(This article originally published January 31, 2013; slightly revised January 28, 2016).
 |
| 2003 |
Mark Hummels is my best friend. Mark was shot and gravely wounded yesterday while working in downtown Phoenix, and today, I very sadly learned that he will not survive those wounds. I learned less than 45 minutes ago that as of late afternoon today, Mark was 100% reliant on life support, and the process had begun to harvest his donated organs. So that he can continue to be exactly who he is.
 |
| 2012. |
He is the only friend who came to see me while I was hospitalized in the Arizona State Hospital. This is not to say I don't have other friends who I've every reason to believe would have done so, but Mark is my best friend, and the only one I contacted while still hospitalized. I only allowed him to come once, for that was enough in all senses. I benefited enormously from the visit, and in the case of Mark, it was- in my opinion- more than enough for me to ask of him.
I wouldn't wish my worst enemy a moments' time in ASH, in other words. Mark came, he saw, he listened, he met a couple of my friends (patient-peers); and then he returned to his family, and his life among a reasonably civil and humane society, where he belonged.
Mark Hummels and I have been close friends since attending The University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law together, 2001-2004. We met after I sat behind him in a seminar, I think it was Constitutional Law (w/Prof. Roy Spece) during our first week as law students, August 2001, and I noticed he was wearing a tee-shirt affiliated with a popular northern New Mexico newspaper; and being from there myself, I asked him about it, and learned that he and his wife Dana had just moved to Tucson from Santa Fe, which I somewhat consider my home town (although I have not lived there in over fifteen years).
We became fast friends after that, having a shared interest in writing, endurance athletics, good music, and other like things; and we were closer to one another in age than either of us were to the younger first year law students. Amongst other things over the next 36 months, we did a number of epic "blow out the steam" mountain bike rides and back country hikes in the desert and hills around the Santa Cruz basin in our free time; we broke bread at each others home many a time, we drank together, we attended law school parties and events together, and we came to know each other's parents when such times arose; and at school, we joined several of the same clinical groups, such as The Arizona Justice Project, worked on projects together, and studied a few times at one or another of the great coffee shops in Tucson.
Academically, however, I was anything but a stellar student, while Mark began breaking academic records at UA Law from the get go; and I well recall speaking to him on the phone following final exams that first semester, fall 2001 (when all first year students are crawling the walls), and hearing the excitement in his voice as he informed me he had aced every test. He did that for the entirety of his legal education, as it turned out, while also acquiring a variety of related extracurricular accolades; and through it all, he remained as down to earth, humble, open, and generous as any person I have ever known. At some point in that period of time, one of Mark's oldest friends, visiting in Tucson, told me: "That's just Mark. He's always been like that."
I was struggling with depression and related binge drinking well before I began law school. But I somehow managed to continue meeting fairly high achievements, including successful acceptance to seven law schools in the winter of 1999-2000. Once I arrived at UA Law, I had lost control of myself, in effect, although I gave it pretty good run, all told. But to the extent that Mark and I became fast friends not long after our first semester at UA Law began, it wasn't long before he became aware of the fact that I was firing on far less than all eight cylinders in terms of my ability to rigorously apply myself to my studies. He also knew that I had been afforded one of the most prestigious full ride scholarships available at UA Law (we both had received such a scholarship), which was granted to me on the basis of my academic and professional background, resume, references, and history as a public interest advocate and activist. Based on this latter factor, and discussions we had, etc., Mark was easily able to recognize that something very serious was amiss with my emotional and mental health. Mark and I have a lot in common in terms of background life experiences, and when early issues relating to my psychological health arose during that period of my life, he never reacted with anything less than outright respect and empathetic concern. He offered his input when it was appropriate, and he was there for me, supporting my struggle to remain functional in school, and encouraging my attempts to regain a foothold on my life at that time.
Mark Hummels is also the only friend I ever discussed my emerging suicidal ideation with- this while we were together at UA Law- and to that, he reacted strongly, telling me that under no circumstances should I choose to act on those thoughts without calling him first. Like many persons affected as I am by chronic major depression and associated traits, I sidestepped his stronger concerns for the most part, and he gave me that room to remain autonomous in my deepest personal experiences.
But if I had so much as asked Mark to help me further, he would have done so with no hesitation.
When I finally left law school after my fourth semester, Mark did not so much as flinch in terms of losing faith in or respect for our friendship. As such, he is and will always be a best friend, and I will never forget our friendship, under any circumstances. He has been closer to me during the most tumultuous period of my life than anyone, and only he knows the details to what I went through. For these explicit reasons, I will miss Mark like no other.
Following law school (his graduation, and my slow slide into virtual oblivion) we remained in fairly close contact; but his legal career more than expectedly started out with fire works, and he and Dana had their first child and moved to Phoenix, so we naturally were not nearly as close as we had been in Tucson.
Following my first serious suicide attempt in April, 2006, I entered into long term treatment for alcoholism (for the first time) and while I shared this latter fact with Mark, I never told him or anyone else about my first suicide attempt, or subsequent attempts that I made over the next 3 years, until May, 2010, following my last lethal attempt to settle my internal strife on my own terms. It was then that I entered mental health treatment for the first time, and thereafter that my first diagnosis as a person affected by serious mental illness came about. It was something akin to the culmination of a process that began when I was about 12 years old, by my reckoning today. Once my hospitalization began, and I opened myself up to inquiries about my most personal thinking on life and death issues, it became readily apparent that I likely wouldn't be going anywhere too fast, and I allowed myself to fall completely under the radar for the entirety of my first year of hospitalization; none of my friends (and I have a lot of very good friends) had any idea what had come of me in those years (MIA- Missing In Arizona), and it was not until my sixth month at The Arizona State Hospital that I took it upon myself to contact Mark. He came to visit me about 2 weeks later.
I count Mark's wife, Dana, and both of their children among my most cherished friends, as well. My thoughts and heart are with them at this time.
This post has little if anything to do with the substandard conditions and related patient abuse at ASH that I am dedicated to exposing through this blog. But it has everything to do with the fact that in Arizona today, bottom-feeding state employees like Joel Rudd and Cory Nelson and Donna Noriega continually draw over exorbitant incomes in relation to the half-ass work they do at ASH, and they do this in direct violation of the public trust granted them, while people like Mark give their very lives, at times in tragic context, despite being of the highest ethical character. Only in Arizona. Such is life, and life will go on. But from this, I will draw strength and fortify my conviction, for Mark is bigger than any of the ones running ASH, and on behalf of the patient community at ASH as a whole, in his memory I will continue to do good work to the best of my given ability. He would expect nothing less from me.
Yes, life will go on, but the criminally
egregious wrongdoing at ASH will not.
I am dismayed, disheartened, and deeply saddened. I am in mourning, and will be for the foreseeable future. Arizona and the world itself lost a priceless friend today.
UPDATE 2016: In memory of Mark Hummels, and his immediate family, I have and will continue to dedicate my best work to those in peril when it comes to the radically inhumane discriminations against persons vulnerable to abuse, negligence, and societal indifference. Be they the seriously mentally ill, the elderly, and at-risk children. My sentiment in this context has always applied to bringing the ones directly responsible for the suffering of my former ASH patient-peers to justice, which as we all know, is ongoing.
paoloreed@gmail.com
