force fed suicide

I have never felt air as heavy as that.
In the nights that followed I could not sleep under its weight, I could feel it encapsulating my body in its malignant filth.
Was it the impending death that polluted that winter nigh or was it the unfathomable things I had seen.
Some questions, I suppose, are made to linger (the Gods have a nack for the theatrical)

It was slight hysterics that cracked on the two way, a request for medical help. The paramedics, they said, wouldn’t touch him.
In our haste to fetch the doctor and take him to the boy neither myself nor Johan had imagined what we would be faced with.
In hine sight I imagine that the word suicide was yet to be defined in such tangible graphic terms in minds that attach foot notes of movie scenes to such a situations.

There were flowers laid out behind the car and he had locked his dog in with him. “he didn’t want to die alone.” People said
I was younger then and could not fathom how the prospect of death was less intimidating than being alone, this, I would only learn to understand this years to come.
People said many things and they still do.
Culers and Koeksissters on off chance run ins regurgitate a distortion of colored in details.
“Oh but he was gay you know”
“They say they found drugs on him”
In unison they shake their heads and rub their chins each one a better informant then the other.

But it was a different picture that tragedy painted that night.
Such a young body with his head slumped forward onto his chest, the light in the car port was stark white and chemical to my horror widened eyes.
A little dark trickle painted the back of his neck and the hair colorant coagulated in clumps in his hair.

When the doctor rushed past me and moved the cop out of the way I caught a glimps of the medic as he leaned against the van.
His face was set and his eyes unmoved.
Mechanically he answered the onlookers pleas for help.
“ I told you before lady, his a suicide the medical aid doesn’t cover it, you have to wait for the other ambulance”
it twisted my mind to the point pain to imagine a life that would kill a heart like that and I felt sorry for him.

When I breathed again the sickness about it stuck to my skin.
They had moved the boys body onto the ground.
1…2…3… Now blow 1…2…3..Now blow
It was slight at first and then it came in thunderstorms.
Under Johans hands the boys chest convulsed and jumped as it sucked in gasps of air.
Then it when still and he opened his eyes.
Where am I? he gasped at me
“Your home your going to be alright” my best efforts could not have hidden it from him
“where’s my dog is he okay?” he asked in a stronger voice
“His fine, his in the house”
then the purple framed eyes misted again and he cried harder than I have ever seen.
No No No he shouted and moved fast.
Lifting his head up and banging it down on the floor.
Holding his breath it became clear that the cry fro help my have been a serious attempt to harm himself.
He would pass out from lack of breath, wake and do it all again and again.

It sat there like cancer on my spine for nights to come, it left shadows on my mind as I tried to imagine how completely consumed he was by grief that it would drive him to that.
I concluded then that I didn’t have the capacity to feel that big….
But, again, I was young and would still grow to respect heart ace for all her destructive magic

I saw the boy the other day
As he drove by he smiled and waved
He passed and he was just like many other people in my life for a moment. A smile a face a voice.
Meat and bone and not a thought more than that.