My uncle holding me circa 1979
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Three years ago, my uncle committed suicide. He shot himself in the head with a gun in his possession. It was the horrible, tragic ending of his life’s story. But it could have been worse. He had threatened on several occasions, to go to the local Wal-Mart and kill everybody he could.
I’m going to tell you this story at the risk of upsetting my family. But he was my uncle, his life touched mine, we share some blood. I might have some of the details not-quite-right, but the main events happened and any mistakes are not intentional.
So many people loved him. I loved him. He was funny and nice, tall and handsome. He was a talented guitar player. Remembering him in my mind’s eye makes me feel starstruck. He taught my brother, who is disabled, how to play guitar and took him fishing. He was a good person who became very sick.
My first inkling of his mental illness was an occurrence at a family reunion. After giving us kids rides on his motorcycle all afternoon, he came over at night, drunk, and tried to take his daughter. He was in the process of getting a divorce and losing custody of her. The night ended with my mom making us go in the back bedroom, and a fight that ended with my other uncle punching him out.
The rest of his life seemed like a downward spiral. He wasn’t allowed to see his daughter. My mom started to use the word ‘alcoholic’ when telling me about him. He went through phases of being homeless, of using drugs, of getting clean and getting a good hobby, of getting back into music, and then falling back into darkness again. He gained a lot of weight. He grew a grisly man beard.
He owed money to shady people. He got beat up. He collected knives and guns.
Understand, I was on the very fringes. My mom would find a quiet place to talk to her sister about their brother, but I had pretty good ears. I would ask my mom why he wasn’t getting the help he needed? The fact was, he was probably getting all the help available to him.
He went to jail several times but jail isn’t help. Jails are for real criminals, and they can’t keep you there forever even to save you from yourself. He was institutionalized on several occasions in the nearest psychiatric hospital. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic. From what I could discern, there was nothing that could make him stay there. He would get to feeling better and check himself out, or he would plead with my grandmother who would check him out.
When he was medicated, he was like a big cuddly teddy bear. Almost like his old self.
Throughout his struggle with addiction and mental illness, he often saved his most vicious words and behaviors for those he loved. He would lose touch of time and gave up on the basic needs of life, living in filth. The last time I saw him, the state of his body and his shed where he lived were shocking. He had lost most of his teeth. He took my new husband behind the shed to show him his the latest weapon he had acquired. I think it was a sword.
It seemed that shortly thereafter, the monster that had been stalking him for perhaps his entire life consumed him. The threats came more often, against more people. He would rant about going to Wal-Mart and killing every last person he saw. Then he would calm down and apologize and everybody would so want to believe that was the last time. My family just did not know what to do. I encouraged my mom to make them call the police. She assured that she had tried to get people to call the police who lived near him, but there’s only so much she could do living so far away. I don’t know if anybody actually involved police. Everybody was afraid of him.
Is it better to live with the devil you know than tempt the devil you don’t know?
In rapid succession, there were phone calls, threats, and not long after, a call from my dad telling me that my uncle had shot himself in the head. He died instantly.
I am ashamed to say I was not shocked. I was not surprised. I was only sad. Not the grief kind of sad but a numb, weary kind of sad. While his life ended so violently, I was happy that he could finally rest and be at peace, free from the monster at last. I was glad he didn’t take anybody else with him. So glad. The risk of that happening was likely far greater than anybody wanted to believe.
I can’t even imagine what my grandmother went through, witnessing the progression from precious infant to terrifying, consumed man. She passed away less than a year later.My mom and her sister, still to this day, just want their brother back.
I think telling his story honors his life. He was a good person who fought a very tough battle, a battle many of us won’t experience first-hand but far too many of us will witness from the sidelines or closer. My mom and her sisters and mother were much closer than anybody ever should be. They absorbed his trauma. They are still reeling from his life and loss.
My hope in sharing this story is to shed light on what I believe are the main lessons to preventing gun violence – any violence, in fact – on any scale.
Yes we need to do our very best as a society to help diagnose and treat mental illness, including helping the ill person’s family. Did ‘the mental health system’ fail my uncle? I’m not sure. There was help available. He got a diagnosis. He got medication. Perhaps the system failed in that it did not provide a safe place for him to live out his days where he couldn’t leave. Perhaps those who loved him and tried to care for him (while protecting him and themselves) should have been better prepared to access and advocate for him within the system.
Yes we need to figure out how to make sure that mentally ill or unstable people do not get weapons, and that availability and access to high-powered weapons designed solely to kill lots of people is severely restricted. The ‘system’ of gun acquisition failed my uncle. He should not have been able to put his hands on a gun or weapon of any sort. Am I advocating for gun control? You bet. When time is of the essence a gun is much more deadly, portable and easy to operate than were any of his other options. Addressing the mental health system alone will not solve the problem. What if my uncle’s first act of insanity had been killing people en masse at Wal-Mart?
One thing remains. There is a very strong correlation between traumatic childhood experiences like abuse and neglect, and addiction and disease as those children become adults. Knowing what I know, I believe my uncle was genetically predisposed to mental illness and something in his environment when he was young – the way somebody treated him or treated somebody else in front of him – turned on the mental illness buttons on and set him down a scary path. I believe the most important solution is that we help in all possible ways and manners to support parents and caregivers to always act with love and kindness towards children and each other. You cannot go wrong investing in or helping children and families. In fact, few things are more right.
If my uncle could tell his own story, I think he would tell you his biggest regret is how he treated his family. They didn’t deserve the hurt and anger and malice and threats he threw at them, just like he didn’t deserve whatever unspoken acts that I suspect befell him as a child. In this regret is perhaps the biggest lesson for us all. It sounds so simple, yet is so difficult in practice, especially when your brain is broken: love one another.
About Mary Beth Cox
