“At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer, and die, but they do not seem to make a “problem” of it. Their lives seem to have so few complications. They eat when they are hungry and sleep when they are tired, and instinct rather than anxiety seems to govern their few preparations for the future. As far as we can judge, every animal is so busy with what he is doing at the moment that is never enters his head to ask whether life has meaning or a future. For the animal, happiness consists in enjoying life in the immediate present- not in the assurance that there is a whole future of joys ahead of him.
This is not just because the animal is a relatively insensitive clod. Often enough his eyesight, his sense of hearing and smell, are far more acute than ours, and one can hardly doubt that he enjoys food and sleep immensely. Despite his acute senses, he has however, a somewhat insensitive brain. It is more specialized than ours, for which reason he is a creature of habit; he is unable to reason and make abstractions, and has extremely limited powers of memory and prediction.
Unquestionably the sensitive human brain adds immeasurably to the richness of life. Yet for this we pay dearly, because the increase in over-all sensitivity makes us peculiarly vulnerable. One can be less vulnerable by becoming less sensitive- more of a stone and less of a man- and so less capable of enjoyment. Sensitivity requires a high degree of softness and fragility- eyeballs, eardrums, taste buds, and never ends culminating in the highly delicate organism of the brain. There seems to be no effective way of decreasing the delicacy and perishability of living tissue without also decreasing its vitality and sensitivity.
If we are to have intense pleasures, we must also be liable to intense pains. The pleasure we love, and the pain we hate, but it seems impossible to have the former without the latter.Indeed, it looks as if the two must in some way alternate, for continuous pleasure is a stimulus that must either pall or be increased. And the increase will either harden the sense buds with its friction, or turn into pain. A consistent diet of rich food destroys the appetite or makes one sick.
To the degree, then, that life is found good, death must be proportionately evil. The more we are able to love another person and to enjoy his company, the greater must be our grief at his death, or in separation. The further the power of consciousness ventures out into experience, the more is the price it must pay for its knowledge. It is understandable that we should sometimes ask whether life has not gone too far in this direction, whether, “the game is worth the candle,” and whether it might not be better to turn the course of evolution in the only other possible direction- backwards, to the relative peace of the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral.
Something of this kind is often attempted. There is the woman who, having suffered some deep emotional injury in love or marriage, vows never to let another man play on her feelings, assuming the role of the hard and bitter spinster. Almost more common is the sensitive boy who learns in school to encrust himself for life in the shell of the “tough-guy” attitude. As an adult he plays, in self-defense, the role of the Philistine, to whom all intellectual and emotional culture is womanish and “sissy.” Carried to its final extreme, the logical end of this type of reaction to life is suicide. The hard-bitten kind of person is always, as it were, a partial suicide; some of himself is already dead.
If, then, we are to be fully human and fully alive and aware, it seems that we must be willing to suffer for our pleasures. Without such willingness there can be no growth in the intensity of consciousness. Yet, generally speaking, we are not willing and it may be thought strange to suppose that we can be. For “nature in us” so rebels against pain that the very notion of “willingness” to put up with it beyond a certain point may appear impossible and meaningless.
Under these circumstances, the life that we live is a contradiction and a conflict. Because consciousness must involve both pleasure and pain, to strive for pleasure to the exclusion of pain is, in effect, to strive for the loss of consciousness. Because such a loss is in principle the same as death, this means that the more we struggle for life (as pleasure) the more we are actually killing what we love.
Indeed, this is the common attitude of man to so much that he loves. For the greater part of human activity is designed to make permanent those experiences and joys which are only lovable because they are changing. Music is a delight because of it’s rhythm and flow. Yet the moment you arrest the flow and prolong a note or a chord beyond its time, the rhythm is destroyed. Because life is likewise a flowing process, change and death are its necessary parts. To work for their exclusion is to work against life.
However, the simple experiencing of alternating pain and pleasure is by no means the heart of the human problem. The reason that we want life to mean something, that we seek God or eternal life, is not merely that we are trying to get away from an immediate experience of pain. Nor is it for any such reason that we assume attitudes and roles as habits of perpetual self-defense. The real problem does not come from any momentary sensitivity to pain, but from our marvelous powers of memory and foresight- in short from our consciousness of time.
