Sixty Weeks to 60: Ten Years Ago

(31 Weeks)

Monday, October 6^th, began like any normal day – or as normal as our days had become that year. 2014. It was a roller coast of emotions. I had been diagnosed with breast cancer in March. Ran a sub-4-hour marathon in April. Had surgery in May. Our daughter graduated from 8^th grade in June. By July, I was out of work, starting radiation treatment, and our lives were spiraling downward.  

I was angry most of the time. Angry because I was dealing with that disease. Angry I was still the primary bread winner at a job I hated, then lost. Angry I wasn’t getting the support I needed from the person I needed it from most. I had moved into the guest room. Determined we would sink to financial ruin without any income, I also put the house on the market.  We had an offer quickly and were set to close at the end of October. I had told him to move in with his mom while I looked for a rental for our daughter and me. 

That entire day still plays out so vividly in my mind.  We had a short conversation about addressing issues the home inspection brought up that the buyers wanted fixed. Then I packed up my stuff to spend the day working at Starbucks. I had secured a consulting gig and working from home was impossible. I found it too difficult to be in the same space as him. He was desperately hanging on and all I wanted to do was run away; every memory of everything he did wrong, every time he hurt me, every time he came up short of my expectations over the past 22 years, providing a justification for my anger and dismissiveness.

As I threw my backpack over my shoulder and headed to the door, he said good-bye. I ignored him and as the door was closing behind me, I heard him say, “So, that’s it? You’re not going to say good-bye?” I didn’t. I walked out, got in my car and drove away. 

About five hours later, I left Starbucks and drove around for an hour not wanting to face what was at home, not imagining for a minute that what I would actually find at home was going to change us in an unimaginable way – my daughter and me – forever. 

I pulled into the driveway a little after 5 p.m. and hit the remote for the garage door to open my bay of our 3-car detached garage.  It didn’t open. This wasn’t completely unusual as it had been glitchy in the past although it had recently been fixed.  I parked my car in the driveway and made my way around to the side door.  That’s where I found the envelope with my name on it taped.  My heart sank. 

The note simply said, “I’m in the garage. Probably Dead. Don’t let [our daughter] see me.” The first thing I remember thinking was I don’t want to see you either, buddy. It hadn’t totally sunk in that he was gone, only that there was something in the garage that I needed to deal with whether I liked it or not.

Our daughter, who had just started high school would have arrived home about two hours earlier.  I went inside to find her in her usual spot in the family room watching TV. I asked if she had seen her dad since she got home. She had not, but surmised he had gone out because his keys and shoes were missing.  I am grateful for the self-absorption of the teen years, of her lack of curiosity, for her not seeing that he had left his wallet and phone on the kitchen counter.

I told her to stay put and I was going back out to take care of something. I didn’t call the police, but rather drove to the police station about a half mile away. I’m not sure why.  It was probably about this time that my mind began feeling as if it was separating from my body, that my thoughts were as if I was looking down on my life from another dimension. It would be months before that feeling went away.

The police had a patrol car follow me back to the house. It was now their job to confirm what was behind door #1. I was grateful for that. I wouldn’t see Chris until the morning of the wake on Friday just before we closed the casket, before those paying their respects would arrive. He was in the only suit he owned accented with a Frank Llyod Wright inspired necktie that I found in a shop on Michigan Avenue while visiting Chicago for business in 1994.   

More police, paramedics who were authorized to declare someone deceased, and eventually the coroner arrived in my driveway to investigate the scene. I called my therapist. I got voicemail. I knew I had to go into my house and tell my daughter that her father was dead. I recalled the night 14 and a half years earlier at home at 2 a.m. when my water broke, and I briefly considered just going back to sleep and ignoring the whole thing yet realizing that wasn’t an option. Just like then, there was no option to live in denial, to ignore the current situation, procrastinate, or run away.

I walked into my house and met my daughter coming down the stairs. She had a what’s going on look, and I simply said. “Daddy died.” She asked me what happened, and I directly said, “He killed himself.” 

We stayed in an upstairs den/guest room for most of the night. I navigated the emergency scene in my driveway to take the dog for a walk. I ignored text messages from my running club friends about a bunch of things that seemed completely trivial now. The police contacted Chris’ mom and brother and they came to the house. I was grateful for that, too. 

A detective investigating the death questioned us all. I was asked to go down to the station for further questioning. He had me in a room like they take criminals. With the camera and one-way glass. He asked me questions about the state of our marriage, why we were selling the house, about financial issues. If he wasn’t working for 10 years, how could you have afforded that house? What?  I was working! And about my whereabouts. So you spent 5 hours at Starbucks? Is there anyone who saw you there? He made me feel like I might need a lawyer. As grateful as I was for the helpful officers earlier in the day, I have never forgiven that detective for the way he made me feel that night. Still. 

By 10 or 11 p.m. we were alone in the house. Me, my daughter, and our dog, Enzo.  I don’t think anyone slept well. Scrolling through Facebook in the middle of the night, I saw a post from my brother in the UK pop up, confirming he had just finished his run and was therefore up. I messaged him asking if he had time to talk, that something tragic had happened. He did and I told him.  Then my sister called and said she would be on her way to me.

Four of my sisters came all the way from Ireland and the UK to provide support. Friends from town and my running clubs came with food. My tight group of elementary school girl friends coordinated the lunch for after the funeral. Oh and all the people from our past and present who came to the funeral home or the church for the mass. They all did something miraculous that put me on the road forward. I survived.  With a heart full of gratitude, we survived. 

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I sat in a therapist’s office almost weekly for three years talking about the what ifs. It wasn’t like I didn’t know. It wasn’t like I didn’t often say under my breath, “what the f— is wrong with you?” several times a day. It wasn’t like I didn’t feel like I was losing my own mind in the weeks and months following my cancer diagnosis and felt at the time that maybe I drove him to it. It wasn’t like I didn’t feel I had completely given up on him – and us. 

I came across this poem a week after my cancer diagnosis. It was then as I was reaching my breaking point, needing to take care of myself, that this spoke volumes. It still does. It’s a reminder that sometimes putting ourselves first – putting on our own oxygen masks first – is the right thing to do. 

The Journey by Mary Oliver, from “Dream Work”

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice—

though the whole house began to tremble, and you felt the old tug at your ankles.

“Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible.

It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones.

But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do – determined to save the only life you could save.

We are responsible for ourselves, our actions, and inactions. So, I forgave him. And I forgave myself.

What’s hard now is that my memories are so rarely of the bad things. I look at our time together – making a house a home, watching our daughter grow, times when we brought out the best in each other – and it’s very hard to remember what went wrong. I have a revisionist historian’s look at our past and imagine a future that never could have been. 

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Did you really think this wasn’t going to include a fundraiser? It’s me. Of course it is! Over the course of these 60 weeks, I am hoping to raise $6000 for the children of Mercy Home for Boys & Girls (that’s just $100 a week!). To learn more about Mercy Home and my why, please visit my fundraising page. Thank you.