Suicide Confirmed

Posted at 12:29 pm on Wednesday, November 14, 2007, in Uncategorized, and tagged iraq.

Two months ago I blogged that one of my childhood best friends had committed suicide not long after his return home from serving in Iraq. That conclusion was not definite, but most likely. The paper didn’t report the details of his untimely passing, but it was implied. A month or so later, I received an email from a reader…

I was wondering something, and pardon me if it seems too personal. I remember a post of yours a while back where your friend Justin who was in the military had died after coming home and you thought he most likely committed suicide. Did that turn out to be the case? I sincerely hope it wasn’t, but it is something that I found myself wondering. It sickens me how soldiers are not taken care of when they come back from a war forced upon them.

When I responded to the email, I didn’t really have much to report. I had inferred that my friend had committed suicide, but I didn’t know for sure.

As far as I know, my friend did commit suicide, which is so hard to believe. I’ve never confirmed with the family (that would be an awkward email), but from reading the obituary and the words they used (“died unexpectedly”) and other notes that were written by friends and family (they still appear on his MySpace page from time to time, as well as the Buffalo News’ commenting board for obituaries), and from understanding his story from Iraq, I think that is a safe but horrible conclusion.

Not to get political after this, but when Bush talks about the press reporting only the bad in Iraq, and not the good, the press has hardly covered the real story from Iraq, the tragic lives of those soldiers who have fought in Iraq, who have become lost here at home, following injuries — both physical and mental — sustained in the war. The fact is, there is little good to report on in Iraq, the press hasn’t even scraped the surface of the bad.

Maybe the timing was off, but a rip on Bush is always suitable.

But now the troubling reality. The particulars of my friend’s death have been confirmed recently. My hometown paper — the Buffalo News — has reported on the large amount of suicide deaths of local servicemen upon their return home from the battlefields in Iraq. One of the five examples was the tragic story of my best friend…

[Justin] Reyes left the Army last May after he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. About a month later, he hanged himself.

In one sense, it is closure. The questions regarding why, however, will never be answered.

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