For the animal to be happy it is enough that this moment be enjoyable. But man is hardly satisfied with this at all. He is much more concerned to have enjoyable memories and expectations- especially the latter. With these assured, he can put up with an extremely miserable present. Without this assurance, he can be extremely miserable in the midst of immediate physical pleasure.
Here is a person who knows that in two weeks’ time he has to undergo a surgical operation. In the meantime he is feeling no physical pain; he has plenty to eat; he is surrounded by friends and human affection; he is doing work that is normally of great interest to him. But his power to enjoy these things is taken away by constant dread. He is insensitive to the immediate realities around him. His mind is preoccupied with something that is not yet here. It is not as if he were thinking about it in a practical way, trying to decide whether he should have the operation or not, or making plans to take care of his family and his affairs if he should die. These decisions have already been made. Rather, hes thinking about the operation in an entirely futile way, which both ruins his present enjoyment of life and contributes nothing to the solution of any problem. But he cannot help himself.
This is the typical human problem. The object of dread may not be an operation in the immediate future. It may be the problem of next month’s rent, of a threatened war or social disaster, of being able to save enough for old age, or of death at the last. This “spoiler of the present” may not even be a future dread. It may be something out of the past, some memory of an injury, some crime or indiscretion, which haunts the present with a sense of resentment or guilt. The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings the past and future are not as real, but more real than the present. The present cannot be lived happily unless the past has been “cleared up” and the future is bright with promise.
There can be no doubt that the power to remember and predict, to make an ordered sequence out of helter-skelter chaos of disconnected moments, is a wonderful development of sensitivity. In a way it is the achievement of the human brain, giving man the most extraordinary powers of survival and adaptation to life. But the way in which we generally use this power is apt to destroy all of its advantages. For it is of little use to us to be able to remember and predict if it makes us unable to live fully in the present.
What is the use of planning to be able to eat next week unless I can really enjoy the meals when they come? If I am so busy planning how to eat next week that I cannot fully enjoy what I am eating now, I will be in the same predicament when next week’s meals become “now.”
If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.
After all, the future is quite meaningless and unimportant unless, sooner or later, it is going to become the present. Thus to plan for a future which is not going to become present is hardly more absurd than to plan for a future which, when it comes to me, will find me “absent,” looking fixedly over its shoulder instead of into its face.
This kind of living in the fantasy of expectation rather than the reality of the present is the special trouble of those business men who live entirely to make money. So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live.
Instead of earning a living they are mostly earning an earning, and thus when the time comes to relax they are unable to do so. Many a “successful” man is bored and miserable when he retires and returns to his work only to prevent a younger man from taking his place.
From still another point of view the way in which we use memory and prediction makes us less, rather than more, adaptable to life. If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy future, we are “crying for the moon.” We have no such assurance. The best predictions are still matters of probability rather than certainty, and to the best of our knowledge, every one of us is going to suffer and die. If, then, we cannot live happily without an assured future, we are certainly not adapted to living in a finite world where, despite the best plans, accidents will happen, and where death comes at the end.
This, then, is the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. By remembering the past we can plan for the future. But the ability to plan for pleasure is offset by the “ability” to dread pain and to fear the unknown. Furthermore, the growth of an acute sense of the past and the future gives us a correspondingly dim sense of the present. In other words, we seem to reach a point where the advantages of being conscious are outweighed by its disadvantages, where extreme sensitivity makes us unadaptable.
Under these circumstances we feel in conflict with our own bodies and the world around them, and it is consoling to be able to think that in this contradictory world we are but “stranger and pilgrims.” For if our desires are out of accord with anything that the finite world can offer, it might seem that our nature is not of this world, that our hearts are made, not for the finite, but for infinity. The discontent of our souls would appear to be the sign and seal of their divinity.
But does the desire for something to prove that the thing exists? We know that id does not necessarily do so at all. It may be consoling to think that we are citizens of another world than this, and that after our exile upon Earth, we may return to the true home of our heart’s desire. But if we are citizens of this world, and if there can be no final satisfaction of the soul’s discontent has not nature, in bringing forth man, made a serious mistake?
For it would seem that, in man, life is in hopeless conflict with itself. To be happy, we must have what we cannot have. In man, nature has conceived desires which it is impossible to satisfy. To drink more fully of the fountain of pleasure, it has brought forth capacities which make man the more susceptible to pain. It has given us the power to control the future but a little- the price of which is the frustration of knowing that we must at last go down in defeat. If we find this absurd, this is only to say that nature has conceived intelligence in us to berate itself for absurdity. Consciousness seems to be nature’s ingenious mode of self-torture.
