Matt started the first month of the Reviz Project with the
sobering topic of Gun Deaths in America.
The thing that touched me about Matt’s story was that fact that over 60%
of gun deaths in America are the result of suicide. It was also moving to note that approximately
30,000 lives are cut short by guns each year.
I think about what would have happened to those people if they’d been
able to keep on living. What would they
have done with the rest of their lives?
I choose to focus this visualization on suicide for a couple of
reasons. As Matt pointed out, this is the
majority of gun deaths, yet we’re not talking about it. Our silence allows us to pretend that it’s
not happening. Suicide is devastating. It destroys families, friendship, and
communities. It robs loved ones of a life
that is extinguished too soon and creates a gap through events that never happen and experiences
never made.
I know this because, as a freshman in high school, I went
through it. A senior, with a full ride
sports scholarship in the same sport I loved, and I guy that I’d grown up looking
up to in my neighborhood, committed suicide over winter break using a gun. The school was in shock, and we began the
year with grief counselors. I wondered –
how could anyone, even just a few years older than me, think they had the power
to take their own life? There was such
much love for him now that he was gone – why couldn’t he feel that before he
left?
These questions changed me, and each year I played I wrote a
quote in the bill of my hat in remembrance of him: “If there were no tomorrow,
how hard would you play today?”
To a certain extent I still live this way. I chance more than others think is wise. I take on enough for a 30 hour day. I tell my boys I love them until they roll
their eyes. I remember that life is sacred
and precious. We are not guaranteed
tomorrow – so how should we live today?
Those that lose their life to suicide create a loss that the
rest of the world has to life with. I
think about my friend – he never graduated high school, never took that
scholarship, never got married, never had a son to play catch with in the back
yard, never retired to sit on the front porch in a rocking chair…. There were lives he never touched, because he
wasn’t there to touch them.
That’s the story I wanted to tell. I wanted to show the volume of the years
never lived, stolen by our own hands as the result of a firearm suicide. I wanted to remind us all that those gun shots
often echo for decades, creating gaps that last a lifetime.
One of my father’s favorite movies is ‘A Wonderful Life’ where George
Bailey, in the moment he’s considering suicide, is given the opportunity to
pause and see the impact of his life.
This is done by experiencing the world as if he’d never lived. This alternative world is a shadow of reality,
so painful that he begs to go back a face his troubles, realizing that he
really does live ‘A Wonderful Life’. I
wish the stuff of movies would actually happen.
I wish those considering suicide had a chance to pause and reflect on
the void they leave behind.
So I submit The Suicide Gap to show the lasting effects that tragedy
leaves behind as its wake. May it be a
sobering reminder to us all that we never know the impact of an encouraging
word, or continuing on with a friendship that’s hanging on by a thread.
Many thanks -
Nelson
