Editor's note: September is Suicide Prevention Month and as part of the mission to improve readiness through development and enhancement of the Army Suicide Prevention Program the Alaska Post has been running information on activities and assets available to Soldiers, family members and Department of the Army civilians. The following is told by someone who was left behind. Reliving the experience was not an easy task, but telling her story was important to the writer hoping to reach at least one person who needs support or encouragement to never quit on life. There are many resources and training opportunities available to anyone feeling distressed or hopeless, thinking about death or wanting to die. If you are concerned about someone who may be suicidal, please contact Suicide Prevention Lifeline at (800)-273-8255. The United Way Help Line is 452-4357.
FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska - On March 1, 2000, my brother, John Michael, chose to end his life and committed suicide.
Even 10 years later the memories are as clear to me as if it happened yesterday.
John ended his life on a Wednesday night at his home in New Castle, Pa. I was living in Weisbaden, Germany, at the time. I had woken up Thursday morning feeling like something was wrong, but just could not figure out was bothering me. I went to work and came home at lunch time to call my mother, just to make sure that everything was OK at home. As soon as she answered the phone I knew something was wrong, but I did not know my life was about to change forever.
She wanted to know if my husband, Ralph, was with me. I guess she didn't want me to be alone when she told me. I told her no, but forced the issue, insisting that she tell me, thinking whatever it was, I could handle it. I was wrong.
She did and I can still hear her voice in my head and her exact words even now: "Honey, John took his life last night." My brain just wouldn't process what she had told me and she had to tell me two more times before I finally understood.
My first reactions were a mix of shock, disbelief and anger, and with it came the use of language I consider inappropriate for any occasion and I found myself using it on the phone with my mother.
Just a few minutes later, I hung up the phone, telling her that I had to get hold of my husband and that I would call her back. I didn't want her to know I was throwing up in the kitchen sink.
Ralph, who never came home for lunch, had forgotten something that morning and did come home that day. He found me sitting on the kitchen floor, crying and shaking. He thought something had happened to our child or to me. I just couldn't get the words out to tell him. All I could do was shake my head in response to the questions he was asking me.
A co-worker called me when I did not come back from lunch, wondering why I had not come back to work. I told her my brother had died and to please tell my boss and relay a message to my friend Trina, asking her to pick up my son after school, but not to tell her why, just that I would get him later.
It took me a while to calm down and call my mother back, but I had to so that I could get the details on the funeral arrangements and we could arrange flights to get home. I had to explain to her about how the military works and why she had to send a Red Cross message. She just didn't get it and I lost my temper with her trying to explain it.
Later that afternoon I started having chest pains and problems breathing. Both Ralph and I thought I was having a heart attack and off we went to the doctor. All I kept thinking was that surely God wouldn't let my mother lose two children in such a short amount of time. It turned out that I wasn't having a heart attack, but a panic attack. Scary. For me and my husband. I never did tell my mother and I won't be sharing this commentary with her.
We told our son, David, about John's death later that night. Without a doubt, it was one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life. How do you tell your kid that his uncle, someone he worshipped, has died, let alone that he committed suicide' We decided to do it the way we talked about everything else. Straight forward and to the point. Yeah, right. I got as far as "kiddo, I have some really bad news for you, your Uncle John" and couldn't get the rest of the words out. Just the look on his face made it impossible for me to continue speaking. Ralph had to finish telling him. I just couldn't speak.
After David went to bed, I called my Aunt Carol, to ask questions I needed answers to, but just couldn't bring myself to ask my mother. What method did he use to complete the act' Who found him' Was his body so badly destroyed that we would have to have a closed casket funeral' How was my mother doing' Had my sisters gotten home yet' How was Linda (John's significant other)'
I spent the next day trying to get ready to fly home. I packed and unpacked several times. I just couldn't figure out what we needed. My friend Trina finally did my packing for me. She also took David shopping, because he didn't have any clothes appropriate for the funeral. Ralph had to find a kennel and then take our dog, which was already stressed because of the way we were acting, to a place he had never been for two weeks. Seems silly now, but it was so upsetting for both of us at the time.
We flew home on Saturday morning. My sister Debbie met us at the airport. She didn't hug any of us, just talked to us like we had come in for a holiday. She told me later that she was afraid if we had any physical contact or spoke of John's death that we would fall apart right there in the airport.
We went straight to my mother's house and Linda was just leaving when we got there. She and my mother were standing there hugging and crying. My mother's pastor was there. He wanted to pray with us. I had no desire to talk to God right then. My brother was dead, I wasn't even sure God existed at that moment. But my mother is a woman of faith and I knew it would make her feel better so I sat there with my head bowed thinking very unchristian like thoughts while he went on and on for what seemed like forever.