Of course we do not want to think that this is true. But it would be easy to show that most reasoning to the contrary is but wishful thinking-nature’s method of putting off suicide so that the idiocy can continue. Reasoning, then, is not enough. We must go deeper. We must look into this life, this nature, which has become aware within us, and find out whether it is really in conflict with itself, whether it actually desires the security and the painlessness which its individual forms can never enjoy.”
There was a time I hated being in my own skin so much so that I pretended to be someone else, which is another story, but at the time I was 13, and my dad had just killed himself. It’s unfortunate, that out of all of the days in my life, I remember the day he took his own life the clearest, as least I think I do. It’s also unfortunate that I don’t really feel much when I speak of it. It’s probably fucked up to most people that recalling it doesn’t make me sad because he died, but for other reasons, mostly being that I can still recall how sad my mom and my brothers were when it happened. I couldn’t feel the tragic reality myself, but the despair of my brothers and my mom still weigh heavily on me to this day. I hope that I haven’t accessed that particular memory so much, so many times over and over through out the years, I can only hope that I haven’t altered the memory by accessing it so often, to fit my current reality, whatever the fuck that may be. One thing is for sure, my mother was never the same after that day. I didn’t know her that well even before it happened, but there was something that had clearly vanished from her, the moment I saw her pull up to the house in that old shitty mini van. The moments that followed are the clearest in my mind. I can literally see the images, flash like an old super 8 movie in the back of my eyes, as if it were permanently imprinted to the back of my eyelids. Sometimes I lose sight of the reality that lay before me, and all I can see are images from that day. I live it over and over again in my head. I was sitting on a cushion which sat in front of the window that overlooked the front of our house, the driveway was completely visible. I had sat there for what felt like an eternity, but was probably more like an hour, waiting for her to come home. I guess I should back up so you know what the fuck I’m talking about.
Earlier that morning, my eyes shot open the moment they started yelling at each other. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, they had been fighting consistently since at least the beginning of the year, and it was now May 1st. But every fight seemed to get louder. Like nails on a chalk board, the sound of their voices booming nonsense back and forth at each other hit a particular nerve in my ears that created a storm of discomfort and anxiousness within me like I hadn’t ever experienced before they started having problems. Not even my dad’s consistent threats stirred this type of tenseness in me. I was still in the child-like mind set that things would get better. After all, they were still living in the same house, and even though my dad was making my mom sleep on the couch every night, they still weren’t divorced. Although honestly, I had hoped for it. I hoped for it every day, but never prayed. Even at 13 and long before that, I didn’t believe in God or understand how anyone could pray to someone who never responded, what a waste of time. I only believe what my eyes see, and sometimes I even have trouble convincing myself that what I see is real. But I’ve never prayed. Just like I never prayed that he wouldn’t hit me. Just like I never prayed for my mom to come into my room at night and hug me and tell me that even though he was an asshole, she still loved me, and would keep me safe. I never prayed, only hoped. She never did.
After my eyes shot open, I layed there, listening, not wanting to drag myself out of bed and downstairs, I didn’t want to get pulled into it. The covers felt like a ton of bricks on top of me, a material barrier keeping me safe from the chaos of my house. My blankets on top of me were the closest thing to a hug I can recall feeling at the time. My bed has always been the only place I’ve ever felt truly safe. Lately when they were arguing around me and my brothers, they tried to pull us in and make us pick sides. I always wanted to side with my mom, but was scared of my dad, so I would just stare at them, frozen. Always frozen. No sudden movements. Always observing. I wouldn’t leave the room until he punched something. A hole in the wall. A chair, but never her. I was always waiting for it, but he never hit her. Only me. Only me. Still ‘till this day I think that he must have hated me more than her, because he never layed a finger on her.
After I layed there and listened to the same argument, which now I can’t exactly recall in detail anymore, I never understood what they were fighting about, I finally kissed my blankie, the soft part of him, peeled the rest of the covers off of my body, and got out of bed. My room was upstairs and they were downstairs fighting. I sat on the stairs, half way up, letting my chubby legs dangle over the side onto the wall almost resting on the back of the couch below. They were screaming at each other in the kitchen, getting louder by the minute. I remember my body being tense, despite having just woken up. Most kids got to wake up on Saturday mornings to cartoons and cereal, but not me, not today. I sat there and listened, and at the same time tuning out everything they were yelling about. I still don’t know, still can’t access that part of my memory.
