Sad Day

Yesterday on Oprah American journalist Anderson Cooper was on talking about the suicide of his brother. It then hit me that its ten years this week sometime that my high-school friend, Tim, committed suicide. I’ve been meaning to ‘commemorate’ this but, unfortunately, I’ve kept forgetting. I also say ‘sometime’ this week because the last time I saw him was at an 18th birthday party on the night of Saturday 24th August 1996. The next day, he drove off to work and was never seen alive again. For the next six weeks, there was no sign of him and people had started to think that he’d taken off to Newcastle, run away, so to speak. However I, and a few others, always had a gut feeling that it was something worse. His body wasn’t found until about three-four weeks later (the details are a bit fuzzy now) in the deep forest at the back of Clybucca, near Kempsey. I believe he died from a single self-inflicted gunshot wound, but no-one really talked about that part of the story. And I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong. Our class’ HSC (final year exams) were then due to start two weeks later. Needless to say none of us got a very high pass mark that year. I don’t think any of us really cared, by then, to be honest. Anyway, there you go. I could go further into the specifics of the time: the misery; the confusion; the mystery. Actually, I’ll put this down…Tim did give me one of the biggest compliments of my teenage life. It was that time of year when we were voting for school captains. As I was not part of the ‘cool squad’—the people who usually get the gig--there was no living chance I’d even get a vote. Or so I thought. Later on that day, Tim told me he’d voted for ME for captain. Flustered and pleased I asked him why??? He said, and I quote, “Because you’d be better at it than those other girls”. Wow. Thinking of you Tim: you funny, silly, sorry, stupid bugger. Wish you were still here.