My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still
the ship is anchor'd safe and sound
This one really should be behind a paywall as it contains some frustration with my culture & church community & I truly don't want to offend, but it's also about showing up, & suicide, & loving people as they are. So I'm going to make it public.
***
I went to a funeral Friday. It was for a twenty-six year old young man who died after a long, difficult battle with depression and anxiety. He didn't "commit" suicide, y'all. He died because the flames in the building were unbearable:
The so-called “psychotically depressed” person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote “hopelessness” or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling “Don’t!” and “Hang on!”, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
The morning of 9/11, I had dressed in too-small scrubs for work. I was a month away from giving birth to Jake and they didn't make maternity nurse-wear back then--at least, none I could find or afford. I remember standing frozen in front of the television, one hand at my mouth, the other across my belly, watching as someone jumped from one of the burning towers.
This person knew jumping would not save their life. They knew it would not bring rescue. The room they were in was on fire; the air choked with smoke. Everything hurt; everything was pain. The only way out was down.
It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames.
Erin was a few years older than my oldest; I didn't have him in a primary class or in Cub Scouts, but I watched him grow up and his big sister was one of the best nannies my kids ever had.
This young man's death is a terrible tragedy and I ache for his family and his very young widow (she's an author if you'd like to support her by purchasing a book). I ache for his young babies who will grow up without him and for the void he left behind that will never be filled.
But this is not a post about suicide. Nor is it about how those of us who have walked beside someone struggling understand it in ways that are difficult to express. It's not about how my friend Sheri and I sat at his funeral clutching each other and weeping because we could so easily be sitting at a funeral for our boys who have struggled with the same things Erin fought. It's even not about how beautiful the service was; how heartbreaking it was when his mom closed her remarks with, "He'll always be my baby boy," or how beautifully his sister spoke.
It's about my community and how few of them showed up and how mad I am about it.
I know that I do not know everyone's stories. I don't know who was out of town or who had to work or who sent condolences in the form of cards or funeral potatoes. I have not been able to attend every wedding reception or funeral. I know life gets in the way and save-the-dates get forgotten.
But sometimes there's a glaring discrepancy and it's difficult (for me) to ignore.
Because here's the short version: Had a different family's son gone missing and later been found deceased, the outpouring of love and support would have been... louder. Not to make inappropriate comparisons here, but to me, it's not unlike the difference in media when a really pretty blonde girl goes missing versus a poor Black boy. One gains nationwide attention and dominates the airwaves. The other, a line or two in the newspaper. Maybe a few mentions on the evening news if the family manages to make enough noise.
And I don't mean to discount the love and support this family received. There was a lot. It wasn't an empty funeral service.
Maybe I'm projecting. Maybe I'm still nursing wounds that Eric's funeral had to be a very tiny, covid-era affair. Maybe the wounds I have from the religion of my birth just ooze sometimes and make a mess and co-opt someone else's grief.
But after the funeral, walking down the hall with Erin's sister, she started to say, "I know we're not very popular..." but got cut off. Someone else came to give her a hug and she had to dash outside to make it into the cemetery procession. But I hate it. I hate that the culture in a church that claims to be Jesus's own organization has this hateful, mean-girl slant. Its members should never feel unpopular.
In Mormon culture, at least within the "morridor" -- the "Mormon corridor" that includes Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and bleeds into parts of Nevada & California -- there is a preoccupation with perfectionism. And because of this, the really clean cut, tattoo-less people are the popular ones. They're the individuals who are going to be serving as bishops, stake presidents, and on Young Women General Boards. And I say this as someone whose family 'fit the bill.' We were clean cut, put together (with a lot of effort), and were considered core members; Eric served as a bishopric counselor, and in Elder's Quorum, High Priest Group, and Young Men presidencies.
If an individual or a family does not quite fit the shiny, happy, perfect, glossy ideal... they can be marginalized in some hurtful but completely unacknowledged ways.
And it sucks.
The obsession with perfectionism in Mormonism probably comes from a combination things:
A doctrine that preaches salvation through works (2 Nephi 25:23),
a focus on the importance of attaining perfection,
the pressure to set an example and be a light to the rest of the world,
the persecution mindset we're raised with & the fight it breeds to be accepted (or admired) by the world so we can preach the gospel (LDS influencers doing everything to look as relatable & pretty & #goals as possible come to mind here--hey, I unthinkingly did this as a blogger, too, trying to make my family as normal and palatable as possible)
We are taught obedience is the highest law of heaven and many equate a strict adherence to societal norms proof of an obedient heart.
