By Sam Rueter

Sometimes I wake up early just to sit in bed and listen to the lake. At dawn there is an implicit understanding, a deal between people and water, water and people. Do not disturb the silence. Ripples only chase ripples, punctuate a profound stillness as the rising sun swallows a milky horizon whole.

It’s been almost a decade since my cousin Ben killed himself. On October 16, 2023, it will be a decade exactly. I am ashamed to say I don’t think about him often, not anymore. I wish I knew him better, wish I could have introduced him to Yulin. I imagine we would discuss soccer, music, and literature together. Suicide is a tragedy that reverberates in shards and pieces through families. It takes a long time to understand the person, and longer to understand their final act. 

I remember the funeral vividly still. There were books and Legos placed lovingly about. The pastor described Ben as Tom Sawyer, a benevolent ghost taking in his own memorial. Ben’s father sang, his sister spoke, and his six little cousins huddled together. Some of us were too young to feel sad, while others were too sad to feel young.

I shaved for the first time on that trip, not that I had much to shave. It was not a particularly meaningful moment for me, certainly not something I had been waiting or hoping for. I think I did it because I felt extremely self-conscious. Not shameful or ugly, but simply aware of myself as a human being connected to my family, connected to their grief.

At the funeral, someone proclaimed loudly, through tears, that suicide was a selfish act. I understood what they meant but thatcomment angers me even now. Ben did not choose to be depressed, but, on those railroad tracks in the early morning hours of October 16, 2013, he chose to end his pain. There is humanity in that decision, and there is also so much unresolved hurt. There is enough hurt to sit with and to unravel for a lifetime.

In the ten years following Ben’s death, suicide has been something of a specter in my life. It’s hard not to view my loved ones struggles with mental illness through that prism. We haven’t been the same since Ben died. Those are the shards I pick at. Other family members have other shards, other fragments of Ben that are a part of them. Then there are the shards we share, those embedded in Meredith, on the lake, the rocks, the trees. On the wind that whistles along the drying lines.

I was not raised religious and none of my friends are especially devout. I think that, if you asked my friends if they believed in God or Heaven, they would say, ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t care.’ My mom has told me that she thinks Heaven, if it exists, is Mozart’s Symphony No. 41. Not the music—the ethereal, eternal feeling it evokes.

Sometimes Ben wakes up early just to sit in bed and listen to the lake. At dawn there is an implicit understanding, a deal between people and water, water and people. Do not disturb the silence. Ripples only chase ripples, punctuate a profound stillness as the rising sun swallows a milky horizon whole.