Suicide isn't Painless

I thought about calling this piece “Suicide is a Disease,” but then I thought about the memory response the song from M*A*S*H might have.

If there’s a normal amount of exposure most people have to suicide, I’ve probably doubled or tripled it. My only explanation is that I seem to be a lightning rod for people in a great deal of pain.

Even though there’s often a lifetime of pain that leads to suicide, most of the pain ends up being felt by the survivors, not the victims. The victim’s pain ends. Theirs goes on forever.

When people ask why I went into near-total seclusion for over fifteen years, part of the answer is that I feel the suffering of the people around me, and I can’t control it.

There’s a theory that the parietal cortex in the brain keeps us from realizing that life is futile, that none of us survives, and prevents us from choosing to take our own lives in despair. Dubbed the “god part of the brain,” scientists believe that it’s the explanation why all humans have some concept of spirituality and God.

Lately, scientists have been questioning whether this takes place in the parietal cortex or the frontal lobes, but the concept of the “God Part of the Brain” remains. Even if the parietal cortex or the frontal lobes makes us question our mortality, I’m absolutely certain the concept of God develops pretty rapidly from that. Maybe it’s the spark that gets us started down this path, but God is much more complicated than that.

In theory, once this “God Part of the Brain” breaks, the victim starts yearning for death, and it becomes very difficult to keep them alive. I’ve seen it happen. Sometimes, it takes days to develop, and sometimes, people battle it for years, but once it happens, once that faith in their own lives is gone, it’s almost impossible to keep them alive.

I knew a man. He was older than me and went to a different school, but he was always around. Everyone knew him, and everyone loved him. On the surface, you would easily have sworn he loved life more than me. He probably did, but something happened, and this God part of his brain broke, and he started yearning for death.

Like a lion, he fought it for years. He took treatments I couldn’t have imagined. He loved his family. He wanted to live for them. He wanted to be a part of life. One day, the brokenness inside him overcame his will to fight it, and he died.

His son was in short pants, and his daughter was still learning to toddle when he died. For twenty-five years, I’ve wondered what his children would remember of him. Could they even imagine him the way I and everybody in Jackson knew him?

I learned today that his son, now a man, is holding a sporting event in his father’s memory to raise money for a counseling service for children and young people. It completed a circle in my life. He remembered his father as I would have had him remember him. That’s a blessing.

In the novel, but more so in the film M*A*S*H, camp dentist Walter "Painless Pole" Waldowski has a reputation with the ladies. Concerns about the war make him unable to perform sexually, so he announces his intention to take his own life as a result. Obviously, this plot aspect was omitted when Alan Alda took the story to television.

I should point out that, at least in the West, most suicides aren’t the result of despondency. Most suicides are the result of a brain disease. For people who believe in God, this “God Part of the Brain” can be seen as a gift from God to keep us pushing for the light through even the most painful despondency. People do still give up and take their lives out of despondency, but you’d be surprised how much a human can work through.

Whatever you believe about our spirit, our bodies are mortal, and mortal bodies are susceptible to disease. Diseases like cancer, ALS, and suicide.

Ring Lardner Jr wrote M*A*S*H. One of the “Hollywood Ten,” despite his award-winning abilities, Lardner was blacklisted for years. By 1970, directors were seeking out formerly blacklisted writers and actors, especially Robert Altman. Like with most of his films, Altman heavily influenced Lardner’s writing, even though he eschewed a co-writing credit.

In the script, Hawkeye and Trapper John foment a plan to make Painless Pole regain his will to live. Organizing one last meal with his friends before Waldowski was to take his life, Altman wrote that Private Seidman would sing a “stupid song” to set the tone and make Painless Pole see how stupid he was being.

Unable to write lyrics sufficiently stupid, Altman asked his fifteen-year-old son to take a shot at it. In five minutes, Michael Altman wrote the poem “Suicide Is Painless.” Satisfied that he had sufficiently stupid lyrics, Altman had Oscar-winning composer Johnny Mandel work up the music for Seidman to sing.

It was only during the editing process that Altman and everyone else realized that the poem his son wrote in five minutes was both beautiful and brilliant. He had it re-recorded with studio musicians, and it became the theme for the entire film. After the movie, the television series, and millions of 45-rpm singles, Johnny Mandel made more money from “Suicide Is Painless” than from anything else he ever wrote.

Through early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be
The pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see

That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please

The game of life is hard to play
I'm gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I'll someday lay
So this is all I have to say

Suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please

The sword of time will pierce our skin
It doesn't hurt when it begins
But as it works its way on in
The pain grows stronger, watch it grin

I have enough stories about suicide to fill a book. There’s been talk that I should do so. My reservation is that—my stories are someone else’s pain. I won’t even consider it unless I feel very certain that what I write will help the people who survive suicide.

Suicide isn’t about giving up or giving in. It’s about losing a battle that none of us can win. I’ve seen it take the brave and the brilliant. No amount of loving or living can defeat it. If it happens to someone in your life, know that it has nothing to do with how much they loved you. They would have stopped it if they could.