Shades of Grey

Shades of Grey

By Julie Platt

A suicide letter is something on which no one likes their name. Emails and snail mail, Instant Messages, love letters, sticky notes stuck on the front door, sure. But no one likes a suicide letter. Perhaps I was being selfish in my hope that I would not be the addressee, but I knew that sometime soon I would end up in the eye of this storm. No one knew Brandon quite like I did, and he didn’t care enough about anyone else to leave them anything, let alone an explanatory letter.

See, my twenty-four year-old younger brother had never quite gotten grips in his own life. He spent years dealing with self-image issues, though he may have been one of the most attractive kids in his class in high school, and even on through the beginnings of college. Before he dropped out, that is. He had no trouble picking up a weekend date. Brandon could talk to almost anyone. He was intelligent, too, and certainly not afraid of working hard. He just decided to go a different direction with his life instead of completing a degree. I supported him, though I was hesitant, and since I was the only one in the family who didn’t push him to get back to school, I think that year locked our brotherly bond in place.

When Brandon was twenty-two, just weeks after he chose to stop attending college, he decided to take a year’s service mission in Africa with a Christian service group to build elementary schools for Nigerian children in need. He came back different. He said he’d seen too much. Whenever we’d ask him to talk about it, he refused. No amount of probing or pestering could get him to visit a psychiatrist or write down what it was that he’d seen that had disturbed him so much. After that, he grew to be obsessed with things that he’d never paid mind to before he’d left. He read the newspaper every day without fail. He followed up trial cases for murder, he stayed up to date on all of the terrorist bombings and war threats he could find in the Middle East, he could tell you how much the government was spending on artillery on a weekly basis, and he never missed a political debate. He became distant, occasionally angry, and eventually altogether unresponsive. No one knew what was happening to him.

As a last attempt at saving our bond, I made a habit of taking him out to breakfast every Saturday, no matter his mood. Usually he would just sit in the corner of the booth and push French toast around on his plate before taking a couple of bites and leaving the rest. I would end up talking at the salt and pepper shakers since they were better company, and then driving him back home to let him sit in his room. One day was different. After an hour or so of my usual questions, he suddenly looked up from his doodles in the syrup. With his dark green eyes, and from under his neglected mop of hair, he uttered one sentence.

“There is no beauty left in this world, Dan.”

That caught me by surprise. Brandon had always been among the most positive people I’d ever known. He was the last to give up and the first to rise again, you couldn’t keep him down. What had stolen his spirit?

I never got the chance to ask him. That was the last breakfast that we had together.

The next Saturday, I was away at a business seminar in Atlanta. Before I came home Sunday night, I got the call from my older sister, Brianne, telling me that when she had brought him home some takeout, she’d found Brandon in his room with a hole in his heart and a gun nearby. It was unquestionably a suicide. He hadn’t been trying to be ostentatious—all evidence pointed to him simply wanting to get it over with quickly and quietly. They found his letter taped to the door on the inside of his room, with “Daniel” scrawled in his measured script across the back of the envelope. Of course, the police had stripped the letter down and hunted for anything they could use in his case file before they gave it back, but as I had already predicted, they found nothing unexpected.

That was a week ago. Brandon’s funeral had been held this morning. I mostly just dazed through the event, plastering on a smile and thanking guests perfunctorily as etiquette required. At the request of Brianne, it was a closed-casket ceremony. She thought people should remember him as he was before he loaded himself with lead, rather than as a dead body in a wooden box. I let her have her way. She was the type to be comforted by being in control of a situation.

After the funeral was over, I left Brianne and her drove of volunteers to clean up the leftovers from the banquet, and drove down to the police station alone to pick up the box of ‘evidence’ that they had taken from Brandon’s room. The contents of the box were sparse. Inside was an old Batman comic book that had been sitting on Brandon’s pillow when Brianne had found him, his MacBook, the letter, and inside a sealed plastic bag, the gun. I considered throwing it away in a trash bin outside, but thought better of it and placed it on the case detective’s desk on my way out.

Driving home was the first time I cried. I turned up the radio and let my tears be drowned out by an annoying pop singer while I lamented behind the wheel of my Camry. I had finished with my weak moment by the time I got home and, drying the last of my tears with my suit coat sleeve, I grabbed the evidence box and headed inside. I took the letter out and threw the box and the rest of its contents on my kitchen table.

