A magician committed suicide last night at the famed Magic Castle in Hollywood, the exclusive club for magicians. I've been a member for thirty-six years and I can't recall anything — not even the fire a few years ago — that triggered the emotion I see on members' websites and forums tonight. The deceased was a performer there, well-known to most though I'd never met him. I can't help but think about the poor staff member who found the body and who had to have wondered if he or she had walked into an elaborate, poor-taste practical joke.
I wasn't there last night. Around 9:40, I got a text message that the Castle was closing down for the night due to a "medical emergency." It didn't take a lot of web-surfing to read what had really happened, though the performer's name had not been released. It's standard practice to not make that public until the person's family has been notified, though I wonder if that's always wise. Sure, it would cause a lot of shock to the deceased's loved ones…but it did cause a lot of anxiety to those of us who heard, in effect, "Someone you probably know has killed themselves. We'll tell you in a few hours who it is."
As I said, I didn't know the gent but a lot of names did run through my skull before I found out who it was.
In my lifetime, I think I've known about eight people who killed themselves. At least two were in such advanced stages of incurable, debilitating diseases that I could well understand it. They certainly spared themselves a lot of pain and their loved ones, a lot of pain and trouble and expense. If I'm ever that bad off, I might well decide to take that route before they did. The others had either made such a mess of their lives that they felt they couldn't go on, or had suffered a personal tragedy, like the loss of a life-partner.
One did it in the messiest, public way he could think of — a way which caused great pain and shock to those who knew him but also to total strangers who had the bad fortune to be there when he did it. Years later, some of them were still under psychiatric care because of it. In that case, my initial feelings of sorry and sadness for my friend turned to a fair amount of anger for doing it the way he did. Some of us may soon feel that way about the fellow who took his own life, not at home but in our clubhouse, disrupting business and ruining many evenings.
I don't think it's a bad thing to be angry at a dead person. You just have to remember that your anger can't do a lot.