I think purity culture and the prevalence of "modest is hottest" plays a big part,
plus the very much unexamined and unacknowledged roots of white supremacy in our church (the goal to become & convert a "white & delightsome" people).
To be fair, I'll also admit there is an influence from society at large. Pressure to fit in, look a certain way, behave a certain way, obtain measurable financial success, etc. These are not things unique to religion. It's everywhere. But I do think my culture compounds that pressure and puts a confusing Jesus shine on it that can be difficult to recognize or unpack.
Whatever all the components are, there's an intense link many of us feel between our outward appearance & our inherent value. It's something that has made aging particularly difficult for me--as whatever beauty I had fades, I worry constantly, what do I have left?
When we moved to Idaho in 2004, I felt an incredible amount of relief. I didn't have words to describe it yet, but I knew visiting home (a suburb of Salt Lake City) brought with it an incredible spike in anxiety. In my home state, I felt mousey, frumpy -- a walking fashion disaster. In Idaho, I could put on a pair of green skinny jeans from Old Navy & a pair of tall black boots and feel as fancy AF. For the first time in my life it was easy to feel put together because no one around me cared.
But as the area grew and more fields turned into subdivisions, the dynamic seemed to shift and the lines between the "good" families in our ward and those who just didn't quite fit in became more and more stark.
Erin's family are good people. His dad was one who put on his black jeans and bolo tie for church and looked like he might have walked in off a ranch somewhere. He showed up for stake girls camp, cooked meals for 200+ people for a week, and had a huge smile on his face the whole time. Just happy to be there, to be of help, and to be filling bellies. I've never met anyone kinder than Erin's mom, a warm, down-to-earth woman with a tender and accepting heart.
When one of their boot-wearing, hunting, mustachio'd sons came out as gay, that family rallied around him and supported him. When their daughters dyed their hair purple and blue, no one batted an eye. When Erin started dying his hair black and hanging around the 'goth' kids in high school, they rolled out the black velvet and bought him some eyeliner.
Okay, a bit of poetic license here as I have no idea if anyone bought Erin eyeliner or if he even wore it, but from the outside, it looked like what mattered most to this family were the most important things of all: love, acceptance, and authenticity. Be who you are. Show up as you are. Who cares what anyone else thinks?
But all of those lovely individuals walking their own paths make some Mormons in our community a little uncomfortable. And so, when this family had weddings, fewer people showed up with registry gifts than when, say, one of the clean cut, shiny, returned missionary kids from a different family got married.
It makes me so angry. And sad.
Because while Mormonism (and I'd argue, most organized religions) have problems, there's a lot of potential there, too. Any big community organization like that has a lot of power to show up. To fill seats. To stand in line and sign guest books and make people feel seen and loved.
Erin's funeral should have been full past overflow. This family has lived in the same house for twenty plus years. They were involved, the church body watched their kids grow up, benefited from the service their parents offered. Where was everybody? How hard is it to show up and put a bottom in a seat? To shake some hands, to give some hugs? To say, "I'm so sorry."
Anyway. Death and funerals and widowhood are just the worst. I hate that any of us waste any time cringing away from human beings in need just because they don't fit our perceptions of acceptable. I hate that a family I love is hurting. I hate that a parent's love, a sibling's love, a wife's love, a child's love is not always enough. I hate that Erin hurt so much the only way out was jumping from that burning building.
And I hope he's at peace.
And I hope his family comes to understand, as we have, that we can learn to carry the hurt and emptiness and never-ending ache inside; that it gets easier to carry even if it never goes away.
And I hope we can all be better at showing up. At holding space. At sending the text. At filling up a seat. At sending a card. At saying things like "You matter" and "I'd miss you if you weren't here" and "I'm sorry."
xx
J
Title nod: From "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman, a poem I rediscovered while on a deep dive in Heather's archives after she died in May. In that same post, she quotes David Foster Wallace who I re-quoted above about the burning building analogy -- the most perfect explanation of suicidality I've ever seen and resonated deeply with my son who has struggled with anxiety & major depressive disorder.
If you or someone you love is struggling. Help is available. It sounds so trite, I know. But please, reach out: global suicide hotlines. You matter.