Premiered on November 11th, 2018 — a date marking not only Veterans Day, but also the centennial of the end of the First World War — I am sorry that it has come to this is an acknowledgement of the importance and realities of veterans healthcare. Scored for offstage voice and piano, I am sorry that it has come to this revolves around its electronic soundtrack, which focuses on a recording of twenty-two individual voices reading excerpts from a Veteran's suicide note documenting crippling mental and physical illnesses. These voices are a manifestation of the statistic that — at the time of this veteran's death — twenty-two veterans took their lives each day. Additionally, the diverse collection of voices helps to provide not only a textured soundscape, but also drive home the idea that this letter could have been written by any service person. The soundtrack begins with the “presidential chatter” of the five U.S. presidents who were in office during the lifetime of the individual who wrote the letter; the overlapping ramblings are the boastings of government achievements with respect to veterans healthcare. However, this flaunting of government successes is almost immediately contrasted with the reciting of the note left by the veteran, who states that the government has abandoned them, and that receiving proper health care is “too much to ask from a regime built upon the idea that suffering is noble, and relief is just for the weak.” Accompanying the centerpiece of a soundtrack is the piano, whose main role is to not only add live harmonies that settle with the additional sounds of the track, but also provide harmonic context for the offstage voice that interjects with selected chants drawn from the Latin Requiem Mass — the Mass for the dead.
The latest figures from the Department of Veterans Affairs show there were more than 6,000 Veteran suicides each year from 2001 to 2021 (the last year of available data). In 2021, the suicide rate was 2x greater for Veterans than for non-Veteran adults. As a friend recently said, “it is striking how many of our country’s most fundamental issues are, or ought to be, nonpartisan matters of shared human concern.” This is one of those issues.
For more information and to view the most recent VA National Suicide Data Report, please visit: https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/suicide_prevention/data.asp