A Soundtrack For Suicide

If you stop at this fence in the park when it is not busy you can hear nature. There are birds, leaves rustling, water gurgling, and sometimes ducks in the river just over the trees. But it is mostly quiet. At 4 am on a clear night almost two years ago there was the crunch of truck tires on the gravel and then a single shot. Nobody else heard those sounds, but we lost Daniel.

I had already been thinking in other ways about sound and Daniel, and will fill you in shortly. But stopping by this fence on a bike ride and hearing the gravel under my tires really put it together for me.

Sounds and music go to the core of our brain and trigger memories in the most vivid way. Certain songs come on and I am on the elementary school playground, having my first awkward kiss, driving home from college, or looking at my beautiful bride at my wedding. You can’t help it — the music sound turns on a memory in your brain and you are along for the ride. The crunch happened yesterday, but believe it or not music from my youth can jolt my grief on a more regular basis.

I am an unapologetic 70's and 80's rock and roll fan. 2000's music or hip hop? Please. Get off my lawn. I love power ballads, and poured them into mix tapes for girlfriends back in high school. Spotify feeds me all of it now.

Since we lost Daniel, some of the lyrics in three particular songs can pierce my soul. The songs of course were not written about a lost child at all — two were about romance — but just damn. I mean just damn. Listen to Dennis DeYoung and Styx asking to “Don’t Let It End”…

What can I do
Pictures of you still make me cry
Trying to live without your love
It’s so hard to do
…
Don’t let it end
I’m begging you, don’t let it end this way
Don’t let it end
I’m begging you, don’t let it end this way

I went to see the 80's staple Survivor in Birmingham during high school for one of my first concerts. “I See You In Everyone” was a modest track from the smash album Vital Signs. I like most of their stuff. Take a listen…

I hear your voice in every crowd
Listening for your footsteps in every hallway
Watching for your headlights around the bend
I can see you standing in every doorway
…
Out in the street, in every glance
I see your reflection, I fall in a trance
You can’t know what you have done
It’s making me crazy, I see you in everyone

And of course we have Elton John, my all time favorite artist. I know “Daniel” is not my brother, but just listen to this…

Daniel my brother you are older than me
Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won’t heal?
Your eyes have died but you see more than I
Daniel you’re a star in the face of the sky

I have become skilled, like most folks who have had this kind of loss, at mental strategies to put aside sad thoughts and grief when the Blue Moth brings them (read more about him here). But music and sound? They can hack around the defenses in no time flat. Suicide is a unique kind of grief, as victims truly succumb to depression but it is hard not to wrongly infer your loved one “chose” to leave you. Don’t Let It End.

And there is one more sound, sitting in a datacenter somewhere, that is frankly haunting me. It is my Edgar Allen Poe worthy “Tell-Tale Heart”, beating in the wall asking to be brought out. Daniel called 911 after he fired the shot. He talked to the operator for a few minutes and that is why an ambulance was able to get him to a hospital where he lingered for 18 days.

That audio will be preserved as evidence by state law for 5 years — a law that believe it or not I voted for during my time in the Georgia Legislature. I passionately want to petition for access to listen to it, and passionately think that is a terrible idea. In fact it is almost certainly an absurd idea to endure that pain, but without the “real thing” my imagination is free to compose an ever changing symphony of sadness in those last words. Sound is powerful, in this case both real and imagined.

As I close, please don’t take this column to imply I am in bad shape and not doing well. I wanted to write about the remarkable connection of sound and music to our deepest self, and in my case to deepest tragedy. But humans are remarkably resilient, and I am continuing to learn how to live with the grief. Anyone who says “get over” has never walked down this path. I am living, and in most ways life is very good and getting better. In fact there are many nights now I go to bed and note that the grief and trauma did not hit me at all that day. But then comes “Don’t Let It End” and damn, just damn.