Suicide Sobriety

From last year:

Today I got home from work and found in the mailbox Tiger News 2006, my high school alumni newsletter. I skimmed the bright orange booklet until coming to the list of “Tigers who have been reported as no longer with us,” titled “In Memoriam.” I looked for the years nearest my own. It stopped at 1997, a year before I graduated. There, only one name laid claim to the freshest death. Michael _____. Suddenly, I remembered. He had ended his own life. Whether or not I was still in high school at the time I don’t remember. But it had seemed so dark. I knew who he was.

That same day, a few hours and a thousand unrelated thoughts later, an old friend from high school called me. Alice had found me on myspace weeks prior, and we had been emailing with promises to reconnect. Strange that it would happen this way—that the first time I hear her voice in 7 years is so that she can tell me news of Kris _______.

“He took his own life last night,” she said.

I was shocked but didn’t have much time to express it. Her call was urgent. She needed the phone number of a mutual friend whom she thought ought to know. I gave it to her and we commented on the strange circumstances under which we were reconnecting, and then promised to catch up soon.

Life has convinced me that coincidence is not random, but rather, some kind of display of God’s involvement in our lives. So I naturally wondered why the news of Kris’ suicide came up on the same day as the reminder of other schoolmate suicides. I also thought about the newsletter. If it had been printed only a few days later, then Michael would no longer sit last on that list. No doubt, November’s edition will list Kris.

Sobered, and curious, I took some of my yearbooks from the shelf in the corner of the garage. Here is Michael’s senior quote: “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” And Kris’, from a fortune cookie: “Depart not from the path which fate has you assigned.”

Were these hints at what was already going on in their minds? Or were they just innocent quotes? I don’t know, but I wonder if God is telling us to pay closer attention.