Suicide

Suicide. It's not a pleasant subject but it's there staring at us when we research family history.

Several of my distant relatives or those connected by marriage committed suicide. I often have to edit out the facts on the family histories I've published so to not offend.

I suppose there are cases in every family but it's not something we normally talk about. The first one I remember was a good friend of my Grandfather Tink, Albert "Gator" Mora. Gator was a big man, hence the name, a commercial fisherman who at age 60 had been diagnosed with cancer in 1964. After finding out he went home, parked his car with the engine running, put a garden hose in the exhaust and the other in the side window and sat down behind the wheel.

Gator met my Grandpa Green once, maybe at my parent's wedding and was friends of sorts with him. They had an ongoing "discussion" of who owed who money. Gator would give me messages to tell him something about the money Grandpa had under his bed or buried in his yard and Grandpa Green always had some retort about Gator paying off the money he owed. This photo is of Gator (on the left) and my uncle Ralph taken around 1960.

Some other cases I have come across, Grandpa Green's brother shot himself in 1934. The newspaper article about the event said only he had been despondent and shot himself in the heart as his sons approached the house.

Another great great uncle on the Fulford side of the family tied a rope around a 90 pound boat engine, tied the other side around himself and jumped overboard with the engine and drowned.

So what's the point, there is none. Just like when anyone takes this as the way out.