An Inexplicable Gay Suicide

We read time and time again about gay teens who end their lives prematurely due to relentless bullying and other factors that no one will likely ever know. Thus, it's unnerving to read about the suicide of a financially successful member of the LGBT community who had outwardly seemed to come to terms with living in a still very homophobic society and by reports was a personification of the "It Gets Better" story line. The New York Times has such a story today. Having attempted suicide twice myself in the past and ended up hospitalized as a result, I do understand all too well the feeling that forces are out of one's control and the desire to just stop the pain can take control and trump everything else. And getting older - I will hit a major age benchmark in August, so I speak with knowledge - and realizing that so many of your dreams of your youth will never come to be can also be a depressing phenomenon - especially for those of us who tend to be perfectionists.

While I don't claim to know what motivated Bob Bergeron to take his own life, I do believe that gays have a far more burdensome existence where we are forced to justify our own humanity and worth in ways that the heterosexual world will never know. Like it or not, the religious culture in America remains overwhelmingly toxic towards LGBT individuals who see themselves as a group denigrated daily and described in the foulest of ways by the "godly Christian" crowd. Even if one's family doesn't reject you, some level of damage is done nonetheless. And that damage is done deliberately by those like the folks at the National Organization for Marriage, Family Research Council, and even the Vatican. Devout Mormons and Christians don't like have their responsibility cited - as I found from a nasty e-mail attacking me for a recent post on a gay Mormon suicide - but the fact that the truth hurts doesn't make it any less the truth.

Here are some excerpts from the New York Times on Bergeron's tragic and still inexplicable suicide:

Over the last decade, he built a thriving private practice, treating well-to-do gay men for everything from anxiety to coping with H.I.V. Mr. Bergeron had also begun work as a motivational speaker, giving talks at gay and lesbian centers in Los Angeles and Chicago. In February, Magnus Books, a publisher specializing in gay literature, was scheduled to print a self-help guide he had written, “The Right Side of Forty: The Complete Guide to Happiness for Gay Men at Midlife and Beyond.”

It was a topic he knew something about. Having come out as gay in the mid-1980s, Mr. Bergeron, 49, had witnessed the worst years of the AIDS epidemic and emerged on the other side. He had also seen how few public examples there were of gay men growing older gracefully.

He resolved to rewrite the script, and provide a toolbox for better living. “I’ve got a concise picture of what being over 40 is about and it’s a great perspective filled with happiness, feeling sexy, possessing comfort relating to other men and taking good care of ourselves,” Mr. Bergeron said on his Web site. “This picture will get you results that flourish long-term.”

But right around New Year’s Eve, something went horribly wrong. On Jan. 5, Mr. Bergeron was found dead in his apartment, the result of a suicide that has left his family, his friends and his clients shocked and heartbroken as they attempt to figure out how he could have been so helpful to others and so unable to find help himself.

But there is something particularly resonant about Mr. Bergeron’s tale. Here was a man who ended his life at the exact moment he seemed to be nearing a professional peak, one that involved the upbeat story of a mature gay man facing the second half of his life with enthusiasm, hope and an endless array of tight T-shirts.

“We sell this idea that 60 is the new 40, but it’s just lying,” said Dr. Frank Spinelli, an internist in Chelsea who referred numerous patients to Mr. Bergeron. “We tell children there’s Santa Claus, and then they get older, and learn better. I can’t even begin to imagine what Bob was going through.”

Though some of his friends, Mr. Rappaport among them, wondered whether drugs were involved, leading to a crash Mr. Bergeron did not anticipate, the suicide seemed to have been carried out with methodical precision. On an island in the kitchen, Mr. Bergeron had meticulously laid out his papers. There was a pile of folders with detailed instructions on top about whom to call regarding his finances and his mortgage. Across from that he placed the title page of his book, on which he also wrote his suicide note. In it he told Mr. Sackheim and Mr. Rappaport that he loved them and his family, but that he was “done.”

As his father remembered it, Mr. Bergeron also wrote, “It’s a lie based on bad information.”An arrow pointed up to the name of the book. The inference was clear. As Mr. Bergeron saw it at the end of his life, the only right side of 40 was the side that came before it.

I hope Bergeron finds the peace that seems to have eluded him. Perhaps he feared not living up to his own standard. Perhaps he feared disappointing - failing, if you will - his patients and readers. Even writing this small blog, I at times feel I cannot fail readers. For the rest of us, we need to be vigilant in watching out for one another and keep up the fight against the anti-gay hate and bigotry that remain so rampant in America.