I stood there in the hallway, letter in hand, for about five minutes before I manned up and tore open the top. Apparently the police had been bored enough to steam it open and reseal it. I took out the one sheet of paper that it contained. That was disappointing. I had hoped he’d at least have more to tell me than could be written on one page. I started to read.

Dan,

             The first thing you need to know is that this is in no way your fault.

“Well that’s reassuring,” I mumbled bitterly under my breath.

I know, that doesn’t give much comfort, but it has to be said. The second thing you need to know is that I know how hard you have been trying to make me open up. You have no idea how much you affected me by making me go to breakfast with you every Saturday. That’s more than anyone else tried to do, not that it will matter by the time you read this.

There was never a moment when you were not there to support me in everything I needed. I owe you unimaginable amounts. Because of you, I know that you and Brianne will be fine. Eventually, you’ll forget about me and move on, which is the best thing for you.

I lost my way, Dan. That’s all. I see too much hatred and suffering to see the beauty in this place anymore. I’ve tried for a long time to see life how I used to see it, but I can’t. All I ever see in the end is blackness, and that is no way to live. If all there is left is a dark void, I might as well accept it and join it.

You’ve always been stronger than I am. Don’t make the same mistakes that I did. Hold onto the beauty, Dan. Once it leaves it’s hard to get back. Maybe if there’s a heaven or hell or some sort of later existence, there’s a vacancy sign still on for me. If there is, I’ll save you a lawn chair next to the pool.

Thank you, brother. I wish you a lifetime of happiness.

Brandon

P.S. They say that when words fail, music speaks. Turn over the page to find a list that may help. Understand. Heal. Start again.

           

I turned the letter over to see the list.

            Of course. Song titles. Brandon loved music. I skimmed over them; some I knew, some I didn’t. Listed first by title and then by artist, it incorporated almost a hundred songs and had a selection with a range that covered everything from Bob Dylan to Stone Sour to Kelly Clarkson. The last one, one I didn’t know, caught my eye. It was a song by the Monkees called “Shades of Grey,” probably written in the ‘60s. I sat down at the table with my laptop and looked up the lyrics online. Of course, I had heard this song. I sang along in my head as I read on:

I remember when the answers seemed so clear.

We had never lived without or tasted fear.

It was easy, then, to tell truth from lies

Selling out from compromise

Who to love and who to hate

The foolish from the wise. 

But today there is no day or night

Today there is no dark or light

Today there is no black or white.

Only shades of grey.

            I shut down my computer and put the letter aside. I didn’t understand and I didn’t have any energy left for a dead brother who wanted to play mind games with me from the great beyond.

When I went to bed a few hours later I was not tired. Far from it. The chorus of that song kept echoing in my head while I tossed and turned over the day’s events. I wondered what could have possessed me to think that I could make a difference in the life of anyone, anywhere. Me. One person. I had done everything I could to help Brandon, but nothing had come of it. I didn’t know how to save my own brother’s life. Nothing I had done had mattered for a long time, and probably wouldn’t ever in the future. I tried to remember the last time I had genuinely laughed; the last time I had done something because it made me happy or spent time with someone just because I liked them. I couldn’t. Instead I wound up reminiscing about playing Justice League with my brother and sister in the backyard when we were in primary school. I gradually fell into unconsciousness as I tried to wrap my mind around the deeper meaning of Brandon’s song choice. It certainly wasn’t helping me understand. I didn’t feel healed. There wasn’t going to be a ‘starting again’ any time soon.

***

When I opened my eyes, I knew I was still dreaming. I knew that because angels aren’t real, and one was standing in my room. He was bright. Annoyingly bright. He just stood there in the corner, giving me a patient-yet-patronizing stare. I glared at him for his obtrusiveness and tried shoving a pillow over my eyes to block his light, but that didn’t help. Neither did pulling the blankets over my head. I even tried pinching myself to actually wake up, but apparently that doesn’t really work. So, giving up, I sat upright on the bed I had dreamed up for myself and looked pointedly at the man that was so rudely interrupting what dregs of peace I had left.

