Dealing in the Aftermath

I received a comment last night on my blog entries regarding my friend who recently died. The poster asked me to please remove his name from the site. In anger and a state of impulse, I used Steve's full name as a title of an entry, yet later removed it of my own volition. Nevertheless, google was turning up my site as a top result when his name was entered, and the original post with my friend's full name was showing up when you select the "cached" option. This poster was concerned about his students performing web searches and coming across my site.

I temporarily pulled my site til I figured out what I wanted to do. I kinda didn't care - it is what it is, right? That is, life and death. We all gotta figure it out some time. I never violated Steve's trust as a friend, even after his death, but am I violating it by writing my own thoughts about him and the details of the suicide? I tend to think not.

Steve was writing a 'book' on his own suicide that he'd been working on for a long time. The last time he wrote in it was in June, I believe. His birthday was in June. A couple days after his birthday he told me that he was planning on doing 'it' then - on his birthday. He wanted his suicide note published, so his "inner circle" as he called us - that is, his self-made family, has decided to publish it online. It's what he wanted, and it has a lot more details about him and his life than my three blog entries.

As far the request to remove Steve's name from my site (which I had already done long before this request was made) and the search engine cache, I wrote him the following letter:

Dear Friend,

I am sorry for your loss, too. I temporarily removed my webpage after your request to think about what I wanted to do. My webpage is now back up, although it looks like since I took it down, you don't find it on google anymore. Nonetheless, I had a very close relationship with Steve, and I strongly feel that he wouldn't care about the comments I made on my site, and I talked to his other closest friend, and he very much agreed. The bottom line is, it is the truth, and we were Steve's family.

We (what he liked to call his "inner circle" - his self-made family) have also made the decision to publish Steve's suicide note. He made it very clear that he wanted it out there for public consumption, so we are going to honor his wishes. My blog does not reveal anything that he doesn't already reveal himself. If his students come across it, so be it. It's what he wanted.

To answer your question about the cause, please take comfort in knowing that this is simply what he wanted. He had no fear of death or suicide, and he simply was not content in this life. Death and suicide were something he had wanted and thought about for many, many years. He was a dynamic, charismatic person, so it can be difficult to understand why he would take his own life. As much as he was these things, he was also very unhappy and struggled with life daily. To be honest, this was inevitable. I loved him a great deal as he loved me back, and I am sad and angry at him that he is gone, but he didn't want to be here. He just had a very different outlook on life than most of us.

I hope this helps shed some light on 'why'.

Take care,
the lady love