Hope in the Depths
21/08/12 06:20
Although he was incredibly successful, director Tony Scott lived with a fear of failure. He rose to fame with the movie “Top Gun” and became one of Hollywood’s most sought-after directors. In 1995, after the successful Naval Adventure, “Crimson Tide” appeared he said, "The biggest edge I live on is directing. That's the most scary, dangerous thing you can do in your life. The scariest thing in my life is the first morning of production on all my movies. It's the fear of failing, the loss of face and a sense of guilt that everybody puts their faith in you and not coming through."
Now the world will never know the dynamics of the brain of the creative genius. We will never know what problems beset him or what demons he struggled with. We will never know what he was thinking when he stopped his car on a famous Los Angeles bridge. The bridge has appeared in a lot of television and movies including “The Fast and the Furious,” “Gone in 60 Seconds,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “To Live and Die in L.A.” A witness said he hesitated briefly and then dove 7 stories from the bridge to his death.
The family is left trying to put their lives back together.
There are clues. He left notes to loved ones.
All of those private and personal messages are none of my business. I want to respect the privacy of the family. And I know from other experiences that we will never know what happened. All we know is that at the moment Tony Scott took that fateful step off of the bridge, he was not in his right mind.
His pain might have stopped seconds after he hit the surface of the water, but the pain will never go away for his family.
People will speculate about the death. They will ask, “What could have been don to prevent it?” There are some generic answers. We know quite a bit about suicide prevention. I have been through the latest ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) course. I carry the card in my wallet. I have successfully intervened with people who have been thinking of suicide. I consider myself to be informed and professional in my approach to those in need.
But I received a call last night about another death by suicide. One that it would be fair to say I could see coming. It was also one that I was powerless to prevent. It is not my story to tell and there is much that it is not appropriate for me to write about in this blog or any other place, but there are a few things that I can write without betraying confidences.
I have known the man who died yesterday for most of his life. I met him when he was a young teen. I knew his parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles. I have kept in touch with his family through all kinds of life events and transitions. I can remember moments of celebration and moments of deep grief.
I know that he was profoundly troubled. I have invested a lot of time in his family and his relationships in the past year. I tried to intervene and offer my support. I tried to get help for him. I was the wrong person, I guess. When my calls went unanswered and my attempts to reach him through his brother were not successful, I felt that my options had run out.
When I received the phone call last night a thousand memories flooded my brain. One memory, however, seemed to dominate. I remember the night I received the phone call with the news of the death of his younger brother. I remember the feeling of the awful, terrible conversation I shared with his father.
Here is part of the story. Theirs was a relatively small family. Two parents and three boys. The twins were born first. Now the parents have divorced and two of the three boys have died by suicide. Like his brothers, the surviving man never married. Relationships in the family are strained. You could blame the divorce. You could blame the effects of alcohol abuse. You could blame chronic mental illness that has been suffered by various members of the family.
I know I keep trying to find something to blame.
The truth is that we will never know the whole story. Unlike the death of Tony Scott, there were no witnesses. There were no notes.
Life doesn’t have a “rewind” button. You can’t stop the action and go back and start over. There are plenty of things that happen that cannot be changed. Some decisions have permanent results.
Whatever grief and loss I am experiencing, whatever sadness I feel, whatever pain I know – these are all small in comparison to the waves that are crashing over the surviving brother, father and mother. They have huge estrangements and probably can’t share their grief in the ways that other families might. But their pain is no less real. And there is no one who knows this family who isn’t thinking about the one surviving brother and wondering if he, too, will die by suicide.
If I were prone to swearing, I would be swearing right now. Sometimes the circumstances of life are beyond the power to express with polite language.
This is a moment for genuine hope.
I’m not talking about some simple, easy concept that is about sunshine and laughter and good times. The hope we need to survive in this world needs to be stronger and more robust. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be sufficient for the real tragedies of this world. I’m not searching for easy answers or simple hope.
But I know of another kind of hope. It is the toughest, watched my own son die, know the depths of pain, hope. It is the “I will never leave you no matter what” hope forged in the depths of slavery and injustice and the stories of our people who have often been only barely surviving.
We are survivors. We have inherited generations of pain and suffering and sorrow and we are still here.
