About a minute before boarding my connecting flight from Chicago to San Francisco yesterday morning, I got notified about my upgrade to first class, so I hurriedly went to the counter, grabbed my updated ticket, and headed onto the plane. What I have found in getting upgraded to business or first is that the guy sitting next to you will inevitably never want to talk to you; not only does he not want to talk to you, he will barely want to make eye contact with you, let alone give any acknowledgment that there is another living thing he is sitting next to in his plush seat or large cubby station. And yes, in my experience, about 90% of the people sitting up there tend to be men in suits.
So I was surprised when the guy sitting next to me this time made eye contact with me as soon as I got settled into my seat and said hello and smiled. I smiled and said hi back. But then what started as a quick friendly exchange of greetings became a chat that lasted the entire duration of our flight – four and a half hours. This has never happened to me before.
He is a 63-year-old man who just lost his wife to cervical cancer last December, has five children, came from a strict Catholic family of seven children, and has spent his entire life in the Chicago area. He’s a conservative Libertarian, can’t stand Obama and his Hawaiian vacations and “excessive use” of Air Force One, is pro-life, and is the president of a staffing company based in a suburb of Chicago. Well, who would have thought I would be interested in speaking with someone who fits all those conservative ticks? But I did, and I actually found myself agreeing with a lot of the things he said, particularly when it came to Trump and his no-BS attitude when it came to calling out politicians on the left and the right.
I think I liked him because he seemed so human and honest, and he was very thoughtful when telling me about his late wife, who it’s clear he loved very much. Superficial and shallow is what this man is not. He spoke about her as though she were still alive, and I’m sure in his heart, she really was very much still alive. He told me about their discovery of her cervical cancer at stage 4, how the doctor kept gently saying that this could have been caught earlier had it not been for their resistance to seeing doctors. “When you say ‘I do,’ on your wedding day, you should also take it a step further in your mind and promise each other you will agree to annual health exams,” he said to me, pensive. “If only I could turn back the clock, I would.” He told me about her struggle, her pains, even to the extent of her emergency room visits, particularly the one where one of her intestines burst, and they didn’t think she was going to make it, but she did.
I shared with him quite a bit about my life — where I’ve lived, studied, worked, what my family is like, where they’ve come from, how I was raised, my attitudes on life and living in general. And then of course, it got to the siblings, and when he asked about my brother, I said he passed away two years ago. His eyes grew sad, and he asked gently if I’d be willing to share how he died. I hesitated and gave him a hard look.
“Do you really want to know?” I asked him.
“If you are comfortable sharing it with me, yes,” he said.
“Suicide,” I responded simply with a straight face.
He buried his face in his hands. “I’m so sorry,” he said, looking completely anguished. “But I will tell you that I think suicide is just one of the most selfish things… I mean, it’s like they don’t even think how it will affect the people they love around them.”
I could feel my face grow hot as soon as he said the word “selfish.” I thought for a few seconds about what I wanted to say and said, “Do you really think it’s selfish? Really? Do you have any idea what it’s like to struggle with a real mental illness all your life and to also have to be constantly criticized and told you are worthless? It’s not selfish if that’s the life you lived. You cannot make a statement like that unless you know what that person went through, to feel completely powerless and like every day someone’s trying to crush every little effort you are trying to make.”
He looked at me and clearly regretted what he said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it like that and I had no idea that your brother went through that. For those who have mental illness, of course it’s not selfish. I’m just saying that for those who do not, it is.” He then shared the story of his best friend who hanged himself after he found out his wife was cheating on him with a mutual friend for the last six years. His three-year-old son found him in their basement.
It’s something people still think, that suicide is selfish, that a lot of people who commit suicide did not suffer any mental illness or depression and that they were just thinking about themselves and their own lives. “Selfish” and “suicide” should never be in the same sentence. I will make sure anyone who ever tries to tell me otherwise is swat down.
