. . . diminishes us all.

Rob killed himself last week.

I’ve started this post three or four different ways. And I’ve realized — I can only describe Rob in terms of how I saw him. This is an obvious truth, of course. But it’s an important point when discussing loss — my personal loss is minor. Rob was an acquaintance of mine, someone I saw at conventions or community events — other people’s housewarming parties, other people’s birthdays. He was intermittantly in my shooting league, that sort of thing. I sincerely doubt that I had a personal conversation with him in ten years. So for me to talk about his death seems presumptuous. Shouldn’t someone who knew him better talk about him? Shouldn’t those who loved him mark his loss?

They do; they will; they are. For those who loved Rob, his loss is great and frustrating and anger-inducing. For me it’s a little more distant.

A little more distant — and isn’t that the sort of thing one ponders with a suicide? The distance, the lack of knowledge, the high gloss of surficial and superficial interactions? Rob had friends, he had community. In the course of his decision-making, Rob had to look at those. I wonder, from my vantage over here, what weight those relationships had. I wonder what things unseen weighed more, in his mind. I heard that Rob declined to offer an explanation for his actions. That choice of his is now a truth with which his friends and family will have to live, like the truth of his absence. I wonder what truths he saw as being so equally immutable that his life could not coexist among them?

While at times our human presence seems to be unstoppable the presence of any single one of us is a flickering light. Irreplaceable and uniquely contributing to the accomplishments of the whole. That whole is now less than it might be. The loss of any one of us diminishes us all.