Response #4 to that Craig’s List suicide note; slightly edited, but it’s better with the rough edges:

Date: 2003-09-25, 10:45AM

This is the second time in my life that I have read a note like this. The first time was when my wife of seven and a half years decided that she didn't want to live anymore. Thanks for bringing back that memory, asshole.

So, you do yourself a favor. You are conceited to think that your death affects no one. She thought so, too. Your death affects every person you have touched in your very short life. You touch more than you know. And you think no one will have to clean up? Wrong again. That's what she thought. She decided to take a bottle of Vicodin, a bottle of Flexeril, and a half gallon of Canadian Whiskey. She died alright, but before she did, she puked all over the hotel room she chose. Then someone had to come and discover the body, then the police had to come, then the medical examiner, then the coroner, then she was taken to a funeral home where she was cremated and 200 people cried. Someone had to come to the hotel room and clean up all the puke and the shit on the floor (you lose control of your bowels after you die). Me? I cried hard sobs for weeks. It's more than three years now for me. I still cry from time to time. Oh, one other thing -- suicide is the ultimate FUCK YOU to everyone you have ever met, laughed with, cried with, enjoyed sunrises or sunsets with. It's the ultimate FUCK YOU to every bird you've ever seen, or every beautiful scene that ever came into your visual cortex. Thank you for reminding me that there are still self-centered assholes like you in the world. But before you do it, let me say to you FUCK OFF YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!!!!! You don't get any sympathy from me. I gave at the office.

It’s all about you, isn’t it, Sparky?
This response is more about the writer's pain and anger from his wife's suicide, and focusing it on this person about whom he knows absolutely nothing. He starts off trying to bring perspective by mentioning the people who would be affected by his suicide, but he very quickly slips into the pain of memories from his wife's suicide, and down the slippery slope of anger and blame he goes until the big emotional outburst that he can't express to his wife, so he let's it out here.

This is not someone who took responsibility for himself to heal from his wife's suicide, and this is his resulting contribution to someone standing on the same precipice that his wife stood on; no sympathy, no compassion, just pain, bitterness, anger, and blame. It is sad, but not pitiable. I wouldn't pity him since it's all his doing. He made his choices. For example, he's angry that his wife gave him the "ultimate FUCK YOU", but that's the way he chooses to interpret it. Does he really believe that was her intended message? Weren't there better ways to process her death than read "fuck you" into it, as if she did it just to say that?

Also telling is that I don't think the person who wrote the suicide note mentioned anything about his death affecting no one. It's pure projection on the part of this response writer, and probably has something to do with his wife's suicide note. Interesting because if she didn't think her death would affect even her husband, then he couldn't have been doing a whole lot to make her feel like her life was worth living. No, this guy was no prize pig. It seems to me that this guy is just as much a self-centered asshole as he accuses the suicide as being. I find it very curious how he describes how she did it and what transpired, but makes no mention of why she did it, as if her reasons are unmentionable, as if she didn't have any reasons, or at least that they were not worth mentioning or affirming in this response message, which says "fuck you" very loudly. To who?

This response writer could have chosen to heal from his wife's suicide, to learn, to be a better person, to appreciate more, but instead yells "fuck you" to a total stranger who's about to end his life! I try to imagine how I would respond to someone yelling "fuck you" to me if I'm about to kill myself: ". . . um, OK?"