“You’re going to have to get up eventually, Daniel.” He spoke, in a deep voice that sounded disturbingly like my late father’s. That was unnerving, but I shook it off. The angel could talk and knew my name. This was definitely a dream. I had an internal debate as to whether I was going to answer him or not, but I could feel his expectancy for a response beating on me, so I responded.

“And if I decide to stay in bed?” I replied stubbornly.

“Then I suppose we’ll be here for a while. I can wait. You have an immense capacity to sleep for extended periods of time.” Looking at him was giving me a headache already, but as he strode across the room and plopped down in the chair next to my window, he somehow turned up the amplitude of his radiance to practically-blinding. Something told me he did it on purpose just to annoy me. I tried the pillow again, but it could have been saran wrap for all the light it blocked.

“Okay, so what’s the deal here?” I inquired warily. “If I get out of bed and listen to you and a couple of other guys lecture me on something I’m doing wrong, do I get to go back to bed?”

“This isn’t A Christmas Carol, Dan. I’m not here to lecture you. In fact, I’m here to let you do the lecturing. I want you to show me your world as you see it and explain to me why you feel how you feel tonight. Convince me.”

That sounded too easy. “There has to be a catch.”

“Only one.” He stated. I groaned internally. He continued, “You must be completely honest.” That seemed like a ridiculous notion, which I then pointed out.

“Why would I lie to you?” was my exasperated question. “You’re a dream. It’s not like you can run and tell my mommy if I say something naughty.” I knew I was being childish for twenty-six, but after all, this was all going to end when I woke up. I decided I’d do whatever the hell I wanted. While I was on my immaturity kick I realized that he looked quite a bit like an old librarian I had known named Mortimer, so that became the angel’s name. “Alright Mo,” I smirked at my own joke. “I suppose we had better get this over with.”

Judging by the look on his face after my comment, which look was a mixture of bemusement and slight annoyance, it was obvious that he was realizing that this was going to be a long night. However, he didn’t protest his new nickname and instead beckoned for me to approach him. I stepped out of my bed, conveniently fully dressed shoes-and-all—though I would have sworn I had been sleeping in my boxers—and plopped down in the chair next to Mo.

“I meant be honest with yourself, son. That’s much harder than being honest with me. I’m inside your head. I’ll know before you do if you’re lying.” He said, looking at me with slightly raised eyebrows.

That was nice. At least Mortimer knew he wasn’t real. It also explained his nonresponse to my knighting him after a stuffy librarian.

“Okay, fire away. What do you want to know?”

“First, I want you to show me today.”

With a snap of his fingers, we were back at that morning, and though it hurt I went along with it. He showed me how I could skip around, fast-forward or rewind, and pause time like it was a VCR. That was weird, but I justified it by reminding myself that this was, after all, just a dream. We went back over the events of the day—lots of crying, lots of not-talking except to say ‘thank you’ to guests and order some pizza after the funeral. Mostly just silence and misery from trying to ignore blaming eyes that had constantly locked with mine. Back through the letter and listening to Shades of Grey.

“Did you see anything beautiful today?” He said. I shook my head. There had been nothing good about this day.

“Show me.” He prodded. “Show me the ugliest things you can think of. Keep going until you can’t think of any more.”

I raised my eyebrows at him, tacitly questioning if he was serious. He nodded me forward and I took the wheel again. I started with a picture of Brandon on a table in the morgue. Next was the day my father died of prostate cancer, again pictured on a metal gurney. My mother’s funeral when I was ten. September 11, 2001, when I had been a few miles out of New York—it wasn’t until later, when I saw a news broadcast, that I knew what had caused the smoke pillars.

I thought back even farther to my best friend getting bullied in elementary school. I was jumping around now, each scene only occupying a few seconds. I started drawing from news reports and history books. D-day, Pearl Harbor. Gang shootings, Columbine, Uganda. I started to flounder, pulling at everything I could think of. Domestic disputes I’d seen through work. Business fraud, phishing scams. A report on TV about a drunk driver running over his own child when he pulled in to his driveway. Children of single-parent drug addicts. Poverty-stricken men standing on the corner begging for a dollar to buy themselves a beer to warm their souls for an hour.