We will survive this. I’ve been around enough to know that it won’t be easy. I am dreading some of the phone calls that I need to make today. But I will make them. We will keep talking. We will keep speaking of our faith. We will continue to support one another. And somewhere, in the depths of these moments, we will once again discover the kind of hope that never dies.
Faith, hope and love remain even when there is nothing else left.
Now the world will never know the dynamics of the brain of the creative genius. We will never know what problems beset him or what demons he struggled with. We will never know what he was thinking when he stopped his car on a famous Los Angeles bridge. The bridge has appeared in a lot of television and movies including “The Fast and the Furious,” “Gone in 60 Seconds,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “To Live and Die in L.A.” A witness said he hesitated briefly and then dove 7 stories from the bridge to his death.
The family is left trying to put their lives back together.
There are clues. He left notes to loved ones.
All of those private and personal messages are none of my business. I want to respect the privacy of the family. And I know from other experiences that we will never know what happened. All we know is that at the moment Tony Scott took that fateful step off of the bridge, he was not in his right mind.
His pain might have stopped seconds after he hit the surface of the water, but the pain will never go away for his family.
People will speculate about the death. They will ask, “What could have been don to prevent it?” There are some generic answers. We know quite a bit about suicide prevention. I have been through the latest ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) course. I carry the card in my wallet. I have successfully intervened with people who have been thinking of suicide. I consider myself to be informed and professional in my approach to those in need.
But I received a call last night about another death by suicide. One that it would be fair to say I could see coming. It was also one that I was powerless to prevent. It is not my story to tell and there is much that it is not appropriate for me to write about in this blog or any other place, but there are a few things that I can write without betraying confidences.
I have known the man who died yesterday for most of his life. I met him when he was a young teen. I knew his parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles. I have kept in touch with his family through all kinds of life events and transitions. I can remember moments of celebration and moments of deep grief.
I know that he was profoundly troubled. I have invested a lot of time in his family and his relationships in the past year. I tried to intervene and offer my support. I tried to get help for him. I was the wrong person, I guess. When my calls went unanswered and my attempts to reach him through his brother were not successful, I felt that my options had run out.
When I received the phone call last night a thousand memories flooded my brain. One memory, however, seemed to dominate. I remember the night I received the phone call with the news of the death of his younger brother. I remember the feeling of the awful, terrible conversation I shared with his father.
Here is part of the story. Theirs was a relatively small family. Two parents and three boys. The twins were born first. Now the parents have divorced and two of the three boys have died by suicide. Like his brothers, the surviving man never married. Relationships in the family are strained. You could blame the divorce. You could blame the effects of alcohol abuse. You could blame chronic mental illness that has been suffered by various members of the family.
I know I keep trying to find something to blame.
The truth is that we will never know the whole story. Unlike the death of Tony Scott, there were no witnesses. There were no notes.
Life doesn’t have a “rewind” button. You can’t stop the action and go back and start over. There are plenty of things that happen that cannot be changed. Some decisions have permanent results.
Whatever grief and loss I am experiencing, whatever sadness I feel, whatever pain I know – these are all small in comparison to the waves that are crashing over the surviving brother, father and mother. They have huge estrangements and probably can’t share their grief in the ways that other families might. But their pain is no less real. And there is no one who knows this family who isn’t thinking about the one surviving brother and wondering if he, too, will die by suicide.
If I were prone to swearing, I would be swearing right now. Sometimes the circumstances of life are beyond the power to express with polite language.
This is a moment for genuine hope.
I’m not talking about some simple, easy concept that is about sunshine and laughter and good times. The hope we need to survive in this world needs to be stronger and more robust. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be sufficient for the real tragedies of this world. I’m not searching for easy answers or simple hope.
But I know of another kind of hope. It is the toughest, watched my own son die, know the depths of pain, hope. It is the “I will never leave you no matter what” hope forged in the depths of slavery and injustice and the stories of our people who have often been only barely surviving.
We are survivors. We have inherited generations of pain and suffering and sorrow and we are still here.
We will survive this. I’ve been around enough to know that it won’t be easy. I am dreading some of the phone calls that I need to make today. But I will make them. We will keep talking. We will keep speaking of our faith. We will continue to support one another. And somewhere, in the depths of these moments, we will once again discover the kind of hope that never dies.
Faith, hope and love remain even when there is nothing else left.