Fredric S. Kay
Dead by His Own Hand
4/29/69 – 2/5/06
Freddy and Ada
For Freddy
Before you hold the gun to your head,
Before you pull the trigger
and the bullet blasts its way through your brain,
Before you end it all,
Think:
Is there really nothing else you could do?
Are you sure of that? Are 100% dead sure?
As certain as you are that the sun will rise tomorrow?
Is there any doubt, however small?
Any doubt whatsoever?
Have you received a diagnosis that the illness is incurable, and only a painful and prolonged death awaits you?
Has a prison door locked behind you,
the sentence life without pardon or parole?
Do you face certain death by torture?
Or are you hearing only your own confused thoughts:
Hopelessness and Helplessness, the dread twin offspring of depression?
Is it possible you may be wrong?
Could there be other options you haven't yet thought of?
Is it possible, however unlikely it may seem, that you would regret this,
if you clearly knew the reality of your situation?
Is the darkness so complete that there could never again be any light?
Is it really so awful that it requires your death?
Damn it all to hell, my son! Was there nothing else you could have done?
Before you left your children without a father, and your wife without her husband?
Before you left the forlorn legacy of two little words and a blank space to those who loved you:
If Only ---
If Only we had known –--
If Only we had said –--
If Only you had given us a chance to ---
Forever now, with no answer possible, to be haunted by those words: If Only ---
And with those words, the knowledge that it was not necessary,
That there were other things you could have done.
Before you raise that gun to your head
Think of this:
Yes, there are times when suicide may be justified, but those times are mercifully few and far between,
And yes, you may be ending all of your troubles,
But you are also ending all your joys, all your hopes, all your love, and all your possibilities --
Forever.
My son, my son, there were other, better choices you could have made.
Yet who among us has not made poor choices at one time or another?
Who among us is without faults or failings?
Perhaps you did the best you knew how to do.
When the anger is scattered with a portion of your ashes,
I will remember you as a kind and gentle man who held a deep and abiding love in your heart
For your wife, my very dear daughter-in-law, who now must find the strength to go on without you,
And for your children, who are mercifully still too young to realize what they have lost.
You were a father who did not shrink from changing dirty diapers, nor shirk your part in caring for the little ones.
You were a husband who earned the abiding love of a fine woman.
I will remember your talent for mimicry, and your wry sense of humor that often reduced those around you to helpless laughter,
And I will remember your disrespect for authority, which often got you into trouble, but which I happen to respect and share in full measure.
I am proud of you and the man you became, my son.
I always will be.
I am glad to have had you with me, if only for an all-too-brief 36 years.
Freddy and Tyler Jake
Do Not Stand at my Grave
(One of several alternate versions attributed to Mary Frye)
Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow;
I am the diamond glints on snow;
I am the sun on ripened grain;
I am the gentle shower of rain.
When you awake in morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the starshine in the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom;
I am in a quiet room;
I am in the birds that sing;
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there.
This is a Mourning Tree. The base is a piece of broken glass, which stands for the way life can be shattered by death. All the buds are black, except the very top one, which symbolizes hope even in the midst of grief.
The Freddy Tree, a Japanese Maple, which was a gift from my co-workers.
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Hotline for Suicide Crisis Nationwide: 1-800-SUICIDE
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