November 2021

 It seemed ironic that the Christmas before, I bought him a cookbook titled “How not to die”. 

I thought about this as we drove to Ogden after my daughter had just called us and said simply “He’s dead”. 

Buying gifts for E was not easy.  My daughter’s boyfriend of several years loved to cook and to read.  He loved dogs and had two of them that he pampered.  He related better to dogs than people but then dogs don’t judge or make demands.  

He was a guy of plaid shirts with understated colors and jeans which endeared him to me as that is how my people in northern Michigan dressed.  He was originally from Wisconsin but he didn’t like cheese except when it was on pizza,  which I could never understand. He always wore comfortable but expensive looking shoes.  

He was picky about all of his clothes and I knew it was a mistake when I knitted him a pair of socks for one birthday in a muted color that I thought would be acceptable. I found out later that along with many other things,  he gave them away.  That hurt a little but he didn’t know that if someone gives you something that they made, especially knitted socks, it means they really love you.

He loved antiques and their house looked like a museum or a library filled with old but interesting books.  He had a MLS degree and his knowledge of research helped him, I am sure , to find what he thought was the best way to end his life when his pain became too much to bear.

On that seemingly long drive to Ogden, which in reality is only 45 minutes, I didn’t know how his life had ended. I imagined the worst.  Did my daughter find him hanging?  Did he shoot himself?  Did he take the dogs too?  Maybe I should have texted him.  Maybe I could have been the one person that later he would have said,” If it weren’t for her phone call, I would have killed myself”.   Later I would think how irrational this was and that probably nothing could have stopped him.  Only in movies does one phone call save someone from suicide.  But we all want to be that hero. 

I would later find out that in the morning he painted the bathroom and then in the early afternoon ended his life.

We knew he suffered from depression but it seemed well controlled until the past summer when the depression took over his life.  Nothing he or we did seemed to help.

When we turned on her street, even from about a half mile away we could see the rotating flashing red lights on the top of about three police cars.  I had a sense of dread and took a deep breath.  Bruce said nothing but he had that look of wanting to be anywhere but where we were going.  As we approached the house, I saw neighbors standing outside - some showing concern, others just curious.  There was a nondescript Honda Civic in the driveway that said “Medical examiner” on the passenger door.  I thought that it was totally unlike the big black SUV types that medical examiners drove in all the CSI movies. 

As we walked up the steps, a neighbor got up from her spot on the bench next to my daughter.  She was huddled on a bench on the porch sobbing.  I had heard that sobbing before and there was no mistaking it.  It was the sound I heard as an ER nurse, when parents were told “We did everything we could”. 

I walked over and took my daughter in my arms and held her as she sobbed.  I thought of her at 8 years old. Her gerbil had died and she wanted me to do something.   “Fix him, mom” she had said then.  You are a nurse, can’t you do something"? 

I couldn’t fix this one and the pain of that hit me.  All I could do was hold on to her.  “I found him on the floor,'' she said.”  He was so blue.  I tried to do CPR but he is dead.  I can’t unsee him lying there". 

As I held her I thought, “I will never be able to unsee imagining you finding him like that.”. 

I then felt my anger at what he did to my daughter overcome my tears and I held her tighter.  Later I would realize that he must have been in such unbearable pain that he saw no other options - it wasn't an act of selfishness, it was an act of desperation to end that pain.

A police officer stood in the doorway and asked us if we were warm enough.  It was neither cold nor warm, although it was November.   I could hear the dogs barking in the bedroom somewhere inside the house. 

I wondered if E was still on the kitchen floor but of course that is why we couldn’t go inside.

I looked up and saw Bruce, looking sadder than I have ever seen him.  “I’ll go call the boys” he said, going back to our car.