R.I.P. Leatherface

So a person who fits the description of the leather-clad man I had an odd encounter with in the West Village a few weekends ago has a name: Richard Lewis. As suspected, he was recently released from a mental institution, and died in an apparent suicide by hanging himself by his spiked dog collar from a fence. It almost sounds too strange to be true (as evidenced by the fact that most passersby thought he was an early Halloween costume), but it reminded me of a few past encounters I’ve had with strangers whom I later found out had died.

Though my initial encounter elicited the typical shake-your-head-in-amazement-at-crazy-New-Yorkers reaction, news of his death actually struck me rather sadly. I’ve been lucky to not have lost too many loved ones, save a few aging grandparents for whom death was less about sadness, and more about letting go and being relieved that their suffering was finally over. For the most part, the people I’ve lost had lived a long and eventful life. But I’ve always been strangely affected by the death of people whom I barely knew, especially when the death has been by suicide. I often wondered what their life was like and what caused them so much sorrow that they had to take their own lives.

One summer I worked at the front desk of a Comfort Inn, and I remember a man who prepaid for his room in cash. I don’t remember his name, but I do recall that when he filled out the information card we had all walk-in guests fill out, he listed his occupation as “college professor.” And I remember that when he paid, he gave me a halfhearted smile that was the typical forced smile you give someone when you’re exhausted and just want to retreat to your own bed as soon as you can.

Except this wasn’t his own bed, and he curiously had little luggage, even for a simple overnight stay. Later that night, after my shift was over, I found out that a housekeeper had found him dead on his bed. I think he had taken some medication and placed a plastic bag over his head to suffocate himself. I remember wondering whether he really was a college professor, and, for some odd reason, whether jilted or unrequited love was the reason for him wanting to kill himself. It was an odd thought, but one that didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility. What was even more odd was the possibility that I may have been the last person he ever saw face-to-face.

I never found out his name. But the other close encounter I’ve had with suicide was a girl I knew in college, two years below me. I remember her as someone who always seemed chill, really nice, really interested in what you had to say and an all-around well-adjusted person. After I graduated she went abroad to study in France, I think, and the next time I saw her, she said she had really enjoyed it, almost too much—and I sensed something emotionally significant had happened there, because her face fell a little bit when she said that.

Then one day, at 2 am, in what would have been her senior year, I got a call at home from my friend who had heard word that she had killed herself. She had jumped out of her window, and apparently there was no mistaking that it was suicide, since the high-rise dorm in which she lived had windows that you had to take apart to open big enough to jump out of. I was shocked. I never thought that she, of all people, would do it. Aside from being seemingly well-adjusted, she was religious, and I can only imagine she was going through some kind of extreme emotional and spiritual turmoil, so much so that she lost the will to live.

I don’t think I cried that night; instead, I was shocked. Just shocked. I didn’t know what to think, really, except that I had thought about calling her a few months before just to say hello, to see how she was doing. I had lost touch with her after I graduated, but she was someone whom I definitely thought about from time to time with fondness. I did cry, however, when I finally put flowers on her grave a few months later on a dreary day in a Long Island cemetery.

I don’t think one can ever speculate how or why someone loses the will to live. I think those of us who have ever thought about it were lucky that something just stopped us short from that feeling of total despair, of total separation from the rest of the world, when you think your only option for finding peace is in death. I think of my undergrad friend from time to time, and I think she’s found that peace, though the means through which she found it was not the way she was meant to. I find solace though, in the fact that if I ever see her one day, we’ll both realize that the pain she was feeling was just a blip in the eternity she was meant to experience.