My husband Steve and I were married for almost 13 years, together for almost 15 years.  On the day of our 5th wedding anniversary, he had his first “break with reality”.

He was extremely upset about a letter he had received from one of his investment companies. There was a small post-it attached to the professionally written letter asking him for updated contact info. He interpreted the hand-written post-it note to be an attempt to get his personal information, because he believed the letter wasn’t in fact from the investment company but was from someone who had infiltrated the company. That was the first time I saw the paranoia.  Surprisingly, he was able to get in touch with someone over the weekend who was able to clarify everything and calm him down.

Then five years later, his closest friend moved away and his depression became more apparent. A year later, with no trigger that I was aware of, he had a second break with reality and the paranoia really kicked in. He would wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me that, “It’s real. They know where we live. They have all of our private information” and so on. 

He didn't want to leave the house because he thought "they" had marked our house with blue chalk (Upon investigation,  I found out the water company had made the chalk mark), and were going to break in to steal his (fill in the blank).  So if we even did go anywhere, we'd need a house sitter for the evening. 

With threats of divorce, I finally got him to the doctor who wisely put him on an anti-depressant and an anti-psychotic.  He managed “well” for about a year.  Then, job-wise, his worst nightmare became reality when one of his client's servers crashed. The decline was rapid.

 It was becoming increasingly difficult for him to function normally, and, sorry to say, it was difficult to be around him. What I know now but didn’t know then, was that I was equally very depressed at that time. Poor us. 

How do you live with your mate who has clearly slipped into mental illness? I could say the words "depressed and paranoid". I could not say "mental illness".   I was fully aware and in denial at the same time. 

How do you live? You don't. You survive. 

You watch the person you love suffer and they don't know why. You watch your comfortable life transform into a nightmare. You feel like you're walking on jello, because it's now impossible to live on solid ground.  

I did everything humanly possible to get help for him but he didn't want it.  He was stuck in a loop and I didn't know how to get him un-stuck, aside from electro shock therapy.  Yes, it was suggested that he have it done to rewire his neural pathways. Right. Despite EST working for some people, how was I going to convince him to take 6 months off of work to get his brain re-set. Just the idea of taking a leave of absence caused him paralyzing anxiety. Yet, his job was the culprit and the trigger for his descent...and he knew it.  But he simply could not walk away from it. 

A few months after the server crash, I had to ask him to go to his sister’s because I needed a break. When I checked back with him later, he was just sitting in his car and was prepared to sleep there. I called his sister and she went to get him. He stayed with her that night. The next day, her husband called to tell me that Steve had written a suicide note. The whole family converged on his sister’s house (more about them later), strategizing how to help him.  He finally agreed to go to the ER, where he was put on a 5150 hold, complete with security stationed outside his door. Oh Steve and Karen, how your lives have changed. 

He spent 9 days in a psych ward and was released on December 26, 2016. Less than six months later, he would hang himself in our garage.  

 In the months that followed his release, he managed with the help of a new anti-depressant and  anti-psychotic, though the drug names escape me now. We even did a seven-day day road trip to Sedona, the Grand Canyon, and Las Vegas. He was really happy during that trip and rewarded himself with buying another pawn shop guitar, of which he had many. 

Sadly, as the months passed, he was in decline.  I worked with his psychiatrist to fine tune his drugs. Two days before he died, I fought with our insurance company to go out of the network (and won) so that he could get into a highly rated and a gorgeous in-patient house where he could be in therapy every day.  

 
And as the months passed, I was also in decline.  All Steve and most people saw was a strong, capable woman.  What I didn't let them see was that I was cracking under the strain. I was brittle and fragile.  I asked his brother to please take him so that I could rest. I made the bold move of asking that he take him for 10 days. If memory serves, I think his in-laws were going to be staying at his house also so that wasn't going to work.

I asked other family members to take him out mountain biking or something to give him a change of scenery and to help me.  Some help came, but not very much.   I get it now. It was very hard to be around someone that depressed.  Believe me, I know. I lived that every day.

 I had been away from home that day. I worked a half day and was getting my hair cut early that afternoon.  I called him when I was finished to let him know that I was stopping at my sister's on the way home.  He didn't pick up either the land line or his cell phone. I had a weird feeling that something was not right. I stopped by my sister's and told her that I had a bad feeling. 

When I found him in the garage.....when I looked up and saw that my husband was half standing on a step stool, that he had a cord around his neck, that his head was cocked to the side and that he had dribbled ever so slightly on his shirt, my brain imploded. Fortunately, his face wasn’t discolored. In fact, he looked tanned and handsome. But he was dead.  

My brain fought furiously to make sense of what I was seeing. I thought he was playing a Halloween joke on me even though it was May. 

I can remember all those things but I still can’t remember anything else.  My brain won’t allow me to recall any more than the details I’ve written here.   To even bring some of those memories now requires me to hold my brain's hand and manually push my thoughts in that direction. Thank you, brain.

During my conversation with the kind woman who took my 911 call, she asked me to cut him down. CUT HIM DOWN??? What ?? He would fall on the concrete floor of the garage. That's all I needed to add to my horrific shock.  I just couldn’t, and still think it was an insane request to ask of someone. She asked me to stay on the phone until the Sheriff's Department came. I obeyed and shook violently the whole time. 

