Listened to a Crying Man

15^th March 2011

Dear Cassi,

         

Well, in my last letter I told you about my time working as a guard for (a phone store). I have to say one of the most difficult situations that ever arose at work happen at that place. A man arrived one afternoon on a bicycle loaded down with bags and such. He was an older ragged looking man with a long graying beard. My first thought was that he might have been homeless, but I had to say he was too clean. The old man had come for help with his cell and his questions took a supervisor more than two hours. Every now and again the supervisor would excuse himself and the old man would talk to me about his life. That was nothing of a concern, people had been discussing their lives with me from the day I became a Security Officer. He was an electrician by trade with one son who was out of work.

         

As the old man went on his stories became more upsetting. He told me that one of his friends had been cheating on his girlfriend when he was killed and his body parts had been spread over a highway. He said that the girl was never the same after that and who would be.  At this point I had to wonder if the man was insane because he was opening up to a stranger in a room full of people, but having experience in that regard I just let him talk. He just needed to vent I figured.

He told me that his brother was very rich, but that his brother’s son had committed suicide. Now that was a story that truly drew my interest, because this nephew had everything in the world, everything that you and I would want, and still took his own life. At first I didn’t believe, but then the man looked in his bags and came away with a file folder baring his nephew’s name and showed me a copy of the suicide note. I remembered that it said “I’m sorry, I can’t tell whether it is positive or negative,” the duration I can’t remember.

The most upsetting thing about this case is that the deceased had just started medication and it is likely that killed him. It is the sad truth about psychiatric medications used to treat depression that the time shortly after they are administered the desire for death has not been suppressed but the depression has. All too often the sufferer is given just enough will to die.

I watched tears well in the old man’s eyes as he spoke of his departed nephew and hoped that the ear I had given to his pain would relieve his suffering some.

Stay safe, Cassi

Richard Leland Neal