There was a time in my life when I would visit cemeteries and read headstones that I suspected compressed a life’s worth of living into a few words. Many of the ‘last words’ were quizzical and personal, but some were funny or clearly quite wise. One obelisk read, and forgive me if I don’t quote it right as it’s been a great many years since seeing it: “The sins of our brothers we write in water, but their strengths we engrave in granite.”
How do we talk to ourselves?
I sometimes feel sad when I think about my shortcomings, but then realize I spend a lot more time doing good things than ‘bad’ things. So I quit carving my defects in stone and ‘drop the rock’ of recrimination. How we talk to ourselves nudges the way we talk to others, for better or for worse. Be a Noticer of the good things of life.
After speaking for MADD and Minnesotans for Safe Driving, etc. these years, I heard so many people say they didn't get to say I Love You or Goodbye or worse, the last words were angry. We never know when the last time we see someone is the 'last' time we see someone, so yeah, always say I love you when possible, or show some act of love — that sort of thing.
A friend of mine said, “I know 2 people who strongly regret saying unkind words to a mother and an ex-husband, who then committed suicide shortly after. Not because of their words, but the timing couldn't have been worse.” He also once heard someone say, "Always say 'good-bye' when you depart because neither of you will be the same the next time you meet."
Life is really about timing. Letting our mouths overload our emotions with torrents of self-righteousness is RARELY our intention, but how a person feels our words is not all about 'us' and what we deserve to say. Yeah, I nowhere near smart enough to know when to say or not say a thing, and that's why I slow down to listen for direction and speed up my willingness to listen. Truth without paradox pushes Creator out of the loop of faithful, authentic living. Without surrender and prayer, we might 'think' for ourselves (ego); we're so smart and entitled that we might drivel our greatest truths before the injured people and never think twice about our role in compassionate discernment. Truth without compassion is cruelty.
Another friend told me, “My sister was not speaking to my brother when he died; she was the one I worried about the most.” I’ve thought about the people I’m not talking to, and I should have my ‘who I’m talking to’ on a carefully reviewed list. In my opinion, sometimes people will trample on you if you get close enough to their feet, so I keep my distance. I keep looking for opportunities for healing but learned to be careful over time. As the song goes, “I’m only human, born to make mistakes.” One of the people I stay clear of always mocked me when I said, “I’m only human” and mocked those who were weak enough to believe such ‘drivel.’ Hmmm…maybe ‘drivel’ is the word of the day? LOL! This same person also said the only reason I turned my willpower and life over to the care of God and why I believed I’m “powerless over alcohol” is because I’m inherently weak. Well, maybe so, but when I asked her how many times she drank and got sick and quit drinking because of it, she proudly said, “ONCE!”
I responded that her stopping after getting sick only one time was possibly a clear sign of her lack of willpower. I got drunk and ill a thousand and one times without quitting. My willpower was working correctly! Before leaving my willpower because my ‘self-will’ was immensely powerful (and sick), I fought and clawed my way to failure. “Self Will Run Riot” was my real problem. When I got honest about powerlessness, I got my power back.
‘Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future.’ I let God be my new employer and friend, and guess what? My life got better; I quit going to prison. I stopped serving time and started making time serve me. From that point forward of growing along spiritual lines, Earth School began to take on a new meaning for me, a beautiful one.
Start every day with a greeting, even when you don’t ‘feel’ like it. Always have a consciousness to have kindness in your voice when someone you love leaves your presence (or when they really piss you off).
If you’ve heard me say this once, you’ve probably heard me say a great many times, “Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don’t say it mean”. To me, this is an indispensable life-lesson. While we all probably fall short in this objective and it remains a goal more often than a reality; realizing that we can't change the past, maybe we should take our lessons and not look back with debilitating regrets. We can let the mistakes gear our lives to a Higher Purpose, sometimes with speedy results, but sometimes with slow results. It will always materialize to some extent if we work toward it.
Lastly, I also read (online) the headstones of people who committed suicide or who left a suicide note when they died. I sought wisdom in their last words. And even more obscure, studying their writings for hints of why they quit, was challenging. For example, take Randall Jarrell, a Poet whom I admire. He penned:
“A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.”
― Randall Jarrell
Here’s some of his backstory:
Depression and Death
Towards the end of his life, in 1963, someone noted: "Randall's behavior began to change. Approaching his fiftieth birthday, he seems to have worried deeply about his advancing age. After the assassination of President Kennedy, Randall spent days in front of the television weeping. Sad to the point of inertia, Randall sought help from a Cincinnati psychiatrist, who prescribed [the antidepressant drug] Elavil." The drug made him manic and in 1965, he was hospitalized and taken off Elavil. At this point, he was no longer manic, but he became depressed again.
In April, The New York Times published a "viciously condescending" review by Joseph Bennett of Jarrell's most recent book of poems, The Lost World, saying, "his work is thoroughly dated; prodigiousness encouraged by an indulgent and sentimental Mama-ism; its overriding feature is doddering infantilism." Soon afterward, Jarrell slashed a wrist and returned to the hospital. After leaving the hospital, he stayed at home that summer under his wife's care and returned to teaching at the University of North Carolina that fall.
Then, near dusk on October 14, 1965, while walking along U.S. Highway 15-501 near Chapel Hill, N.C., where he had gone seeking medical treatment, Jarrell was struck by a car and killed. In trying to determine the cause of death, "[Jarrell's wife] Mary, the police, the coroner, and ultimately the state of North Carolina judged his death accidental, a verdict made credible by his apparent improvements in health. Due to the odd, sidelong manner of the accident, medical professionals judged his injuries consistent with an accident and not with suicide." Nevertheless, because Jarrell had recently been treated for mental illness and a previous suicide attempt, some of the people closest to him were not entirely convinced that his death was accidental and suspected that he might have taken his own life.
In a letter to Elizabeth Bishop about a week after Jarrell's death, Robert Lowell wrote, "There's a small chance [that Jarrell's death] was an accident. . . [but] I think it was suicide, and so does everyone else, who knew him well." Jarrell's death being a suicide has since become accepted practically as fact, even by people who were not personally close to him. Some well-known writers have perpetuated the idea. A. Alvarez, in his book The Savage God, lists Jarrell as a twentieth-century writer who killed himself, and James Atlas refers to Jarrell's "suicide" several times in his biography of Delmore Schwartz. His wife always denied the idea of Jarrell's death being a suicide.
The preceding was from a Wikipedia Page on Jarrell and I edited it.
Whether a person dies of suicide or not, what does it matter? The value of life is in our words and actions.
What will be your last words or actions?
Silently contemplate that question for yourself.
I’ll leave you with some words by Edgar Allen Poe that inspired me:
"Thou wouldst be loved?- then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not!
Being everything which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways,
Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love- a simple duty."
Poe