aftermath

A few days ago I showed our film on suicide prevention at our monthly staff meeting--a presentation made possible by the urging of the owner of our agency. It can be a raucous bunch these fellow workers and friends of mine and I didn't know what to expect. Certainly not glued to their seats in respectful attention listening to real people and their families talking about living on the edge of a bridge staring at the gravitational force of water down below. I was proud of my often unpredictable radio show co-host--a client who would not normally be present at a staff meeting. I asked him to say a few words at the end. He talked about the suicide of his mother a few years ago and how she was once young, beautiful and healthy before illness drove her over the edge. Not hard to believe after we saw her picture at the end of the film in the dedication section. There were lots of red faces and a man my age spoke privately to me about his father's suicide when he was twenty. We looked at each other and knew that his father's death and my brother's suicide really happened five minutes ago. The passage of time--just another of life's illusions