How To Not Kill Yourself
I failed to corpsify myself last Thursday. The Super Sibling Squad is smarter than me. They put together the clues, figured out which social network service I was using to schedule updates, and grabbed the addy of the hotel from what was supposed to be my final update.
Room #666
The Cheap Hotel
On the Local Name Road
Don’t tell the others, but you’re my favo(u)rite.
(My updates have an international audience.)
I also left a note in the room: “I was on Earth all along!”, blowing all my best material on my presumed death.
I was going to die on apple vodka and store brand benadryl, neither of which I will *ever* touch again. If I had been serious I would have waited out the credit check and gotten a tank of nitrogen, but I get lazy when I’m suicidal. But as the title says, I failed, praise Elvis, Bettie, and all the saints.
Dead is cold, dark, and lonely. I was never happier than when I heard a voice telling my mother that I was breathing on my own and the tube was coming out. When the light and air came back my easy-to-love mother was there. I apologized to her and cried a lot.
There’ll be a real bill to play, but until then my family is paying an emotional price for my idiocy, poor health, stress induced problems, tears, heart-break, all on my head. I’ve even managed to piss off the entire interfacebooknet. Sorry not-imaginary peeps.
Listen to Uncle Ray, kids, find someone to talk to. Unless you’re actually in hospice there’s a way home. You may feel like a giant wuss for, y’know, having ‘feelings’ and shit, but you’ll be a *live* wuss and chicks dig that ‘feelings’ shit.
And death is a cold, dark, lonely, place, and there is no way, *no way* home.
How to Get Amnesia
This is a companion piece to my brother’s story up there.
Here’s what I know happened on Thursday, July 17:
I got a phone call from Mom around 4:00 pm (Mom’s ring tone is Placido Domingo singing Ave Maria), telling me she could not find Ray. She gave sufficient details that it was clear he had gone missing. She also contacted Kristi, who is not our sister by blood, but who calls Ray her brother. I called Alec, who said he’d try to reach Ray.
Gus picked me up from work; I get off at 4:30. I’d been on the phone with my best friend, Corinne, and with Kristi. Kristi went to Mom’s house and she and Mom had figured out that Ray “ran away.â€
Alec told me Ray had just posted on Facebook. I called Kristi and told her so. She found the series of scheduled posts that Ray mentions in his story. She called 911 to get police and ambulance to where he was. She went there, too.
At first a police officer believed Ray to be dead, and said so to Kristi, who said so to me. However, another responder found a pulse, or a breath, or whatever.
Somehow, in the midst of this, Koby and Borice, who live in Montreal, arrived at our house, and I hugged Koby in the kitchen. We went to Theo’s to eat, where I took a few bites of my salad.
Here’s what I remember about Thursday, July 17:
I got a phone call from Mom around 4:00 pm (Mom’s ring tone is Placido Domingo singing Ave Maria). I answered the phone.
Little bits of being on the phone with Kristi, noticing that Kristi’s Cajun accent was “ticker†that I remembered.
Hugging Koby in my kitchen.
Coming around late Thursday night in bed with Gus, looking at texts, etc. and wondering what happened. Gus talked me through it (many times, according to him, I only remember the last one) until I knew what happened. I’d say the trauma of believing my brother, the third person I ever knew, my first friend and companion, and my Evil Twin, was dead was what altered my brain chemistry.
As many of you know, Ray loves palindromes, so the next day, when Gus got me to medical attention, I appropriately got a prescription for the palindromic Xanax.
Ray covers what needs to be covered in his note. Yeah, I know, apple vodka?
Yes, his suicide note said “I was on Earth all along.†That’s not a suicide note, it is (spoiler alert) the plot twist of The Planet of the Apes.
If I’m laden at all
“I’m laden with sadness
That everyone’s heart
Isn’t filled with the gladness
Of love for one another”
So on we go. He ain’t heavy, y’all he’s my brother.
Actually, he’s a little heavy, we’ve both gained weight in middle age.