The Staff at AM640 offer their condolences over the passing of Mike Stafford’s brother-in-law. Mike has returned to work after a couple of days off and has decided to share his experience with listeners.
This is how Mike opened up his show on Tuesday:
“I wasn’t planning on coming back to work until tomorrow, but my wife and I generally agreed it’s better you go back to work today. I also talked to her about whether she minded at all that I talk about this on-air. It’s not going to be very easy to do. And, it goes contra against every Wasp bone in both our bodies, very waspy.”
LISTEN: Mike talks about his brother-in-law’s decision
“Do you remember that awful movie Ordinary People, to this day I still hate it, because it beat Raging Bull for best picture. I’m sure it’s a great, great film with Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland and Timothy Hutton. It was about a family tragedy and a family’s inability to deal with it because of their waspy background, and it had to do with someone who made a decision to take their own life.”
“I tweeted last week, along the lines of when someone dies of cancer, they start to post on Facebook, ‘F Cancer’ — you can scream it at the top of your lungs and it feels good. But when someone passes by their own hand, you end up screaming at each other. And that’s what happened.”
“Good guy, he was the best man of my wedding, stepped up for me that day, got me to the church on time, had a little flask in his back pocket for those noon-hour nerves waiting for Jodi to come outside to be married outside under a canopy. His name is, I refuse to say ‘was,’ his name is Tim.”
“Tim was Jodi’s baby brother. I didn’t have a brother. I have a twin sister and a younger sister. My twin and I have always been competitive a-holes, we’ve never seen eye-to-eye because I spent nine damn months in a container with her called my mother’s womb! We’ve never been close, we had enough close, in utero! So, I’ve always been much closer to my baby sister, who is only three years younger than me, but she’s still my baby sister. Tim is about three, four years younger than my wife; he was always her baby brother.”
“The guy had issues, after a few false starts in his life, he became a pretty damn good chef. He knew his way around the kitchen. We always liked going over to his house because we knew we’d be fed well! If you’ve read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, you know there are all kinds of demons in the restaurant industry, and yeah he had his.”
“He got married about a year before I did. I was in Australia and I wasn’t just going to cancel the ticket and take the financial loss. It’s a shame I couldn’t be with him because he was with me one year later on my day. In appreciation from me, I gave him a Movado watch that he just treasured. He loved his bling and his rings. He had those spacers and sleeves. He was a hero to my stepson. And things weren’t going so well for him over the summer. As you may remember, I lost my mom in July, so it was tough, we had that loss to deal with. She died because her heart finally said ‘enough’ at the age of 79 — that’s how people are supposed to die, in their sleep and quietly.”
“Tim made a decision last week, that he had been threatened. A lot of people reached out over the summer — childhood friends, family, his employer — and he just didn’t want to get the help. He spent some time in a facility. We thought he’d be back in the saddle if you will, and that didn’t happen. We’d hear less and less and less.”
“God, love my wife, she would text and email, ‘How you doing?’ The last email she got was about two weeks ago and he wasn’t doing very well. He told her straight up, ‘How do you think I feel? I’m broke, starving and I’m thinking things, dark things.’ Well, what do you do? We called the fabulous folks at the OPP in Wellington County to just do a check on him. And she didn’t hear back from him.”
I texted him, phoned him. And we got a call from Jodi’s eldest sister early Wednesday morning: ‘He’s gone.’
“And he’d made that decision I believe on Monday — it doesn’t matter. If he died of cancer, we’d be screaming, ‘F Cancer,’ but again, when someone makes that decision, man. In a way, you kind of want to go, ‘Yeah do it on your own terms,’ and we’ve legalized medically assisted ways of doing it.”
“There’s been talk about how do we protect people who just have mental issues — you can’t, you can’t. In fact, goddammit, I would prefer someone who has made that decision, not because they have a disease, just because they’re tired with life, that, that would be the way and they could say ‘goodbye’ and make amends. That didn’t happen.”
“I’m talking about this one because my wife wants me to, and because if you ever think of doing this, your pain will end. I don’t believe in an afterlife, I believe in oblivion. I don’t want to get into that philosophical argument, but the pain you’re going to leave behind is too much to bear. It’s too much to bear for anyone. You son of a b***h, we wanted to help you.”
“This is from the heart. It isn’t some corporate initiative so we’ll have an easier time buying more properties from the CRTC — I hate to sound cynical. This is from the heart. Let’s talk about this, no celebrities in the studio, I’m not here to raise money, not having PSAs from athletes who’ve struggled with issues. This is from my heart, for my wife, my stepsons, my in-laws.”
“How do you deal with this?”
Where to get help
If you or someone you know is in crisis and needs help, resources are available. In case of an emergency, please call 911 for immediate help.
The Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention, Depression Hurts and Kids Help Phone 1-800-668-6868 all offer ways of getting help if you, or someone you know, may be suffering from mental health issues.
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