Suicide is Not a Selfish Act
His name was Sam Girouard, and he would have been 38 this year.
I met him when I was 16 years old, in classes at Whatcom Community College. He was outgoing, funny, and had kind eyes and a joyful smile. He was tall, over 6 feet, and gentle, and when I imagine him I picture him in his khaki vest. I don’t know if I’ve ever met someone with such expressive eyes.
We became friends and studied together. Math practice turned into math books left behind, chats in the student union, and hours outside in the sun laughing together. It wasn’t long before he developed a crush on me, and I developed a crush on him. I had a boyfriend, but Sam would tell me that he didn’t treat me well enough.
His name was Sam Giroaurd, and he was my boyfriend.
Our romantic relationship was short-lived, but nice. I loved the way it felt when he hugged me. He was tall, and warm, and when he enveloped me he smelled like laundry detergent. His lips were soft. He fell hard and fast, and I was on the rebound, and it was a recipe for disaster. He liked me so much, but we were kids, finding our legs in a world where high school was behind us, but we weren’t really adults yet. He was the first person I watched have a broken heart that I had caused.
His name was Sam Girouard, and he helped me become a better person.
After we stopped dating, we tried to be friends, but I was not being a good friend to him. I liked the way he looked at me, the attention he paid to me. I was selfish, and I wanted to spend time with him whether it was painful for him or not. The greatest gift he gave me was sitting on the bench with me outside of his PoliSci class, listening to my apology for being a terrible friend as my hands shook with nervousness. It was the first time I took real, big responsibility for my behavior with as a (semi) adult person, and because of him I learned a big and important lesson about how to be someone’s friend.
His name was Sam Girouard, and he was one of the most brilliant people I have ever met.
He was a paleontologist. He graduated High School and Community College at age 17, and when I met him he was 16 and already attending classes at University. He started collecting fossils when he was 8 years old, and when he was 12 he went on a paleontological expedition with UW. There were articles in local papers about him, and he appeared in Time for Kids and Boy’s Life magazine. Before he died, he published 2 papers in scientific journals. He LOVED rocks and dinosaurs. He told me that when he saw the opening scene in Jurassic Park where Ellie & Dr. Grant see the park for the first time, he cried because it was so beautiful. He lit up rooms with his love for fossils and his stories about being hit on by college girls who didn’t realize he was only 16.
His name was Sam Girouard, and this year, it’s been 20 years since he got his hands on a gun and he ended his own life.
Sam contacted me the week before he killed himself. We hadn’t talked in months, hadn’t really spoken since the day I put him in charge of whether we would be friends. We were supposed to meet for coffee, but his car broke down. I waited for him outside the cafe and I got mad because I thought he’d stood me up. He emailed me later explaining his car troubles, and I was hopeful that we would reschedule. Later, his mother told me he was uncharacteristically upset and anxious about not having been able to make it. I didn’t know that he was meeting me to make peace and say goodbye.
At the church before his funeral began, I went into the bathroom and it was crowded with friends gathering tissue to staunch the flow of tears that felt like it would never stop. I sat with his family, and friends, and all the girls he’d charmed, and heard people talk about how Sam made us laugh. His geology professor from WWU held up a piece of meteorite and talked about how they travel so fast through the atmosphere, burning really bright, and how we are lucky if we get to see their beauty. He said that’s how Sam was. People talked about how he gave away every fossil he ever collected, how he was so proud of his parents, and how he talked to the neighbor’s children about fossils whenever they asked.
Years, later, I named my oldest son partly in his memory.
I don’t think about Sam every day anymore, but I think about him often. After he died, I corresponded with his parents for a while, and still am in touch with them every so often. I shared my memories of Sam, and talked about him in a time when people didn’t know what to say. Even now, 20 years later, I am crying thinking about what a terrible loss the world suffered when we lost this bright, beautiful young man. I still miss him. It hurts so badly to think about what his life could have been. In the grand scheme of things, in my life, I spent so little time with Sam. But he touched me. I don’t have many regrets in life, but I regret that I never got to tell Sam that he changed my life, and that I loved him.
Almost everyone I know has been touched in some way by suicide. Whether it was a friend, a family member, or thoughts they’ve had about self-harm, suicide touches us all.
I have been to dark places in my life. During the end of my marriage and in the years that followed, I faced depression that was so physically painful at times that I felt like my chest was breaking apart. And in all of that time, I have never considered ending my life. I don’t feel like Sam had a long-term plan for ending his life. I think things just built and got out of control and he was young and big-hearted and didn’t know how to go on when he was in pain.
Imagining the amount of pain that people must be feeling when they see killing themselves as their best or only option takes my breath away.
Suicide is not a selfish act. If you have thought about killing yourself, you are not a selfish person. If you are feeling like hurting yourself, or like the world would be better off without you, I hope you are able to find the strength to reach out. I know it’s hard. I know that is an understatement, and that it feels like people can’t understand how you feel, and that’s probably true too. I would not presume to say I fully understand, but my heart aches for yours.
I may not know you, but I am here. You can talk to me. I will listen. If you tell me you want help, I will do my best to give it. If you just need to share your pain, I will listen. If it helps, I will remind you that there are people here who will miss you. If what you need is to be told that it’s okay not to feel strong, I can do that too. If you just need to tell someone that you have been feeling suicidal without having them try to talk you out of it, I will have that conversation. I will do everything I can to create a safe space where you can process your feelings. You are valuable, and you matter.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1–800–273–8255