I sat there until I heard stomping and the back door slam. The yelling was louder, despite them having moved farther away from where I sat, frozen, on the stairs. I sat there staring at my hands, folded innocently in my lap. My eyes were tightly closed, squeezed shut, the same way a kid squeezes their eyes shut when someone is cleaning out of wound or a cut for them. Maybe if I kept them closed that tight for long enough, I’d open them and it would all be better. I couldn’t bare it anymore. I was rejecting it as reality. This couldn’t be how my life was going. Out of control. Frozen. I just wanted to shut it off and not hear it anymore. I already couldn’t feel it. I just wanted it to end.
As I was sitting there, a new voice started screaming, breaking the cycle of their circular back and forth bickering. My older brother was yelling at them in the backyard, maybe out of embarrassment trying to get them to stop, since I’m sure the neighbors could hear. I got up and made my way slowly to the back of the house. It was so sunny out, the light was coming through all of the windows in the house, and as I walked past them, my bare feet felt the warmth of the day on the hardwood floor, heated by the light shining through the open windows. The floor was the warmest thing about my day. I didn’t make it far, I found myself paused at a stand still next to the part of the wall in the dining room that my dad had punched a perfect circular hole through a few months back during an intense argument with my mom. He had plastered over the hole, probably out of embarrassment, but it still hadn’t been painted over. I couldn’t help but stare and get lost in the circle of plaster. Underneath it, the hole was still there, never to be undone, no matter how much he tried to cover it up and pretend like it didn’t happen.
I never reached the back door, because it swung open, and slammed shut quickly behind my dad, who was now charging into the house, directly towards me. I felt myself jolt out of terror for a brief moment and froze again, this time like a statue. I remember feeling the quake of the floor beneath my feet caused by his impassioned charge into the house. I was frozen. He had that affect on me. A moment later my mom appeared before me standing midway in the kitchen, and I watched my dad charge into their bedroom, the next room over. She stood against the kitchen counter with her arms crossed, staring at her feet, almost as frozen as I was. My little brother , 4 at the time, toddled out of his bedroom and into the kitchen, he saw me and froze too. A moment later my older brother came through the back door and up through the kitchen, and joined our statue contest. What was my dad doing? He was making a hell of a ruckus in the bedroom. I unfroze when I saw my little brother with the saddest most curious look on his face, as did my older brother, we both stood by him, nearly right outside the door of our parents bedroom. We didn’t say anything to each other, but must have all felt like something big was happening.
As we stood there, comforting each other in our silence, my dad barged out of his room, with the most intense, yet zombie like emotionless look on his face, and a briefcase in his hand. We stood in a line to face him, almost as if he was our drill sergeant and we were reporting for duty, sir. I always felt like this when I saw him anyway. Whenever my dad was around, I wanted to stand up straighter, make sure my bed was made, that I was chewing with my mouth closed, that I wiped the smirk off my face, avoided eye contact, avoided attention. This time was different. This time my eyes, and the eyes of my brothers were glued to him. He stood there for a short moment, maybe gathering his intensity, maybe gathering his thoughts, maybe taking in the moment like we were. I can’t help but wonder now if the thought crossed his mind at this moment, that this was going to be the last time he ever saw his children.
As we stood next to each other facing him, waiting for him to speak, or do something, he sat his briefcase on the ground and knelt down in front of my little brother and put his hand on his head, and his other hand took Mark’s tiny little hand and spoke, but not directly to any of us. It was almost as if he was speaking over a loud speaker to make a final announcement. I wish I could remember his exact words, but it was something like, “Maybe I’ll see you guys around. Have a nice life. I won’t be back.” And with those words, and his cold uncomforting exiting touches, shaking my older brothers hand, and then mine, we all started crying, except him. My tears weren’t out of sadness, but out of anxious confusion. I don’t remember if I ever saw him cry. My older brother questioned what he meant as he burst into tears. My little brother was crying, probably not because he understood what my dad was saying, but for a lack of better understanding the intensity of the “happeningness” of it all.
