Don't Try Suicide

by Queen

Don't try suicide - Nobody's worth it
Don't try suicide - Nobody cares
Don't try suicide - You're just gonna hate it
Don't try suicide - Nobody gives a damn

+++++++++++++

Chris Fraley committed suicide last Friday - dead at 45 by his own choice.

He dated my sister in high school. He lived with my brother during college. And me? I love trees.

The summer of 1984 I was working on my Forestry Merit Badge for Boy Scouts. Chris had taken a Forestry class at Ohio University and I went over to his house to borrow several textbooks. I returned all but one, "Guide to Tree Identification" promptly because I couldn't find it. I kept it for at least a year and kept meaning to return that damned blue book.

I didn't know Chris that well, even though we had several common threads to connect us. I got my Forestry Merit Badge that Summer, as well as every other nature-related Merit Badge the Boy Scouts offered. A few years later, I became Ecology/Conservation Director at a Summer Camp, with the blue book in tow.

I learned to identify trees not only by their leaves, I learned them by their bark as well as their shape. Whenever I didn't know a tree, I figured it out, until I could identify over 100 different species of tree.

I wrote a poem at a much later time called "The Body as a Line" which was actually referring to the shape of a tree in winter as much as it was about anything else.

He shot himself in his bedroom with a shotgun. The memorial service is next Friday, a week after his death. My brother is flying into town and we're going down to Cincinnati for the service. I need a break from being home alone on the weekends - this is a morbid sort of vacation for me. I've been trying to capture photos of the autumn landscape: the red and gold leaves in the southern Ohio hills.

Tragically, my father passed away just a few days before Independence Day and I cannot see fireworks without it effecting me directly. Now, it's Chris Fraley's turn to haunt my thoughts at least once every year.