One of Steve's sisters was the first of two family members to show up that afternoon. As she came into our house, she told me that “…If I had different job and was making more money, this would not have happened”.  She also bought up something else that I had done that caused Steve to kill himself too but that escapes me.  I’m sure she rehearsed that on the way over and just had to get that off her chest. She eventually apologized.  I was in shock. 

Soon, I could hear sirens and the roar of vehicles pull up in front of my house. A lot of people in uniforms came through and went to the garage. Bless every one of them.  An officer came and sat with me and was the first person to say “I’m sorry for your loss”. It was as if my ears were ringing when he said those horrible words. I was there but I wasn't there.  The word "surreal" doesn't even scratch the surface. Out of body is closer. 

Following a death, a whole new vocabulary shows up. Words like… the coroner, the body, autopsy, death certificate, cremation, burial. 

Afterwards, people came over. People brought food. People wanted to spend the night. People wanted me to spend the night with them. I had to take a call from the organ donor company and was on the phone for over 20 minutes answering questions about Steve’s health, how long had he been dead, etc.  What a horrible and cruel thing to have to do only hours after your husband dies. 

How many people have said to you “I can’t imagine what you’re going through”? Multiply that by having someone die by suicide, or being murdered, or dying in a plane crash, or anything else with drama and was traumatic. But here’s the thing about that; we don’t have the time or the luxury to not be able to not imagine it. In the blink of an eye, it has just irrevocably become our reality for the rest of our lives.  Steve’s death will be forever etched in my psyche. 

His family was lovely after Steve died. One sister came over a few times, as did his brother with his children. I gave them things. I wanted them to have Steve’s stuff. I gave them whatever I could think of that might bring them comfort. We’re not talking carloads, but his collectables, his leather jacket, some musical instruments. Steve was collector of things and had amassed a large guitar collection. A few guitars were requested for other siblings and their children as well. I gave those too. 

But they were only lovely up to a point.  

Steve wanted to be cremated so he was. I couldn’t wrap my brain around anything else beyond that, such as a memorial.  Steve and I were mini-pyromaniacs...we loved our outdoor fire features. Between the two of us, his brother and I decided to attend the cremation and give him a Viking send-off. His brother has also told the rest of the family about this very fitting ceremony. Soon after, his brother called and sheepishly told me that upper management asked that I not attend the cremation service because “I wasn’t family”.  I was told that they were going to "have" the cremation service and that I could "have" the celebration of life service. 

Fuck me. 

Then word started getting back to me about all the nasty things that were being said about me by his family. 

Steve died on the Friday immediately following Mother's Day.  I didn't attend his family's Mother's Day festivities because I was in desperate need of a break.  Later, I received an email from another sister telling me that I had let Steve down by not attending.  Un-fucking-believable.  I should add that in the pantheon of involved siblings offering me direct help or support for Steve (or me), her name was at the bottom of the list. A third, and last sister, and I worked behind the scenes to get him help or at the very least, tried to figure how he could take a leave of absence from his job. She was supportive and oh so very helpful, but after the family turned, she went silent. 

Nonetheless, I invited his siblings to attend a Celebration of Life that I was planning to take place on my birthday in July. I could not think of a better way to mark my first birthday without him than by having everyone who loved him at our home.  I didn't want a cake or presents, just some heavy drinking and tearful, joyous remembrances. I had also planned that the band would play "Gentle Soldier of My Soul", which Steve and I performed at our wedding as a freshly married couple. I just wanted to have that day spent celebrating all things Steve. That would be my greatest birthday present ever. 

Nope, the family didn't like that.  I received a text telling me that it was "all about me" because the Celebration of Life was on my birthday.  I still tear up sometimes when I recall their cruel behavior. But then I get mad. Anger always finds its roots in pain.  And I was profoundly wounded by the very family with whom I thought would be my companions in grief and in missing our Steve. I was so wounded by their behavior that I couldn't follow through the celebration and had to cancel it. 

I was so traumatized by their behavior following Steve's death that the mention of their names, even a few years later, would cause me to shake and have a panic attack. 

I’m going to end this part of the narrative only to say that things quickly came to a head and I broke off all ties with them. And, presumably, EVERYONE was relieved.  I was. 

Meeting a few months later with his psychiatrist, I found out that it’s horribly, and unfortunately, so common for families to turn on the spouse or anyone closest to the deceased loved one.  Their behavior wasn't unique, but that was cold comfort for sure. Families are consumed with grief, guilt, anger, remorse, and (fill in the emotion of your choice here), and are unable to bring themselves to direct all those feelings at the deceased, so that mushroom cloud of nuclear energy is directed at the next best person.

In this case, me. 

I get it now. I understand it now. I’ve made conditional peace with it and with them.  Still, the idea of being around them now causes me pain. I'm SURE the feeling is mutual. 

Much more importantly though, the psychiatrist told me that Steve had probably been planning his suicide for a while. It was his “happy” secret. And that when he made the decision, his mood probably lifted because he knew peace was coming soon. This is what severe depression does to people. He assured me that I could not have done more to help him. Moreover, he said that I did more to help Steve than the majority of spouses of the patients he was treating. I got a tremendous amount of comfort from that.  He also told me that it wasn’t my fault. 

Yeah, right. (Please refer to Guilt...What A Fuckhead.)

So there it is. 

Think I'll have some tequila now.