I didn’t say a word. There was so much going on within me; Panic, anxiety, fear, sadness for my brothers, and even relief. Was he really leaving? This strong, heartless man, who I’ve been scared of the past 13 years of my life? The one man who was supposed to make me feel safe, but instead stirred the most daunting fear within me whenever he was around. The man who’s hand had stung my bare ass with the hardest of slaps for the first chunk of my life that created an immense amount of hate within me that I would struggle with for the rest of my life trying to understand and come to terms with. Was he really leaving? Was the Mom and Dad war of 1999 finally ending? Would I not have to be afraid in my own house anymore? At this point my mother had stepped into the dining room with us, and was egging him on to “leave and abandon his kids, like that’s going to solve anything”. By this time, he had already shut her off. I’m pretty sure by this time, he had shut the entire world out. That’s the only explanation I can come up with as to why he shook his kids hands as a final goodbye, instead of grabbing and hugging us.
After he shook our hands, he grabbed his suitcase and quickly started towards the front door. We all followed him, asking where he was going, my older brother pleaded for him not to leave. They all followed him out the door and watched him from the porch. They watched him get into my grandpa’s old car, pull out of the driveway, and quickly peel away down the street. I didn’t go outside after him like they did. I sat on the cushion in front of the window watching it all imprinting the moments like snapshots and mental Polaroid photos, in the same spot where I would later find myself again, to receive the most haunting news of my life. News that would be forever tattooed, imprinted and cemented into my brain.
The time in between him leaving and me being mortified and glued to my cushion isn’t as clear as the more intense moments of the day. I remember walking around the house not believing that he wouldn’t be back later that night, even though I had secretly hoped he’d never come back. I’ve never told anyone that before. I wanted him to stay away. I wanted to not be scared anymore. I remember following my mom around a bit that day, she was pissed off all day. Helping her wash her car (she cleans when she feels anything so she doesn’t have to acknowledge that she’s feeling anything, always has, still does) I remember her saying as I was spraying her van off with the hose that she was going to change the locks, and if he wanted to leave, that was fine by her. Me too mom, me too.
I only felt guilty about my hopes of him never returning when I found out that my hopes, not my prayers, turned into a heavy reality. On that cushion. I felt the guiltiest I had ever felt.
My uncle called later that afternoon, I answered the phone. My uncle Joe was a jolly guy in general, but I remember after picking up and saying hello? The heavyness in his voice. The loss and emptiness in his voice and lack of jollyness when he said “hey kid…put your mom on the line would ya?”
At first she didn’t want to take the phone from me, she thought he and my dad were plotting against her. “Mom, uncle Joe NEEDS to talk to you.” I don’t know how I sensed the urgency other than his tone, but I had always been good at reading people, and their moods and behaviors, and I sensed something wasn’t right by his tone. After she spoke to him briefly and hung up, she stood frozen again for a moment. She was still pissed. Apparently my uncle wanted her to come over to my grandpa’s house, about a 5 minute drive away. My uncle Joe needed to talk to her. She thought that my dad would be over there with him, and they would just get into a 3 way argument. She pondered over not going, and I think she sensed something in his voice as I did, because within 5 minutes she had grabbed her keys and her purse, told me to watch mark and that she would be back soon. She was pissed and wanted to be done with this shit. My older brother wasn’t home, and my little brother was parked in front of cartoons in the back room.
I parked my ass on that cushion in front of the window from the time she pulled out of the driveway, until at least an hour later, when I watched her pull back up. As soon as she pulled up, my heart starting beating harder than it had all day. Something was wrong. I sat there impatiently. Waiting for her to get out of her car. Come in and tell me mom, is he coming home? Should I be afraid? Did he hurt you? Mom, get out of the van and come in the house. I thought about going out and getting her out of the car myself after 5 minutes had passed, but was again frozen where I sat. I watched her through the window, for the first time all day she was more frozen than I had been. Something hit me watching her sit there. As if I already knew, but I didn’t.
Finally, she got out of the van, she was a mess. FUCK, what happened over there? Even though my mom didn’t ever protect me from him, I always had a strong urge to protect her from him. She slowly walked up to the house, her hair a mess, me still glued to the cushion. The front door opened making that haunted house creepy creaking sound it always made when it was opened slowly, and she walked in. Frozen and glued to my cushion, I stared at her. This is the moment I mark in my head as the moment she was never the same again. Something had been stolen from her, something had escaped her, had been ripped away, a liveliness, a confidence I had always admired in her, it was gone.
