Highly Disturbing

My friend Sean is writing a paper on suicide for his English class, and yesterday showed me a video of a man committing suicide (the ol' gun in the mouth routine). It was one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen. The sheer amount of blood that came out of his mouth and nose afterwards was astonishing, all the while with a gaping hole at the top of his head.

Apparently, the man was a Pennsylvania official of some type (governor, perhaps?), who had received bribes and such and then been discovered. He had received a letter telling him that the day after these events, he was most likely going to be convicted, and the judge stipulated that he was going to "make an example of him." Something along the lines of a 55 year sentence and fines of something like $300,000. Now, because he was technically in office at the time of his death (the video is available because he committed suicide during like a political meeting of some sort, which were videotaped), his family received a pension of around 1 million dollars. Was he "justified" in killing himself, as it made things so much easier for his family? Watching the video, I know how people say suicide is "the easy way out," but the ability to walk into work one day, and tell my co-workers, "if this is going to offend anyone, please leave," then calmly place a revolver in my mouth and pull the trigger, seems like something beyond the scope of my emotional comprehension. That takes guts like nothing else. How does his suicide compare with that of the man who threw himself out of the window of the World Trade Center as it was on fire? Sometimes, you gotta just remember that life is good.