It happened again. The unspeakable has become the commonplace. We are told our friend died “unexpectedly.” We get notice from our class president on social media and the cycle begins anew. We send texts. Texts become calls. The details are conveyed, person to person by voice instead of digits. Then we say there are no words. We catch up with old friends. We take inventory of those who knew him. We share stories and laugh through the tears. We rededicate ourselves to fighting this thing that keeps killing our friends. The ritual has become too familiar.
This week, I gave a lecture to undergraduates on human geography. We talk about military anthropology and discuss culture’s impact on war. We dwell on the topic of rituals. Rituals are the sacred rites performed by members of a culture or religion to mark an event. They give order to the chaos of our lives. Weddings. Graduations. Funerals. They are the things we do when we don’t know what else to do.
Some rituals are personal. The pre-mission prayer. Rubbing some talisman before crossing the line. Some are shared. The tiresome weekend safety brief. The memorial service.
Our ritual in the wake of a loss like this one is familiar. We recount our last meeting with our friend. Did we miss something? Could we have done something differently? Our lives are so different now, with families and careers and the disparate paths we’ve taken since we left to fight our country’s wars. The wars whose endings were as messy as our friend’s.
The ritual is a comfort. It gives structure to our grief. It is an outlet. A salve to the maleficent force that robbed us of a husband, father, and friend. The thing that came for his twin brother. That snuffed out a light that shown so brightly in our darkest hours. But the ritual’s comfort is cheap. It hides the darker truth. It is only familiar because we have done it so often. It has become part of the rhythm of our lives.
It has been twenty-five years since our graduation ritual. The day our friend walked across the stage at Annapolis to accept his diploma. He broke decorum by giving a bro-hug to the forty-second president of the United States. In those twenty-five years, we’ve buried almost the same number of friends. Some of those deaths were operational losses—enemy actions or accidents in the line of duty. Some were disease or crime. But the most common reason was suicide.
After we bury our friend, we return to our homes and our lives. We kiss our loved ones. We hold our children close. We try to move on. And we wait for the day the ritual begins again.
Matt Collins is a former Marine intelligence officer and an adjunct professor of geography at George Washington University.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
If you or someone you know are dealing with thoughts of suicide, you can reach the Veterans Crisis Line by calling 988 or texting 838255.
Image credit: Cpl. Russell Midori, US Marine Corps