Friendships End in Myriad Ways

Some more painful than others...Chapter 2: Filthy Beauty

Two Deaths 

When Robin Williams killed himself, I tweeted, too soon my feelings about it; coming out of surprise and anger and a sense of disappointment, which, admittedly, included my judgment that it’s hard for me to forgive such an act and hard to not see it as cowardly and wrong because I felt and still feel that way. 

I think I know as much as anyone, that life is filled with pain — and I hold the right to feel what I feel about suffering and bravery and life and death. 

No one needs to agree with me — I don’t ask for that nor do I care. 

A good friend of many years, a man I’ve both loved and admired attacked me on Twitter saying no one needed my forgiveness and that my words were ‘shallow’ and ‘insensitive’ naming me in standard Twitter form, @TerryTrueman, so everyone who followed him could hear his wrath and condemnation. 

It felt to me like he was standing on one side of Grand Central Station, during rush hour, with a megaphone yelling across that vast expanse an attack on my character and views – on me, because his words were personal, hurtful, and seemed so unnecessary. 

We’d been friends for so long and he could have called, emailed, snail-mailed, dropped me a note, rang my doorbell, invited me to lunch, passed word via mutual friends, texted his disagreement, or even tweeted his disapproval anonymously: I’d have known that his sub-tweet was meant for me. 

My remarks had not been directed to or in any way about my friend — they were about suicide. His anger seemed targeted solely at me. Nonetheless, I tried to mend fences quickly: I deleted my tweet and apologized to him and anyone else offended by my remarks. 

A number of Twitter followers sent me messages of support. 

My friend ignored me, brushed aside the proffered olive branch, remaining silent then, and up to this day. 

There are two sides to every quarrel and my friend, as I once did, never cut down the hanging, dead body of his stepson and performed CPR until the paramedics arrived and pronounced him dead and then had to tell his mother that her only son, our son, had killed himself. 

The fact that my friend, likely, never went through such a thing, may go some distance in helping someone understand why my views about suicide and the damage it does to loved ones left behind are so different than his. 

Maybe he forgot about my experience or maybe he never cared about it to begin with. Although, he’s a much beloved, adored, and respected author of books for teens filled with righteous moral indignation and enormous moral certainty. 

Whatever it is, that has kept my friend from talking to me, I’ll never know because when Robin Williams killed himself, a long and treasured friendship died as well and I don’t see it coming back again. 

After all, dead is dead as Robin Williams is. 

And now my former pal, and hopefully everyone else who reads this will understand.