Friday, March 29All That Matters

That Moment You’re the Last Person to Hear Someone Alive


That Moment You’re the Last Person to Hear Someone Alive




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36 Comments

  • flamingo_sushi

    This is the second or third time I have seen this and I have to stop what I am doing to watch it all the way through. I have struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts and it helps me to see and hear stories like this to normalize my feelings.

  • ClassyAsF__k

    I knew watching this would make me cry and I did it anyway. It’s a really powerful story. Thanks for posting this.

  • SquidCap0

    It is weird to know you are one of the last to speak to a person. A mate of mine did a double suicide with his friend, and me and our drummer were the last to talk to them. He was talking about how excited he was about the tour the next summer in Germany, performing in ~~Wacken~~ Full Force and asked if record company would reimburse his guitar if he smashed it. 2 hours later they were dead. We were just wrapping up an indoor festival, i was a stage manager, it was the kind of moment when you are dead tired but still pumping, we were all happy about the evening being a huge success, talking about their future (i wasn’t in that band).. and then they were gone. Amazingly talented guitarist, the fastest shredder i’ve ever seen but also deeply troubled.

    To this day we don’t know what happened that night, they had drunk a bottle of whiskey in those two hours and they were quite drunk already. Was it his mates idea or were they in it together.. no one is here to answer those questions. But nothing pointed to them being suicidal.

    edit: clarity and it happened in 99.

    edit2: if you want to listen their music, here is the album. Jakke is the second guy from the left . It is mid 90s industrial metal with pop twist, a concept that was really, really timed well, if only there had been more time… It was based on a concept we developed together for a previous band, it even has two of our songs in it… [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dcA4MaQDlM&list=PL058CF8BF28C09449](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dcA4MaQDlM&list=PL058CF8BF28C09449)

    And i’m happy that wikipedia entry has been added at some point. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painflow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painflow)

  • cat_in_the_sun

    Yo. I remember seeing this back when I was in college. Like 2016.

    Later on, I volunteered for the suicide crisis line during 2019 and stopped right when covid hit.

    But this man tells a story that I can’t forget and still think about till this day.

    The last day I volunteered, I had a young lady call me. She was sobbing. I think she was 23 years old, she has just purchased rum and was drinking it. Parked in front of some dealers, looking to buy meth to overdose that night.

    That was my last call. This person was in so much pain and I felt like I couldn’t help her. Even the supervisors on call didn’t know what to tell her but they manage to have her agree to wait it out, call someone to pick her up, and schedule a call with a crisis therapist. I’m not sure what ever happened after that…

    I’ve never told anyone but that caller’s plan was very similar to my suicide plan.
    Even small eerie details about her life that lead to that night were similar to mine.

    I couldn’t help her because I didn’t know how to help myself either. I knew my plan but it wasn’t time yet. I haven’t gone back to volunteer since then. I work in mental health, but I don’t know…. I failed.

    Idk. I’m sorry. I just. Life feels so off.

    I still think about that caller :/

  • pinkEasterGuy

    His joke about people who would kill to preserve the sanctity of life went completely over the audience’s heads.

  • AtGamesEnd

    When I hit play I never expected to sit through this entire video. I have never been suicidal in my life, though I have had a very fortunate life up to this point and I’m still quite young. That being said, this story hit me so much harder than I ever thought it could have. When he described Amy wanting help, but it ultimately being too late…there was just something very profound in the entirety of the story

  • Ningy_WhoaWhoa

    This resonated with me a lot. 16 years ago I went through a pretty intense depression, lost 60 pounds, could never just be “ok.” And it all culminated in a specific episode where I was out of town in a hotel room, at the end of my rope, and I finished off a bottle of SSRI’s, pain killers, and some aspirin. I had just gotten off the phone with my mom who was making arrangements for my flight home so I could see my doctor. I told her I loved her and through her tears she said it back. I had no intentions of being on that flight home the next day, just drifting off in my bed free from the pain I’d been going through the last 7-8 months straight. That idea of not “wanting to die” but wanting the pain to stop was EXACTLY how I felt. Shortly after getting off the phone I got sick and threw up most of what I had ingested. I started crying because I didn’t have a backup plan and now I was stuck alive. I cried the rest of the night until I had to leave the hotel around 4am to head to the airport. I sat on that plane crying the whole way, hoping it would crash. After we landed and I started making my way through the terminal to meet my mom, she saw me in the distance and ran to me, helped keep me upright as I could barely walk, and she drove me to my doctor who then had me admitted. I was stabilized eventually and since then I’ve not come close to that point again. Everything I’ve done in my life since that night has been “on the house” and those tiny, perfect little moments do create a type of inescapable momentum to keep fighting on. I’m no one special. I’m Amy who just happened to be fortunate enough to puke.

  • wardrober1

    This was so hard to watch. As a person with a history of depression with suicidal tendencies I felt it all. Thanks for putting it out there.

