dewline: Quotation: "I grieve with thee" (Grief)
On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams ([personal profile] dewline) wrote2011-10-29 10:25 pm

RIP Jens

I was considering finally uploading a ramble about the Occupy Movement tonight, or maybe the CFL game I watched this afternoon, or a review of one or two books.

But all that can wait.

We lost someone on Thursday whom I've known for about ten years, a guy in Hamburg I considered a friendly acquaintance whom, in my arrogance, I would like to think of as in the process of becoming a friend in fact.

His name was Jens Altmann. Some of us here on Livejournal knew him as [livejournal.com profile] black13. He wore a number of different hats in the years I knew him: comics fan, writer, translator, occasional cartoonist, and for a few years, husband.

On Thursday, he ended himself. Personally, without much more in the way of evidence than our interactions over the Net over the years...I suspect - but will never be able to prove - clinical depression.

I never got to meet him in person.

And now that option is off-limits to us all.

Jens, I'm sorry.

[identity profile] wyldemusick.livejournal.com 2011-10-30 05:58 am (UTC)(link)
Clinical depression, major anger issues, bad turns in his work, his marriage coming apart, taking a job that was grueling beyond belief...and a tunnel-visoned pragmatism.

It's the last in that list that would have done it. Jens was always of a mind that if living got to be too much, too painful, too pointless, he'd end it.

He'd spent the last few months disconnecting all of his possible lifelines. I figure he made the decision a while back, spent some time tidying up as best he could, and when he'd done that, got on with it.

There's been so much for me this past couple of years that I can't even properly process this right now. I'm numb. I started to react, and shut down.

[identity profile] p-m-cryan.livejournal.com 2011-10-30 05:16 pm (UTC)(link)
And it's that pragmatism that is weighing down heavily on so many of us. Despite the reaching out we did, he made up his mind not to reach back.

I am angry and I am sad and I miss him.