Suicide: Day 4 April 18 2013

Years ago in art school I hammered straight sewing pins about the neck of a test tube to fix it to the wall for my mindmeld friend J.’s exhibition in the Concordia Univ VA Gallery. 

Parkinson’s Disease has taken the pins from my fingers and the hammer from my hand. It has compressed the tensile muscles, fusing the armature of bones and slowing the drumming blood, hollowing my body: a test tube of parasympathetic nerves and febrile Chi, nanosensitive to emotions within and without me.

I have wondered these few days, why I felt so much this tragedy. Others were closer, more frequent companions… ever since I met Christophe, I perceived a sensitivity to which I could relate, a vulnerability (in my case born of Parkinson’s) that he (it seemed to me) saw. We never spoke of this. When one has a physically apparent, degenerative disease, even the thickest skinned are subject to others’ reactions. Some people manage to communicate their compassion and give assistance with such subtlety that it flows over the pain and frustration without hurting. He did this.

April 15^th in Saint Louis du Sénégal, as the paramedics (les Sapeurs-Pompiers) ran up our apartment building stairs and his friends forced the door, I was brushing my teeth and thinking how I’ve kept meaning to share this blog with him, one of so few here who speak English well enough to wade through…

His suicide has rendered me the test tube.

Suicide: Day 3 April 17 2013

The first 2 mornings after, as I stepped out to warm up in the sun at the front door, I reflexively expected Christophe (our friend) whom I often met as he stepped out to do the same thing.

Two frileux (chilled white people in cardigans and linen scarves) seeking the African sun.

Instead I met his closed door, the plaster felled by his would-be rescuers, the psychosomatic smell of his unwashed blood in my Parkinson’s-diminished nose.

Suicide: Day 2 April 16 2013

3 thoughts for the day after suicide:

1. Watching too much violent American TV does not necessarily desensitize you to the sight of your friend’s blood on the floor

2. Knowing why does not always make it better: the rumoured explanation is just too tragically dumb.

3. Senegalese police should bring their own evidence bags rather than asking us for spare plastic bags! Blades, suicide note and laptop were removed from the scene in a white plastic Duty free bag from Paris CDG and an “aubergine” purple bag from Gala Fabrics, South Granville, Vancouver

April 15 2013

Our friend killed himself this morning.

Ambulance in the street

No hospital corners on his stretcher head first down the precarious steep stairs

Just the rumpled blanket from a sleepless bed.

I couldn’t see his face – covered? uncovered?

So I didn’t know

Then confirmation came and the Commisaire de la Police

So Paix Sur Lui, our friend, and his sad heart