  • brownidegurl

    Currently doing an MA to become a therapist and one of my professors was lamenting how our program doesn’t do enough to train us on suicide. I might send this video around.

    What strikes me about this story is the speaker says it all happened 25 years ago. After 25 years, he’s done the healing and work to be able to tell this story and be an advocate to others. It takes time. I’ve been struggling for 14 years. Maybe in another 25 or 30, I’ll be able to tell stories like this. But I need to give it time.

    Also, how 99% of the people calling have had thoughts of suicide, but no means, plan, etc. How normal it is to contemplate our end.

  • MalachiDied

    I worked on a suicide hotline in Canada for 4 years.

    Moments like this we were legally required to call the police. Usually, I would stay on the line while my backup person would be sending my info to the police. There are a few times I stayed on the call until the police arrive. Or they would be mad I called and hung up.

    The police would never call back and let me know. The only time they did was with a 9 a year old girl and they told me she was safe and in the hospital.

  • VagusNC

    Worked as a 911 telecommunicator for a few years. Some of the hardest calls were suicides and suicide attempts.

    One old guy called, told me his name, his address, where to find his body, put the phone down and walked away. By policy we had to keep the phone line open while I dispatched help.

    I came to terms with it and understood the avenue he chose to notify. I highly doubt there was any malice or forethought to the impact to me.

    Your community 911 folks are almost always the emotional frontlines of your community. They are usually underfunded, underpaid, too often undertrained, and under protected (not that their orgs want it this way, many of them fight admirably to change all of this). They need your support.

  • butsuon

    I’ve been that person. I can still hear every single word they said as clearly as it was yesterday and it was 15 years ago.

  • maimou1

    I’ve been through two. first was Lady G, my husbands boss back in the mid 80s. she was mid forties, engineering graduate from Perdue (think about a female engineering student in the early 60s!). I was so young, 23, and I admired her so much. successful business woman. she suicided after her marriage unraveled and her affair partner rejected her for his wife and kid. I cleaned her blood and brain matter off the furniture and just shook for a couple of months, constantly asking why. I figured out then that even in darkness if you could just find that little moment to cherish, you could find the ability to go on.

    I was the last person Mike spoke to… at least I didn’t hear the gunshot bc he hung up. he was my dear friend Mandy’s widower, cancer had killed her 13 months earlier. I tried so hard to help him, but like Lady G, he was determined to kill himself, and no amount of trying could stop him. he had such regret at the way he had treated Mandy, but he couldn’t see that she put up with his shit bc she really loved him. all he saw was his shitty treatment of her.

    neither one could find the little moment to cherish.

  • guy_with_thoughts

    I think it’s a really wrong-headed to exclude potential hotline staffers and mental health supporters based on a history of suicide attempts / suicidal ideation. Obviously the person should be in a good place when they’re helping, but who better to offer support than a person who’s been in that place and managed to get through it? Everyone else is just repeating platitudes and trying to understand.

  • CannedShoes

    Maybe I’m just a cynical asshole, but this just felt a bit too prescriptive about how we should feel about life, and maybe even a bit too much like a performance. Life inherently involves a *lot* of suffering, but I dont think happiness is inherently a sparse thing; how much of what he attributes to “life” is actually just a side effect of our modern loneliness epidemic?

  • Madmallard

    Those random good moments or as you day perfect moments are not always enough. That’s self-deception. You don’t have to be happy. You don’t have to be content. But you can still keep going anyway. Usually you’ll probably degenerate, but we are just star dust dissipating anyway. It doesn’t really matter either way.

    I’ve had a horrible last few years—almost died of medical issues three times now. I don’t really feel safe or stable or secure for the future at all but I just keep going. I wouldn’t say I’m even mentally all that strong. I am living in constant fear. I think it is just different for everyone in that regard. I just happen to continue living. I think those that actually do it just have a difference there. I’m honestly surprised I am still alive. I went a whole year in hypoglycemia daily, with severe hypoglycemia every morning for over a month straight. At the end of that month I did nearly die. But here I am, a year and a half later, no hypoglycemia but other severe health issues. I’m really sick of it, but I fear now for experiencing what I felt during severe hypoglycemia, I don’t really want to ever feel that again.

  • BallForce1

    Everything in this is so correct.

    Post college living with a college friend and at the time we were close. He was dealing with heroine. One day just broke down to me. He said last night he wanted to kill himself. He had a 22 sporting rifle.

    So I asked him to just talk. Kind of like get everything off your chest. Never said anything like “you should do this or that”. If he asked me a question I would respond with really open ended solutions.

    At the end of it I asked him, can I take your ammunition not your gun. He responded yes. Then I asked will I see you tomorrow morning. He responded yes.

    Then I proceeded to not sleep at all, just waiting for the pop of a gun that he stored one bullet away for.

    Suicide is a bitch for everyone involved. Helpline callers have it the worst. If you take 50 calls a day, it only take one call a year to throw all that good feelings of helping into depression.

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