Tag Archives: suicide

Guilt and Grief–Mates for Life

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The winters are warm now.  I felt a tickle across my hand this morning while I was reading on the sofa, one dog under my legs, another dog on top—a tick in late December.  How things have changed.  I put it, alive, in a sandwich bag.  I don’t know why.

I am home now—my adult home.  I’m in my house, and I’m even enjoying myself a little bit.  I like cooking and reading and taking short rides to the store in my new car that I park at the very end of any parking lot so I can avoid little scratches and scuffs for as long as possible.  Yesterday, after a good-morning hug, I looked my husband in the eye and asked, “You didn’t buy that car just because I was sad, did you?”  or something like that.   He said no, said we needed it, and we had the budgeted for it.  My oldest stepson has taken over the stewardship of the big SUV, the one we bought ten years ago for ski trips and road trips with little kids and large dogs.  Now he’s a big kid with his own traveling to do, and that is now his car.  And so the cycle of life continues.

I was in the doldrums, alone in my dad’s apartment, when my husband told me that my stepson had gotten the job, starting this winter break, and that I should distract myself with shopping for another car.  He let me pick it—the make, model, trim, everything.  I won’t say I went directly to the most loaded model available.  I’ll say that, in increments, my husband encouraged the journey.  I’m a car person, and he’s not.  I’m vain, and he’s not.  It didn’t take long to get me into a sport-touring model with black trim and leather seats and a heated steering wheel despite the warm winters ahead.  It has a paint-job that looks flat on a cloudy day, but in the sun, you can see a million little gold sparkles.  Yes, we had talked about getting another car.  We knew that one of the kids would eventually need a car.  But we could have paid cash for a used Civic with 100,000 miles on it and gotten that job done.  No, I suspect this car is also my distraction from grief.

I am fortunate to have such distractions.  I work at a college, so I am “fortunate” to have had the time to spend with my Dad over a winter break.  My husband has the ability to work from anywhere, so we were “privileged” to be able to spend two weeks with Dad who was fighting to stay alive while also fighting to die.  He picked a good time for it, I suppose.    

The subconscious will to survive, I believe, is quite strong.  Dad’s still fighting both battles.  I’m not there, but he still is, in that beige room with the fluorescent light that doesn’t work, and the roommate asking through the curtain divider if we have any snacks on us.  The roommate, apparently, ended up in the skilled nursing cycle of hell because his home care person tried to poison him.  So much drama.  I could write a book about that awful place. It would begin ten years ago, when my old friend’s sister was a floor nurse there.  She drank a bottle of vodka one evening, came to work, shot a patient dead and then shot herself.  She never should have gone into nursing, not with her temperament.  I feel too much, and Dad knew it, and that’s why he never discussed his DNR with me, or his suicide pact with his brother that never came to fruition.  I know why my friend’s sister did what she did.

I’ll get to take advantage of my swell schedule again real soon when I go back up there to help my brother clear out Dad’s apartment.  He told the landlord, an old family friend, yesterday that Dad would not be coming back, and he paid the rent forward two months.  That’s one of the things that really stings about imminent death—walking into someone’s home and seeing their stuff as they left it, knowing they will never return to use it.  I experienced that with Mom, and it hit me hard, looking at her shoes that she would never put on her feet again.  When it was Dad’s turn, I somewhat more prepared for the punch.  I walked into his place two weeks ago after my first visit with him in the hospital, had a little cry, and then dismissed the grief.  You can’t.  You just can’t embrace grief while your loved one is still fighting that primordial battle to stay alive, despite DNRs and suicide pacts. 

Dad’s still alive.  I’m not there.  This isn’t how I wanted things to go. 

To Burn Out or to Fade Away–I’ll Take Fade.

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For most of my life, I assumed that everyone else in the world considered suicide in varying frequencies or degrees. I didn’t know why professionals made such a big, stinking deal over the mention of it, I just learned very early NOT to mention it around certain people and to outright lie to others: Have I had any thoughts of suicide? Nope. Not a one. What do I look like? A crazy person? A weak person? Meanwhile, I would wake up in the morning wondering what it would feel like to jump off a tall building or put a bullet in my head. Quick and efficient stuff I’d think about. None of this slow bleeding in the bathtub nonsense, hoping someone might run in and save me. I always knew that if I actually did it, I’d do it right. I’d do it to get it done. For most of my life I drifted in and out of these fantasies. I could come up with a hundred reasons to hate myself in the course of a day.

It wasn’t until I met my friend Fluoxetine, at the age of 42, that I learned otherwise. Fluoxetine, and the man who prescribes it to me, taught me all kinds of things about how other people can see the world. For instance, some people NEVER think of suicide. Not just once a day or once a month, but NEVER once. These are probably the people who freak out when they hear you mention suicide as casually as if you’re talking about flossing your teeth. They probably feel sorry for people like me who see no other way to see the world. Hell, I guess I would feel sorry for me, too. But I didn’t know anything different. My doctor said freedom from that world, the only one I’d ever known, would feel like a weight being lifted. When my surroundings became more than a fluctuating shade of drab, I would wonder how I could have lived for so long the way I did.

I was skeptical, of course. I’m always skeptical of the therapy trade. But this dude was more than a therapist; he was a doctor who could make a precise diagnosis. He was a man who didn’t pity me or fear for me or for my condition because he knew it was treatable. No drama. No endless talk therapy.

I was one of the lucky ones who reacted positively to the antidepressant right from the start. I remember so clearly driving to the grocery store, exuberantly singing along to whatever came on the radio, and giggling at nothing. I remember walking through the aisles of the store, trembling a little because I just wanted to FUCKING DANCE! That first day was like a pure coke high without the bleeding nose. My doctor said it shouldn’t have happened so quickly, that my body needed time to adjust to it. But I tell you, it happened. I actually wanted to dance in a public place, and I don’t dance, anywhere. It was a sign.

So what’s my point? I guess it’s this: in all those forty-two years, during those times when bleakness would interrupt my thoughts at random and make the whole world seem absurd, I never did it, never acted on the dark fantasy. I seem to have a strong survival instinct. I found ways to adapt to whatever it was, just like I need to find ways to adapt to whatever this is that’s happening now in the world. I need to adjust my perspective, to compensate, maybe to up my dose. I’m considering going full-throttle into hippiedom and embracing peace, learning how to play the guitar, maybe go vegan, never step on a bug. I’m tired of conflict. I’m so damned good it, so good at starting fires and stoking them, but I always get burned.