My family watched a B movie earlier tonight, The World’s Greatest Dad, I think.  Robin Williams the only noticeable face in the whole thing, was, of course, the main character.  A teacher at his son’s school.

I didn’t watch the whole thing, but, eventually his son accidentally dies via auto-erotica asphyxiation.  Since the father is the first to find the body, he covers up this fact:  clothes his son, deletes all the porn from the computer, and even writes a suicide note to wrap it all up in a pretty package.

It’s funny, obviously, and a little poignant too.  A parent has to love their child very much to clothe their naked bodies, especially if they died masturbating.  Worse yet, the suicide not gets out, and where nobody cared for either Williams’ character or his son, they now all love them.  The Father gets the love he wanted and such.  I didn’t finish watching it.  Not that it was bad, but I preferred to go watch scrubs.

But it brings up an interesting question:  what kind of suicide note would you write for a loved one?  For the sake of the exercise, let’s say a loved one did kill themselves, however, left no note.  You, being the first to discover the obvious suicide write a note so that the rest of the family and friends will feel better, can grieve easier.

How would you go about doing that?  It’s no secret that I attempted suicide once, and luckily changed my mind before too late.  And I did write a note.  I wrote the names of my parents, siblings, my best friend, and my (then) girlfriend down on a piece of notebook paper, and simply said, “I’m sorry.”

Would you follow such a simple structure, or, as in the movie I mentioned, would you create some character in your head, and then from that perspective, write the note.  Because you couldn’t know how the deceased felt, your note would be fiction.  Would you be up to that criteria?

Having written my own once, even I wouldn’t know what to do.