Charlie's gone

I found out today. I guess at first I didn't believe it... didn't believe that you were gone. Your eyes would never eagerly listen again as I took my turn to share in the noon meeting. I'd never again get to glance over and see what new tattoo was on your arm. gone. Silly thoughts that rush through my head without shame. You were a big guy, beefy and strong. Everything about you said "life". Did you make sure the sidewalk was empty, first, so no one would be hurt? did you go face first or fall backward out that window?

When realization settled in the first thing I did was hit something. How could you be so bloody selfish? I can think, off the top of my head, of a dozen people who would have been happy to pick up the other end of a call for help. We are people that will miss you. Why didn't you say something? Did you think of us at all? What was it tipped you over the edge? Did you forget your medication? What made you reach out into the thin air for a solution rather than toward us? How could you have done this? Did you change your mind after it was too late and gravity was already doing its work? What were you thinking?

I can't easily share this with anyone. My mother who has been present for so many moments where her experience is the only thing I could trust with my pain... I can't tell. I can't say it in certain circles because they will immediately insist you have gone to an eternal hell. Judging by actions I'd say you were already there. They like to do that though, those believer types, as if to distance themselves from the experience. It's just another way to say "that won't happen to me." But it might. None of us knows.

Now i feel angry with myself. Maybe you just didn't know. Maybe we didn't make ourselves obvious enough? Did we reach out enough? I think of all the times I've considered ending my life in a fit of depression and how I've worried people. But the thing is, I reached out. I picked up the phone. I realized that "I didn't get what I wanted" would make a bloody stupid epitaph. I stayed on this side of the sill.

But that doesn't make me any less sad... or mad.

Why... WHY??

Did it work? Are you free from torture in the afterlife or did the voices follow you there? Or is that lot just tossed to those of us you left behind?