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Josh Gilbert
1981 - 2001
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I write this exactly one year after I received a phone call from Alex Koroknay-Palicz telling me that my friend Josh Gilbert had killed himself. When I went online to confirm the news, sure enough there was the suicide note posted on his webpage.
The first time I ever spoke to Josh was in an e-mail criticizing CYRA's policy of charging membership dues to persons over eighteen. I don't know how he came to be on my ICQ list, but looking back, it seems as if he was always there and with an air of familiarity that existed between us.
I knew a little about Josh even before I met him. Quite frankly, he had the reputation among the youth rights community as "the crazy one." Unstable. Depressed. Etc.
I'd like to believe that people I know think of me as someone who can give good advice when it's needed. Until a few years ago, I gave out advice freely to anyone who brought me their problems. Then one day, I realized that what I was giving out wasn't really advice at all: I was merely telling them what they should do.
Everyone knows the kind of advice I'm talking about, "You need to tell him this..." "You should do that..." Some people welcome this kind of advice because it frees them from thought. If you make a wrong choice and fail, it's not really your mistake because you were only using someone else's advice.
Once I realized that this was primarily the kind of advice I gave, I resolved to stop it entirely. I never told Josh what to do when he brought a problem to me, which is one reason why I believe he and I became friends so quickly.
Many of Josh's problems had easy solutions that for some reason, he simply couldn't find. I remember late night conversations where he would bemoan one of his failures to me, only to find a solution within a few minutes and go to bed happy and confident.
After another friend committed suicide a little over two months before Josh did, I quit saying "good-bye" to people, and switched to "see ya," or whatever else I could think of that wouldn't jinx my farewell into something permanent.
My last conversation with Josh Gilbert was a discussion over his selected method of suicide. Josh had spoken numerous times before about methods of killing one's self, and how much he wished he could do it, but the calmness and rationalization of our last discussion had an eerie finality.
Ever since I met Josh some years ago, I knew that he would one day take his life. Like all of our other conversations, I didn't tell him what to do when he told me he had finished purchasing his chosen instruments. I didn't tell him not to do it, because it was his choice to make. So I said "see-ya" to my friend, knowing full well that I would not.
I guess one year anniversary dates have a way of bringing thoughts of the deceased to the surface, because for the past year, I've fully realized how much I miss the only member of my ICQ list who is permanently off-line.
I wrote this page on April 24, 2002.
The tenth issue of Oblivion was dedicated to Josh, you can read it here. Also, this page may be of interest.
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