“Mom, what happened?”
She didn’t even look at me, she was still looking down, shaky, not sure what to do with herself. She didn’t respond to my question, she just said “This is not good Amanda, Amanda this is not good. “ she must have said that sentence half a dozen times before walking further into the house. My ass never left that damn cushion.
She repeated herself over and over again, giving my little brother enough time to hear her from the room he was in, and toddled up to the front of the house to see what was going on. Even at 4, he knew something wasn’t right, and stood frozen, watching her and I frozen. Finally she blurted out, “YOUR FATHER KILLED HIMSELF.”
And that’s when I experienced a complete system shut down. Intellectually, I knew what she just said. I didn’t need her to repeat it, although I almost wanted her too, not because I was happy about it, but I wanted to make sure it was real. She burst into tears the moment the sentence had completely escaped her mouth, still not looking at me, she quickly passed my little brother and I and walked into the kitchen where she immediately picked up the phone. Although my ears felt numb, like I couldn’t hear, I had clear range of view of the kitchen and her every movement from my cushion. I watched my little brother’s reaction, crying, frozen standing there. I don’t know if he actually understood what she meant, or if he was crying because she was.
I actually don’t remember crying, and if I did, it was brief. Just frozen. Having an out of body experience, watching it all happen. She had beeped my older brother, and just stood in the kitchen, arms crossed, Crying. Frozen. I wish she would have come in and comforted my little brother. I wish I would have comforted my little brother. He was so little, Too little. So so little, innocent, and at that moment, forever changed without even being able to comprehend it.
My older brother must have been close by, because he came charging in the front door within a matter of minutes. He froze for a second when he walked in, taking in the scene of me frozen on the cushion looking like I had just seen a ghost, and my little brother and his blubbery wet confused, scared face. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?! He yelled. I couldn’t say anything. I wanted him to know. But I couldn’t say anything. Frozen. Hiding within myself. Frozen. Can’t move. I just looked straight ahead into the kitchen. He quickly walked past me and into the kitchen, my mom was on the phone crying with her boss, our family doctor, doctor Raper. (yeah…what a name) he stood in front of her with an intense look on his face and she handed him the phone. Less than 5 seconds later I watched him collapse onto the kitchen floor, the thud sound his body made as it collapsed made the loudest noise that quaked through my entire body.I felt that thud. I can still hear that thud in my head. I can still feel the thud as it quaked across the house to me sitting on that damn cushion. It was almost as if I felt his heart breaking in my own chest as he hit the floor. He screamed for what felt like forever.
I stayed frozen for awhile, I may have sat there until family started arriving with potato salad and jello dip.
If you are one of the people that wonders where I go sometimes, even when I’m still in the room present, but seem distant, this is one of the places I go in my head. It may be just a memory, but it feels like a room in my head, a doorless room that is always open, and sometimes as I walk by it in my mind, I become frozen again. Unable to unfocus from it. Unable to unfreeze. It just plays over. Again and again. Like a not so silent old home movie. I get lost in this memory more often than I’d like to. I’d like to forget, but memories like this make me who I am.
Man’s Body Found In Car After Garage Fire (news paper article I clipped and saved)
“LINCOLN PARK- A 40-year-old man was found dead in a car that caught fire in a closed garage Saturday.
The body of Anthony Mark Bowman was found behind the wheel of his father’s car at 4204 Coolidge. The garage and the car were completely consumed.
The fire probably was an unexpected consequence of a suicide attempt, according to Fire Chief Earnest Moon.
“We believe he attempted to asphyxiate himself in the garage with a running car.” Moon said. “We have no indication that the fire was from anything other than the car overheating.”
Moon said a neighbor saw smoke coming out of the garage and lifted the door. The car’s engine raced as fresh air flooded in. The flow of air, he said, was the fuel that caused the car to burst into flames.
“Garages are filled with things that burn.” Moon said. “There was a blanket under the car as well.”
During training at a firefighters’ school near Cadillac, the fire chief learned that a car left to run in an enclosed environment can overheat to the point that it catches fire.
While the official cause of Bowman’s death is not known, Moon said the man likely lost consciousness from the carbon monoxide fumes that accumulated in the garage.
According to police reports, Bowman’s marriage was ending and papers found in the car indicate that he was planning to hurt himself. He was the father of three children.
1 month ago
