There
Is Always Biloxi
by
Sal Towse
I was twenty-three when my brother killed himself.
Skip was the oldest. I was number four of six. He always seemed
so mature, so sure of himself. He was cool in a Bobby Darin sort
of way, a bit of a rebel, lazy at school, bright. He was my hero.
We were seven years apart at an age when seven years seemed
a huge divide, but he still let me tag along occasionally. He
helped teach me to read when I was four. He was entering high
school when I was entering third grade, a year ahead of other
kids my age. He graduated high school while I was navigating
the social shoals of sixth grade. Later, he joined the Navy.
I was finishing high school by the time he left the Navy and
married someone extraordinarily bright, providing the proof I
needed that cool guys could fall in love with brainy girls.
Over the years, they had a son, bought a house, struggled with
troubles and then divorced. After that, everything started to
go wrong. No. Everything started going wrong years before, but
I'd been too young to recognize the signs.
Some time after his divorce, Skip went cross-country to visit
our grandparents, where he stayed awhile before rejoining the
Navy. The Navy stationed him halfway between the coasts, far
from family. My parents would hear from him. He seemed happier.
He was doing well. I kept hoping he'd return to California.
Early one morning in September 1975, he slit his wrists and
died, two thousand miles away from family. He left letters for
my mother and his son's mother that I've never read.
The snippets I learned were that he'd fallen in love. The romance
fell apart. His bride-to-be left him for a good friend. In despair,
he felt, at the age of twenty-nine, that he'd screwed up his
life forever, was never going to be happy, and was never going
to make anything of his life.
It wasn't that simple, of course. A broken romance doesn't
inevitably lead to suicide.
I couldn't understand how, no matter how bad things were, he
could kill himself without caring how his suicide would affect
me, his other siblings, our parents, friends and acquaintances,
and his four-year-old son.
I was angry with him and angry with myself for not somehow
saving him.
For years I was angry, wondering why, if he thought he'd made
such a mess of his life, he didn't just start over. Our newspaper
had a story of a murderer who'd skedaddled out of town after
killing his wife and children. He was found ten years later with
a new family and a new life, selling shoes in Biloxi.
Why hadn't Skip just disappeared and moved to Biloxi?
William Styron first published Darkness Visible, which
describes his battle with depression and his suicide attempt,
in 1989 as an article for Vanity Fair. The next year he
published an expanded version, a lean, unsettling eighty-four-page
book. I read Darkness Visible for the first time ten years
ago and immediately gave a copy to my mother. I've read it several
times since.
Styron helped me understand what Skip had been going through
and why he chose the path he chose. Styron shares his personal
tale of the "insidious breakdown" that leads to suicide. Styron
limns in excruciatingly painful prose the suicidal mind's despair
and its belief that life is full of never-ending pain, beyond
hope and will continue ever on that way.
After reading Styron's book, I realized that I couldn't, from
two thousand miles away, have changed things. I stopped blaming
myself, and I stopped being angry with Skip. I better understood
what Skip had been feeling when he made his decision, how he
felt there was no choice. Styron also helped me recognize the
same dangerous, dark currents in me.v I still wish Skip's life
had not taken that last turn. I wish, like Styron, he'd sought
help before it was too late.
His son turned thirty-three this year. He's a terrific person.
Skip would've been proud of him. He's four years older now than
his father ever was.
Why do people commit suicide? Darkness Visible lays
out Styron's story in unsparing detail. When I battle my own
demons, Styron's book and my knowledge of the aftermath of a
suicide's choices help get me through to the other side.
And there is always Biloxi.
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