Amanda van Scoyoc

Painting of Darius Poteat

I started this painting of Darius a month after he was gone. I painted it mainly for Eli, but also because I thought that staring at his face while placing paint on a canvas might be healing. It also just seemed like Darius deserved a portrait, and he deserved to be surrounded by blue skies, leaves, and those weird orange spikey flowers that bloom in July and August in North Carolina.

Sometimes, while painting, I would think about how strange it is that this is as old as Darius will ever be. When I paint Eli or me, I imagine being old, looking back on the painting, and exclaiming to Eli, “look how young we were.” But with Darius, this is how old he will be forever. The painting is the same as the memory.

It’s a new year, a new decade, and it is six months since Darius died. It is a day when we are supposed to look forward, make resolutions, and instead I find myself looking backwards. Six months since, and I feel that I am living a different life than I was before.

Darius, your death was life affirming. It is important that you know this. I believe that you would want to know that we are not wallowing in our loss, but are cherishing all that is left for us in this life. I believe your death is why Eli and I ended up getting engaged much earlier than I expected we would. After your death, there was a sense of emergency and desperation. Much of life became unimportant. I was consumed knowing that people could pass immediately and be gone. Every time Eli annoyed me, I heard the replay of his voice shaking on the phone in the moment he told me. Instead of frustration, I would hear those words “Amanda, Darius killed himself,” and then hold onto him and breathe him in. Eli kept your picture on his phone so he would see you every time he checked the time or picked up a phone call. We didn’t talk about you all that much, but you were everywhere.

You changed the way we live our lives. I am no longer willing to live a life unexamined. I want to be sure that every year, month, and day of my life, that I am taking in all that is good. Since your death, so much has happened. We made this apartment slowly into our home, got engaged, I gained a niece, and Eli became an uncle for the first time, I changed my employment, and started spending more time with my family. I applied to graduate school programs with the goal of making changes in the lives of impoverished youth. I’ve seen too much to not need to make changes now, immediately, with a sudden sense of urgency.

The other day, I noticed that Eli changed the picture on his phone to a photograph of me from our engagement photo shoot. When I asked him about it, he said that it was time and it would be what you wanted. We made it through making breakfast and running errands today before voicing that we were both thinking about this six month mark. We had lots of wine with dinner tonight.

Thinking forward to this next decade, I just hope that we continue to both live with the urgency and meaning you brought to life. I want to make changes, forge ahead, love harder, and take time to appreciate the beauty in every day.

A celebration for Darius and for all who loved him.

A celebration for baby X who will be arriving early Wednesday morning.

These last few days have been very difficult. I have hardly wanted to leave the apartment and it’s made me nearly hate it here. It wasn’t good timing to move here when we did. If we had stayed in Durham maybe Darius would have stayed on our couch. If Eli hadn’t just started working his new job he would have gone over earlier in the day. I feel like this moment in time, all these changes were more significant than we realized, and the world is out of control. 

As a kid I always used to think about all of the decisions that we make in life and how they define our life path. Just as the brain’s neurons are constantly changing how we experience the world, each small moment changes every moment of our future. And some small decisions can change everything. It’s too much to think about all that could have been, and I had stopped thinking about it as an adult. But since Darius left us, I just can’t stop thinking about all of the tiny decisions that could have changed this outcome. I’m stuck on the question of inevitability. Was this suicide inevitable. If it had been stopped, would he have succeeded in the end.

Darius’s death has made me feel both out of control and in awe of this world. When I wake up in the morning, I stare at Eli knowing exactly how much I could loose. I’m amazed by how much we humans are capable of feeling. Having talked to so many people, it’s comforting to know that there are expectations of grief. This feeling of being really depressed about 40% of the time and callus about 60% of the time… sometimes feeling that everything is OK and thinking that I’m inhuman and have no emotions and then suddenly breaking apart into sadness… this is the path that grief plows. I saw Maya Angelo speak a few years ago and she said in her singing voice that in life you can always take comfort in knowing that everything you experience, every emotion you feel has been felt before. We are built of common threads. Grief is personal, but every thought, every feeling is a part of grief’s repertoire.

Today has been a better day. Today I painted some small paintings of Darius for Eli. I had been planning this for the past couple of days, but didn’t have the momentum. Today I did.

 

Darius Poteat

Darius Poteat

One of Eli’s closest friend’s took his life today. Eli found him. He is there with police and I am at home waiting, not really sure what it will be like when he opens the door. We’ve never been through anything like this before. A part of me wants Eli home now, and another part is dreading not knowing how to react.

I didn’t know Darius that well. I never knew his sadness. I only knew him when we got breakfast or hung out for birthdays on our front porch. He’s never seemed a dark person, not a hard person to get laughing. Eli knew deeper parts of Darius, but I don’t think he ever thought Darius would truly take his life. I am angry that I didn’t figure this out (I study this don’t I?) and I don’t want Eli to have been there. I want him to have stayed home tonight with me, or arrived earlier, much earlier.

I work with these kids who are nearly there, attempted to be there, and the hardest thing is to know that in some way they don’t mean it, and Darius didn’t mean it either. There’s an article in the NY Times about people who survived attempting suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate bridge. The journalist tracked down these survivors and they all had the same story–the feeling of wanting desperately to live on the way down–suddenly understanding that this is against our very genetics, our beliefs. It is anti-evolution and religion. Their soul kicked in at the last minute, and having survived, they didn’t attempt again. That’s the worst part of suicide. It happens at a point of maybe, uncertainty, apprehension, but too often there is no turning back. The indecision, is also suicide’s saving grace, it’s why it is considered a preventable disorder.

Recently, I have been plagued by people like Darius who have low lows, but are normally steady. It blows my mind that he could get that low when a couple of weeks ago we had breakfast together and laughed about wedding cakes. It’s intollerable to think that Eli was on the phone with him making plans, joking around at one this afternoon, and he was gone by the time Eli made it to Durham after work. What do you do when it’s not predictable, when they are there as usual and then gone.

I had a conversation with an adolescent over the phone, who already has suicide attempts on record. I asked how long the she had debated before each attempt, and she responded in a light adolescent tone, “Never more than a minute.” She went from not thinking about attempting to attempting in under a minute? This happy sounding kid on the other end of the phone in less than a minute could be gone.  What do you do when someone is there, and that possibility exists.

After this I will take all who have attempted, no matter how normal they may seem, much more seriously. Darius had attempted before. I don’t think he was on medication, and I don’t think he had a therapist. Darius, we as a society did not support you well enough. I should have known better. Even though I didn’t believe you would, I should have known better, read more, understood, and taken this moment in your life much more seriously. The past is the best predictor of the future, and this time you stepped across the boundary in an uncertain moment. I wish I had told you about the the Golden Gate bridge and how the girl on the phone made me terrified that you can loose someone so quickly. It would have been an awkward conversation from your friend’s girlfriend, but I still wish I had told you.

Eli and Darius at Locopops. Photography by Mark Schueler.