Stay

Last weekend while wrapping Christmas presents, I was watching It’s a Wonderful Life, which is one of my traditions. The movie was overexposed for years, being shown repeatedly on TV as its copyright had expired, but I still think it’s a masterpiece.

Some people might think the movie is hokey, with all the “every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.” When I was younger, I thought the ending, with everybody helping out George Bailey, was a little too sugary. But I have come to realize that this is one movie that earns its happy ending though the darkness that precedes it.

Beyond the romantic moments like offering to lasso the moon for Mary, there was a lot of darkness in George’s life. He went deaf after saving his brother from falling in an icy lake. He got beaten by a depressed, drunken pharmacist after pointing out a prescription error. He gave up his dreams and financial success to save the Bailey Building and Loan from disaster.

The most horrifying of all scenes comes on Christmas Eve when George returns home and takes his anger out on his children after facing financial ruin and possible jail time. The look on George’s face when he hugs his son to his chest, like he’s simultaneously protecting him and hanging onto him for his sanity, is shattering every time. Then Mary tells him, “Why must you torment the children? Why don’t you —” and stops herself. George looks at her and heads for the snowy bridge. That is pitch black.

So I watch It’s a Wonderful Life every year and reach the catharsis at the end, with the people of Bedford Falls gathering to bail out George, “the richest man in town.” I’ve just been thinking about this lately as my cousin Raymond committed suicide at the end of September. I know I haven’t said much about this but you know how I am with communication. I haven’t written anything on it because I didn’t have the heart at first and didn’t want to use someone’s pain as fodder for some kind of art or navel-gazing. But I feel I should say something because as I make blogs out of things that truly don’t matter, something that really does matter is certainly worth writing about.

Raymond was 44 and had a wife and three daughters, to whom he was devoted. I did not realize he had been having any problems but I hadn’t seen too much of him in the past few years so I didn’t have a window into his thinking. He did come to the wedding and I saw him once after that. Now I wish I had spent more time with him. He was the type of person who did so much with his life (he was a Navy SEAL, a nurse and later owned his own construction business). Those pictures displayed at the wake with him smiling with his family were very true to who he was.

A few things strike me now. I can’t speculate on what was going on in Ray’s mind and maybe it’s ultimately unknowable, so I don’t know what kind of problems preceded this. But I just feel sorrow and horror for how deep down people can go. How terrible does the situation have to be for people to feel they are better off gone, leaving behind their families?

The other thing is that there had to be hundreds of people at my cousin’s funeral. We waited an hour in line just to get into the funeral home. All those people loved him and nobody was able to save him. I realize you can’t swoop in like a superhero and save people. Not every George Bailey gets the angel Clarence talking him down off the bridge. That doesn’t make it a truth that is any easier to confront.

Since this can be a season for depression, what I do hope is that more people who are going through something will get help with it. Whatever people are suffering with, hopefully it helps to know that, for God’s sake, there are people who want them to stay.