Mystery: Deadly Lessons

DEPRESSION ISN’T NECESSARILY the gateway to suicide. Roxanne Kennedy, a Langhorne-based licensed clinical social worker who’s been seeing the Glovers, says only five percent of those who are clinically depressed actually take their own lives. She says most of the time, suicide comes out of nowhere, and no real, objective science can explain why some people kill themselves and some don’t. What the school needs to focus on, she says, is the post-vention phase of things — how those who are left deal with the aftermath.

Rubenstein says that one of the biggest problems in the wake of all this death is the way these kids are memorialized: the t-shirts, the LiveStrong bracelets, the songs of remembrance written by students, the scholarships, the endless tears and palpable melancholy permeating the hallways.

“Let’s not forget that this was a totally selfish act that did damage to a lot of people,” he says. But if the kids who are killing themselves are the popular ones, the ones who seem to have it all in the small-world axis of high-school society, what does that mean for the ones who don’t? In the end, that’s perhaps the most frightening question to arise out of the Council Rock suicides. “If I was a kid on the edge and I saw the way these kids were treated, that would clinch it for me,” Rubenstein says.

The Glovers know it’s unconventional for them to be so willing to discuss their son’s death. But they want to talk about what happened because they want to help. That’s the goal. They want their heartbreak, their frustration, their anguish, to be witnessed, observed, because they want kids to understand just how paralyzing living in their constant state of emptiness is. To know that some days, Big Scott can’t even walk past the basement door, let alone go downstairs. There are times, he says, he can still hear Scotty in the house: “It’s like he’s right there.” He and Tammy want to get past their son’s death, to move on. After all of the meetings and support groups, Big Scott says the one thing he knows is that he doesn’t want to end up like the parents who — eight or 10 years after a child’s suicide — still relive it like it happened yesterday.

They want kids to know there’s nothing glamorous about what Scotty did. Nobody dies this way a hero. Nobody leaves behind admirers. Nobody is Kurt Cobain. “You’ll end up in a garbage bag in the backyard,” Tammy says sternly. They’ll tell their story to anybody: Here’s our pain. Take it, absorb it. See Scotty’s empty room. Look at the pictures of his sprint car. Look at him with his buddies, smiling, happy. Look at the pictures on his wall. That’s what he left behind, mementos on their bookshelves that sit, lifeless, forever reminders that their son took his own life. His legacy, for as long as they live, will be the fact that he’s no longer there. “One kid,” they each told me, separately. “If we can prevent one kid from doing this, it will be worth it.”

 

Scotty left a note. As open as they are about their son’s death, Big Scott and Tammy don’t share the note. It’s too personal, too sacred. They say it explains very little about why their son killed himself, but like any good love letter, it says goodbye to them in the most personal, profound way possible. If that’s all they have left, that’s what they’ll keep. “Scotty’s weakest link was his heart,” Big Scott says, lighting another cigarette as he looks off into the kitchen in search of another memory, another ghost, another rationalization for what happened. He repeats what he’s already said to me twice tonight: “What did I miss?”