh and clearly illuminates that we are failing in
both. Our national priorities are so
terribly skewed, our culture of celebrity without merit, success without
effort, violence as entertainment, the profound absence of accountability and
responsibility are ominous indicators that we are a country adrift.
WHOSE LIFE IS IT ANYWAY?
Every
day on average 121 Americans commit suicide.
Of those, twelve Law Enforcement Officers kill themselves and, in each
category, the real numbers are no doubt higher due to the variety of methods
one can use to kill themselves to make it appear to be accidental rather than intentional.
Death certificates rarely list suicide as the manner of death; in most quarters
to this very day the act itself remains a taboo dirty little secret not to be
discussed outside the confines of the family and those closest to them. When an
NYPD Officer dies in the Line of Duty the local papers always splash the
headline that the City mourns their passing.
That is as insulting if not offensive, and as untrue as it is specious. The “City” as a collective of almost 9
million residents could really care less that an Officer has been killed and
certainly has no sympathy for a Cop who commits suicide. That’s just the way it is.
It
is against this telling background that the recent suicides of a “Celebrity
Chef” and a successful fashion accessory designer provide a glance into the
cultural conscious and societal soul that defines today in the US of A. Yes, the suicides of Anthony Bourdain and
Kate Spade are tragic realities to their families and friends. We are in no way
diminishing the gravity of their demise, we’re merely pointing out a cultural
dichotomy that is plain as day. There
has been so much attention to these suicides in the media that it is difficult
for some of us to understand why the public seems so distraught. Every 9.1 minutes
some one in NYC dies, most of natural causes including complications from
chronic conditions, accidents and suicide; Bourdain and Spade were just two of
them. There are more suicides in NYC than homicides.
POLITICS AND DEATH
Our
elected politicians are crass and craven as well as opportunistic, ever on
guard for a circumstance or event to exploit. Yet, every now and then a
politician will stoop to lower and lower depths of their stock in trade. Wasting
no time our senior Senator from New York, Chuck Schumer, the Democrat Leader in
that Chamber took to the Senate floor to deliver a speech
of such overt self-righteous, self-promotion that even for a schmuck such as he
it was a new low. He had the audacity to parlay the two high profile suicides
into a call for additional mental health and suicide prevention funding. Did he give this speech when the alarming
rate of veteran suicides became evident? Did he give this speech last year when
more Law Enforcement Officers were killed in the Line of Duty ever? The answers
are no and no. Two “famous” very wealthy
personalities decide to end their lives and this lousy asshole uses them as
political fodder. Small wonder why so
many Americans hold the Congress in such abysmally low regard.
Twenty-two
veterans, twelve Cops every 24 hours find themselves amid a cloying darkness of
depression and despair, fatality, frustration and futility that they make the
decision to end their lives, to escape from whatever or whoever their
particular demons may be. Death by
suicide is one of a singular aloneness, of a weariness of the soul that breaks
the spirit and the victim’s connection to the possibility of tomorrow. Once
life becomes mere existence devoid of even the faintest flicker of hope and
possibility, death beckons. Yes, the specter
of Death obscures all light and mocks the desolate soul.
Death becomes a viable option, a feasible alternative step into the
unknown.
HERE
We
had come to this place on this day to mark the birthday of one of our own who
had taken his own life a few years ago.
Back in the day some of us regularly gathered here to, watch a ball
game, tell stories, celebrate family milestones and to drink ice cold beer on
tap and Jameson Irish Whiskey. Some of
us did not see each other as often as we once did; familial obligations,
transfers and retirements had thinned our rank.
But for those of us here on this day the hands of time seemed to have
both stopped somewhere over our shoulder and simultaneously accelerated. We were as a group grayer and heavier than we
had been, but our bond was as strong as ever.
To a man we could not have cared less about the recent high-profile suicides;
we’d been around long enough to have experienced the unique sense of loss in
the wake of a suicide. We understood it
to a point; a few of us confided that they too had once been close to “pulling
the plug”. Somehow, we had all survived
our Job and ourselves up to this day.
We
drank shots and made toasts to our departed and still very much missed friend. Years
ago, each of us processed through the aftermath of his suicide, the interminably
asked questions of what we might have missed, could have missed and the
dissection of every last conversation we had had with him until he decided to
place his service piece in his mouth and pull the trigger. There was no one
around to hear the echo of that single fatal shot, the shot he’d apparently believed
would unshackle him from whatever the weight that haunted him and deliver him
to salvation? Damnation? Either way he believed the unknown was more acceptable
than his temporal being.
On
the anniversary of his death we meet to pay our respects at his grave. The numbers etched in the pale gray granite
that is his tombstone show just how brief his time on earth had been. 1957 to 2005, such a fleeting slice of existence
and a sad statement of where he was psychically when he took his life. We each feel the vagaries of our existence when
we navigate the odd terrain of a broad and deep cemetery like Mt. Calvary. Reading the inscriptions on other tombstones along
the way to our friend’s plot of this sod, it is easy to become a bit maudlin,
even oddly morose. Passing through the
wrought iron gates that define this storied cemetery back out to the street the sounds of the City are
once more registered. The grinding
clacking of a subway, the groans and gurgles of diesel engines in trucks and
buses, the incessant horn honking, siren wales, and din of life in this Great
City.
We
part ways consumed by our own thoughts, we may wonder what those interred in
the acres behind us were like when animated with life. Perhaps each of us wonder for a moment if one
among us is close to taking their own life.
Who knows, who can tell. Suicide is
just another facet of the infinitely complex and confounding human nature; it
is not a forgone conclusion that it is always a cowardly, selfish act, proof
positive of some deeply seated mental disorder or weakness. It is what it is and all we can do is the
best we can.
Police Organization Providing
Peer Assistance
LINKS:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/health/suicide-rates-kate-spade.html
Copyright The Brooding Cynyx 2018 © All Rights Reserved
Copyright Brooding Cynyc 2018 © All Rights Reserved
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