With each of these examples I was drawn deeper and deeper into the conviction that maybe Brandon had been right. Maybe there wasn’t any beauty in this world anymore. I turned to Mo, who had been standing next to me in all of this, with a plea in my eyes. I wanted him to tell me that I was wrong. I wanted him to force me to see the goodness or to stick me in a bowl full of wonderful until I drowned in a blissful cloud of nothing. But he didn’t. He turned to me with a sort of apathy in his eyes.

“Are you done?” He questioned.

“Is there a point in going on?” I retorted. He caught the double meaning in my inquisition. I was still waiting for the lecture, but he stayed true to his word.

“You need to understand, Daniel. I am inside your head. I am only as convinced to this as you are. So, you tell me. Is there a point to going on?”

“I don’t see it.” I mumbled. “When I was a kid, everything was one way or another. It was right or it was wrong. There were things you did, and there were things you didn’t do. Common courtesy seemed legitimately common. Tact wasn’t just a word in the dictionary. Being Politically Correct was for politicians, cowards, and people who were offended too easily. Families mattered. There was a natural order to things. Like, you met someone, dated them, then you got married, then you had kids. Now it seems like everything is backwards. Nobody gives a damn anymore about anyone else. Community service is like a disease. Even my own family is torn apart. I’m not even thirty years old, and already there isn’t a black and white anymore…” And suddenly, I understood the Monkees’ song on the end of Brandon’s list. I muttered, “Only shades of grey.”

Mortimer nodded at me. Then he spoke one more time.

“But would we really be here if you fully believed that that was true? Would you be having a struggle at all if you thought there was no direction left on Earth?”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“I’m going to tell you something you already know, Daniel, but you need to remember this every time you make a turn for the worse. You will get better. You will recover. But it will take a long time and it will not be easy. There is no panacea in real life. Magic is for fairy tales and sci-fi books. This one’s all you. Whether you choose to lean on the God you’re not sure you believe in or not, there’s only one person who will make a real difference in your life, and that is you.”

With that, I woke up. It was ten in the morning on Sunday. I stayed in bed for a while, recapturing my dream before I forgot it.

***

Brandon,

Today I’m in Carmel, California. When I finish writing this letter, I’m sticking it in a bottle and throwing it into the ocean from the beach we visited after you graduated high school.

In the thirteen months since you’ve been gone, things have changed. Brianne and I mostly stopped talking, but not before she made sure that I was going to see a psychiatrist. I did it for her, even though I thought it was a waste of my time and money. In all truthfulness, it mostly has been, but in a few cases like this I’ve taken his advice. He says I need closure. As a result I’ve been visiting our favorite places, and this my last stop. After this I have to let go and move on with my life.

I never stop thinking about what you wrote in that letter—about there not being anything beautiful left here. I’m going to be honest; you leaving so suddenly didn’t help me follow your advice to stay positive. It took me months to be able to appreciate anything again. It’s still difficult. Work became my obsession. I didn’t sleep much because I hated dreaming, I never talked to anyone, I rarely went out at night, and eventually I lost my grasp on who and what was real. Then I woke up one morning about six months ago and realized what I was doing.

I went to church for a while to see if I could find help there, but that only lasted about three weeks. I couldn’t handle all the symbolism and the holier-than-thous looking down their noses at the newcomer. I feel like there isn’t a place for me in the chapel, but that’s fine. I didn’t expect it to be different from when we were kids. Still, I have a hard time accepting that you’re not out there somewhere, as a ghost or an angel or a reincarnate, or what-have-you. That feeling comforts me, even if there is no proof. Maybe someday if I find the right place I’ll find a faith. Until then I’ll just hope you’ve got that lawn chair saved for me, like the old days.

The last thing I have to say, Brandon, is that I understand. I see now what you meant about losing the beauty. It has taken me a long time to take your advice, but I’ve begun to remember to see small glimpses of the good left on earth. The old you would have kicked me for taking so long to figure this out myself. I have to live my life day-to-day just like everyone else, but I’m getting better at finding a silver lining. I’m even going to try to mend ties with Bri. I promise.

 I forgive you, brother, and I think after today I will move forward knowing that I’ve done what I can to honor you and your memory. I love you, and I miss you. A part of you is with me wherever I go. Thank you for your insight, and I’m sorry I took this long. I hope you are happy wherever you are.

Daniel