Gone…
Losing a friend to suicide is one of the most confronting things I think people can go through. For me this past Friday, it was a friend I’d known over 30 years. He was smack bang in my closest circle of friends, a fellow groomsman to my best mate, who himself right now is struggling to speak. This weekend has been so hard for so many of us.
This is my way of understanding, to write down the emotion and my feelings. I wrote it Saturday morning, it’s raw, the language is colourful but it is most definitely a real account of my feelings. I am hoping that sharing this just might help one person, change a thought, a perspective, an action, an intervention and change a life.
I got the call at 3.11pm
I was at the school gate
Hearing the uncontrollable sobbing
The distress, and the pain of my dear mate
All I could say was NO, fuck NO, and WHY
I buckle over in half
Holding my heart
As the tears poured out of my face
We somehow didn't hear but we were all here to listen
We somehow are left with your abandoned fate
Left here wondering fucking WHY mate
Did you forget how much we all love you?
Did you lose all sight of us?
We told you we were there for you
We knew that you were flat
We knew you were doing it tough
But there’s no fucking way we could contemplate
That you,
You'd have it end like that
We know it gets too much
Holding it all in
Most all of us men do this
And unspoken, unshared and un-held
It seems impossible to get in
Of course, we feel guilt
Even thousands of miles away
I wish I got a chance
To tell you how much we love you
And how much we want you to stay
We all want to remember you
For the stunning man, you are
For the guy who makes us laugh
For your love, and connection
For your passing and beloved smartarse
The bloke who's warmth who's love, beamed across a field
A man we were most convinced
Had a heart of immeasurable scope
And now we are all left wondering
How we could have helped you to cope
For we all feel so empty
We have loved you for so long
There’s a hole in our hearts
Where you used to belong
We wonder if we could have done more
Heard more, known more
We keep thinking about, what it is we didn't see
But it’s over
And there’s no fucking shouting
No turning back from here
No last chance to look at your smiling face
To buy you another fucking beer
It’s a heavy burden,
and it’s killing us, guys we have to fucking talk
To feel so much and say so little, it exhausting
We have to just try and fucking share
We have to have faith, that so many care
We know there’s a point when our alone has us convinced
The self-imposed imprisonment and isolation
We have to jump in front of it
And stop this fucking horrible insurrection
We have to stand for together
And fight against the withdrawal
We have to know at points in time
We can lose sight of how important
We are, and how loved and cherished too
We have to fight a mate slipping inside himself
We have to stay with you
If you feel a mate slipping away
Grab him, and hold him close
Fight him if you must
And hold that space for him
Because once we let him drift away
The outcomes are all too often fucking grim
If your mates lost control
If he feels he's lost the race
If he's sitting deeply in his shame
With that expressionless face
Put your arms around him
And stay as long as you must
Because no one, no fucking mate ever
Should ever so pointlessly turn himself into dust.
We love you Ray.
