Big Jim (From Swindon Advertiser)

Big Jim

8:00pm Thursday 9th February 2012

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A week before Christmas 2011, my uncle Jim’s body was found after he’d committed suicide.

Receiving the news was just as abrupt and unexpected as I imagine the opening sentence of this blog was to you. Nothing prepared me for it and nothing protected me from what my mind did to.

Hearing that Jim had committed suicide was without a doubt the most dark, confusing and crushing news I’ve ever been told.

It caused my mind to move a mile a minute.

The obvious questions of ‘why?’, ‘could we have helped?’ and ‘how did we not even realise he was in that state of mind?’ came straight to me. But slowly deeper, darker thoughts I never imagined would surface started creeping their way into both my conscious and subconscious mind.

Jim didn’t leave a note but I’ve had dreams in which he left one, explicitly and aggressively blaming me as the reason he took his life.

I often drift into a daze where, without realising it, I begin to visualise the whole process of what he did.

And straight after the hearing news I developed an irrational fear of the dark, which I’m glad to say has since passed.

Now, it’s very easy and very lazy to consider suicide a ‘coward’s way out’ or a ‘selfish act’ and ask ‘what about the people they left behind?’ Well, I’m sorry, the selfish act is not the act of suicide, it’s the act of those still alive asking ‘what about me?’.

The mental stress I’ve been going through, along with his other nieces and nephews, brothers, sister and mother, is nothing compared to the anguish Jim must have been going through.

Jim was an army veteran. He fought in the first Gulf War and the Falklands as a part of the clean up crew. He saw many unimaginable things happen to his closest friends who, after serving with them since just a teenager, were very much his family.

My uncle wasn’t selfish. He gave more to this country than any of us collectively will ever do. He gave more than 25 years of his life. He gave his body. But, tragically, he also gave his mind.

The sadness I currently hold is not for what he did to himself. Judging by how clean he left his house, the lack of perishable food in the cupboards and fridge, the fact he gave his beloved dog to some friends (who were unaware of what was soon to happen), the non-existence of any debt and the writing of his Will, it’s safe to say, despite how devastating it is to admit, it was something he wanted to do.

The thing that breaks my heart is the loneliness he must’ve been suffering. After hearing that he purposefully shed some post army weight to take part in the Great North Run and overhearing tales from his army friends praising his sense of humour, selfless attitude an ability to drink with the best of them, it’s truly gutting to think that someone who gave so much may have felt like he had no-one to turn to.

Last week I happened to stumble across an army forum entitled ‘Big Jim Burkitt’, which many men who fought along side him and some who didn’t even know him shared a little memory or offered their condolences.

Although the messages were, on the whole, short and sweet, I could feel the love from each and every one of them. It felt like the love shared between a select few who experienced what Jim experienced and understood what he went through. It felt like the love of family.

It may be too late, but as a member of his family I am determined to do something selfless for selfless Big Jim.

This year I will be running in the Great North Run in his honour and raising money for the Mental Health charity, Mind.

If you’d like to sponsor me then visit http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/CarlBurkitt In the grand scheme of things I know me running 13 miles is diddlysquat, but other than writing, there’s not much else I can do.

I guess deep down I just want to show Jim a fraction of the love he showed to the world.

Wish me luck.

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