The next day was the viewing. The funeral home let us come in early so that we could spend some time alone with John before other folks arrived. It was such a shock to come in and see my brother, the guy who couldn't sit still or shut up, lying there, silent and unmoving. None of us spoke for a few moments and I was the first to speak, asking my brother, as if he could hear me "Oh John, what have you done now'"
My mother commented that John did not look like himself, that she had given the funeral home a picture of him, but they had gotten his hair wrong. I was standing at the casket while Deb tried to rearrange it. We soon figured out why his hair was the way it was, it was to cover the exit wound from the gunshot that killed him.
The visitation was a long, difficult day. I saw family I hadn't seen in forever. A lot of them I was surprised to see. John probably would have been too. He had made a mess of his life years ago, and hadn't had contact with some of these folks since he was a teenager. I kept thinking "what were they doing here' They hadn't wanted anything to do with John while he was alive, but they were here now'" After stopping by the casket and extending their sympathies to my parents, some of them sat and visited. They talked and they laughed as if they were at a family reunion, not at a funeral home. I found it hard to be civil when they asked me about Germany, and tried to catch up with what had happened in my life since they had seen me last. How could they expect me to make small talk when my brother was lying over in the corner in a box'
I wanted to spend time talking to my brother's friends though and rushed to them when they came through the door. I wanted to know when they had last seen John, what they had talked about, how he seemed. I desperately wanted to know about John's last days, but they couldn't tell me anything. John had not been in touch with any of them for a long time.
John's funeral was the next day. When I woke up, I actually had a minute that I forgot. But once I opened my eyes and saw I was at Aunt Carol's, not home in Germany, I remembered and all the pain came rushing back.
That morning, before we went into the chapel and they closed the casket I put some pictures of us siblings and of his nieces and nephews in John's pocket so he wouldn't be alone. I wanted to put his coffee cup and some cigarettes in there, but for some reason my mother objected, so I didn't. I wish to this day I had asked the funeral director to put them in after we left the room and before they closed the casket.
When the service was over they carried the casket to the hearse. We followed it to the cemetery while police held traffic at red lights for the procession. My sisters and I rode in the car with my parents and we joked that this was probably the first time John ever ran a red light and didn't get a ticket. We were shocked to find ourselves laughing and fell silent again.
During the funeral I had the thought that if I could just get through it, it would get better. I wouldn't have believed the pain could actually get worse, but it did. Watching the coffin that held my brother being lowered into the ground made me sick to my stomach. Walking away from the grave, leaving him alone, I can't even describe the pain.
I went to John's grave several times before returning to Germany. I sat beside it for hours on end, talking to him, frequently crying and often yelling at him. I said a lot of mean, ugly things. I told him I would never forgive him for leaving us this way, not giving us a chance to say good-bye, doing this to my mother right before her 60th birthday and so much more. I was determined to say it all before I went home.
Ralph had to leave for a field problem a day after we got back to Germany, Dave went back to school and I went back to work. I came back expecting the love and support of my friends and co-workers, instead it seemed as if I had the plague. Like if they acknowledged John's death, suicide would happen in their family. I can't explain it, but have experienced it many times through the years. People just don't know what to say to someone who has lost a loved one to suicide. I expect I will experience the same thing after this article comes out, but that's ok. I have learned to deal.
I wondered if I was just being overly sensitive and had tried to come back to work too soon. I had. The first classroom I was working in that day had a new student. His name was John Michael. I have no idea why that was so upsetting to me, but it was. I excused myself, and made it out of the classroom before the tears came. A short time later I walked out of the school and never went back again.
The next few months were hell for me and my family. I fell into a horrible depression and no matter what drugs the doctors gave me I couldn't seem to snap out of it. My house was a disaster, my family had to take care of the laundry and cooking if they wanted clean clothes or something to eat. There were days I couldn't even get out of bed to shower and dress.
I don't know how I finally managed to climb out of that dark hole, but eventually I did. But life didn't get any better for my family. I was still in a tremendous amount of pain and I wanted everyone around me to hurt as much as I did. I started engaging in risky behavior and did things to hurt the very people I loved the most. I started having marital problems and my child had problems in school, with his grades and his behavior, something that had never been an issue.
It took a year before I was finally able to get my act together with the help of medication, counseling, and support from others who had lost a loved one to suicide. It was a long road back and to this day my family still hasn't recovered from the damage. I don't know that I ever will.
Suicide is sometimes referred to as a permanent solution to a temporary problem. People who are contemplating suicide need to know while the pain of the individual may be ended, the suffering of family and friends just begins and for them the agony never ends.
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