"Failure To Thrive" - Brian's Story

One of the best radio shows on the air these days is NPR's "This American Life".

On New Year's Eve, 12/31/10, I listened to this moving program:

Act One. How To Write A Note.

This story wasn't originally made to broadcast on a radio show. It's a tape made by a guy named Jake Warga, who'd never put anything together for radio. He made it to give to his friend Brian, who wanted to kill himself. After Brian tried to overdose, Jake took him out to a park bench to talk, and brought along a recorder. Later, Jake decided to edit the conversation down and give it to Brian as a gift, hoping that if Brian heard what he was saying, if he heard how he sounded, it might stop him from trying again. To learn how to edit and mix the audio, Jake visited the website Transom.org, where his story first appeared. (24 minutes)

For me, the most-moving part of the show was when Brian clinically-analyzes his condition as a long-delayed case of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS): a "failure to thrive."

Since geography is never far from my mind, I kept trying to figure out where these events occurred. They gave some clues in the story, but probably to protect privacy, they didn't say. Based on the clues, I suddenly realized this story is local - it happened here. So, that added some impact to the story.

I had a friend die under circumstances that pointed to suicide. The sad event always leaves friends and loved ones with a million questions, and despite clinical approaches to the questions, no good answers.