OUR BLACK MEN AND SUICIDE
Today, April 11, 2017, is a younger brothers' sixty-first birthday, April 11, 1956: our Stephen M. Coleman, a financial broker-dealer who was a Stanford MBA; Amherst undergrad.
Yesterday, I was relieved to learn, yet I was also thereby aggrieved to learn, that Stevie's missing body has been found in Lake Michigan several months ago; its identity had been finally confirmed by forensic DNA evidence by Chicago police.
He had left a note; had vanished without a trace on August 30, 2015.
My brother's suicide brought to mind the other black men suicides that I have known. Beginning in high school, in 1968, there was Nick Brooks, who was a year behind me. In later years, from 2001 onwards, there was my friend, Allen Browder , a University of Central Missouri graduate, who owned two McDonald's restaurants here in the Kansas City area. Next came Worsham "Chuck" Caldwell , a fellow member of the Missouri Bar, and fellow, two-time alumnus of Howard University, who was a year ahead of me. Lastly was my own aforementioned, blood brother, Stephen M. Coleman.
These four suicides by educated, successful black men, made me pause to ponder what might be behind this uncommon ( for African Americans at least) collage of suicidal occurrences? I do not now know . Not one of them ever told me, if they even knew themselves.
We do know that they are all dead. Beyond that, we can only imagine.
Thomas Paine, the iconic colonial English-American pamphleteer has written, philosophically of death's dominion:
"[F]or however men may differ in their ideas of grandeur or government here, the grave is nevertheless a perfect republic. Death is not the monarch of the dead , but of the dying. The moment he obtains a conquest he loses a subject..."
P. 152, "The American Crisis Number V," THOMAS PAINE: COLLECTED WRITINGS (1955)
A philosophical preacher-friend of mine, the late Rev. Aaron Neal of North Carolina, California, Missouri, had once engaged our breakfast table and me, in particular, with the question: whether the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, had himself committed suicide to redeem mankind; instead of having been, involuntarily, a victim of homicide?
Rev. Neal had said that Jesus could have called down 10,000 angels from God with but a word, if he were so inclined. Instead, he never said a mumbling word. He just hung his head and died, out of love for us. Thus, Judas was just a prop, a trope, a literary creature for our consideration to complete the plot.
Easter Sunday is a time of rebirth or death, as each day, as every day.
However we may regard death or conceive it, we are immersed in it , by birth on earth, in our later lives.
So farewell Stevie until hello again!
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
BLACK MEN AND SUICIDE
OUR BLACK MEN AND SUICIDE
Today, April 11, 2017, is a younger brothers' sixty-first birthday, April 11, 1956: our Stephen M. Coleman, a financial broker-dealer who was a Stanford MBA; Amherst undergrad.
Yesterday, I was relieved to learn, yet I was also thereby aggrieved to learn, that Stevie's missing body has been found in Lake Michigan several months ago; its identity had been finally confirmed by forensic DNA evidence by Chicago police.
He had left a note; had vanished without a trace on August 30, 2015.
My brother's suicide brought to mind the other black men suicides that I have known. Beginning in high school, in 1968, there was Nick Brooks, who was a year behind me. In later years, from 2001 onwards, there was my friend, Allen Browder , a University of Central Missouri graduate, who owned two McDonald's restaurants here in the Kansas City area. Next came Worsham "Chuck" Caldwell , a fellow member of the Missouri Bar, and fellow, two-time alumnus of Howard University, who was a year ahead of me. Lastly was my own aforementioned, blood brother, Stephen M. Coleman.
These four suicides by educated, successful black men, made me pause to ponder what might be behind this uncommon ( for African Americans at least) collage of suicidal occurrences? I do not now know . Not one of them ever told me, if they even knew themselves.
We do know that they are all dead. Beyond that, we can only imagine.
Thomas Paine, the iconic colonial English-American pamphleteer has written, philosophically of death's dominion:
"[F]or however men may differ in their ideas of grandeur or government here, the grave is nevertheless a perfect republic. Death is not the monarch of the dead , but of the dying. The moment he obtains a conquest he loses a subject..."
P. 152, "The American Crisis Number V," THOMAS PAINE: COLLECTED WRITINGS (1955)
A philosophical preacher-friend of mine, the late Rev. Aaron Neal of North Carolina, California, Missouri, had once engaged our breakfast table and me, in particular, with the question: whether the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, had himself committed suicide to redeem mankind; instead of having been, involuntarily, a victim of homicide?
Rev. Neal had said that Jesus could have called down 10,000 angels from God with but a word, if he were so inclined. Instead, he never said a mumbling word. He just hung his head and died, out of love for us. Thus, Judas was just a prop, a trope, a literary creature for our consideration to complete the plot.
Easter Sunday is a time of rebirth or death, as each day, as every day.
However we may regard death or conceive it, we are immersed in it , by birth on earth, in our later lives.
So farewell Stevie until hello again!