Death by Suicide, the choice of so many friends

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Name: Jody A. Harmon
Email: bluestray@yahoo.com
Date: 03 Aug 2000
Time: 00:04:27
Remote Name: 204.214.120.5

Story

Rob killed himself a week ago. I read about the death this time, in the paper, a brief obituary was blurbed at the bottom of the page. It said nothing, really, about Rob. Just that he had died. It didn't even say how. But, of course, I knew how he had died and why. I talked to his mom who confirmed this. He had left a long, rambling note.

There were four of us who lived in the low income high rise in Corvallis, Oregon -- four of us, who, as friends, had coffee each morning together. We even named our little group of misfits the Dark Town Coffee Club. Our futures did seem dark and void of hope.

Chris died first. He had a massive heart attack one June. I was homeless then, living along the river with a colony of feral cats. I stayed with Chris sometimes, too. I had lived in the apartment directly under his for years. He or Cindy, the fourth member of the Club, would care for my cat, Wrangell, when I was hospitalized for treatment of my bipolar disease. That was before Wrangell died. Chris was sent north, to a larger hospital, for his bypass surgery that could have saved his life had he cared for himself following surgery. Instead, in the months that followed, he refused to take the blood thinner that is vital after a major operation.

I did not know he was in the hospital again until I ran into someone who lived at the Benton hotel and told me. I walked all the way up there that night to see Chris. Arriving, I went directly to his room, walked in and was about to speak to him, laying there peacefully, I thought sleeping. A nurse grabbed me away and said he had died two minutes earlier. I rushed into the forest behind the hospital. There, despite freezing temperatures, I raged and cried for hours. That was nearly two and a half years ago.

It was less than a year ago that a phone call from someone I did not know well informed me Cindy had killed herself. I denied that it could be even a possibility, at least to the caller. Within my sinking soul which shared her hopelessness then, I could not deny the truth of that. I collapsed, shaking and sobbing. I go through deaths alone. I have no one. I had no one when Chris died to lean upon, nor when Cindy left this earth. When Cindy died, my rational spirit died for a time also. I went into delusion. Thinking, believing anything I touched or even smiled at would be harmed -- I took elaborate measures to get my cat to a safe place. I believed vehicles with one headlight or trucks with CB antennas would kill Hopi in a horrible fashion. I drove half one night, pulling off on deserted gravel backroads, taking many diversions, to get her only seven miles to someone who vowed to keep her for me as long as was necessary. Everywhere I went, I saw falling stars. I went to the river to drown myself and the nightmare in my brain but instead fell asleep. When I woke up, it was still dark. I heard angels singing all around me. And I survived, although thoughts of this best friend of a decade still pulls a lump to my throat.

And at a picnic put on by NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) on Friday, July 21st, I saw Rob huddled alone at the end of one table. I tried to talk to him. He is usually very talkative. He stared through me without hearing. I was at a loss. There were numerous doctors and casemanagers, his included present. They must have been aware of his extreme state of depression. He killed himself a couple of days later by overdose and left that haunting note.

I attended the small funeral held for him by his mother's church last Monday afternoon. It did nothing to help bid him goodbye. It only roused my anger. I was raised in the same church. I had left it, for reasons I saw still grossly evident in this sham of a service for the memory of Rob. Back home, I raged. All dead, of the four of us, of the Dark Town Coffee Club, but me. Was I cursed? Were we all cursed? Would I -- should I -- give in and give up?

I set out driving that night and very late, found myself at the cemetery. There in the dark I walked out to where his ashes had been buried and the small piece of grass, removed to dig the hole, had been replaced. The canopy used for the service was still covering the spot. I took my little tape player and sat on the grass with my friend, played him music he liked. It had seemed a strange, coincidental occurrence: the song that had been on the tape as I drove into the cemetery grounds -- the Stones, "Paint it Black". I played Rob Rolling Stones' greatest hits for an hour. I talked to him. I danced in the grass. I lay on my back and watched stars fall. I listened to the coyotes in the field beside me, watched two young ones tussle. Screech owls cut the night with their calls. Night hawks dove to snatch up rodents with which to feed their young.

And, in the end, I fell asleep on his grave. It was a peaceful sleep, there among the stars and the coyotes and the dead. I was cold when I woke up. The wind was blowing across me. My hands were frozen. I rubbed feeling back into them. I took my small pocketknife out and cut a lock of hair from the back of my head and blew the strands from my hand onto the grass beneath which the remains of my friend lay.

Then I walked away, at peace with his death, as much as is possible. As I got into my car, two more stars shot across the horizon. "It's them," I thought. "It's Cindy and Rob. They're together."

Death by Suicide, the choice of so many friends

Story

Last changed: October 20, 2003