Awareness & Prevention

When Mark died, I called very few people. Sharing the heartbreaking news with the kids was too much and I knew I wasn’t capable of doing that over and over. I called both of my sisters and asked them to tell my mom and brothers, I called Mark’s sister and she offered to tell their mom, I called my boss, and a close friend of both of ours.

The next day I asked two friends if they could let some of the rest of our friends know what had happened. In both cases they asked me what I wanted them to say to people. “The truth,” I said, “just tell them the truth.” I never considered telling anyone that Mark’s death was the result of an accident. He had been biking daily for 17 years so the idea that he accidentally rode his bike onto an oncoming train was inconceivable to anyone who knew him. He was too good at cycling for that to even be a possibility and I knew I was in no position to make up a story and keep it straight.

But being truthful about how he died has not been easy. It has opened doors to continuing questions that have gutted me. Why he ended his life, what triggered him, how could I not know how fragile he had become in such a short amount of time. In the telling of his story, there are painful parts that will never be shared. He trusted me with his anguish and I can’t imagine a reason to betray that trust.

For months after Mark died, I laid awake night after night listening to the sound of trains off in the distance and the thumping of a heart that literally felt like it was cracking. This is how everything turns to black, I thought, and I remembered I had a bottle of sleeping pills in the nightstand. Every night I thought about those sleeping pills until I got so scared that I got up and buried them in a basket on a shelf in the linen closet. If I got to the point of considering swallowing every one of them, I’d have to get out of bed, turn on the hallway light, and dig them out of the basket. By moving them I thought it would buy me enough time to reconsider what I was about to do. Months later when I told a friend she asked, “How could you possibly do that to your kids after what they’ve been through?” I wasn’t thinking of my kids. I was only thinking of being with Mark, and I became agonizingly aware that anyone can teeter on the edge of life and death.

As if I needed it, I was inundated with reminders that September is Suicide Awareness and Prevention month. After weeks of raging at this much needed public service announcement, I wondered why it was pissing me off so much. Why wouldn’t I want everyone to be aware of the aftermath of suicide? Why wouldn’t I want to know the signs to watch for? Why wouldn’t I want every family to be spared from what mine wasn’t?

Over the years if the subject of suicide ever came up, Mark would joke that he could never kill himself. “I love me too much,” he would say and we would all laugh because the thought of it was absurd. But over the course of just a few days, he would spiral into a hell of shame that led to him ending his life. I would have done anything to prevent that from happening.

Anything.

I daily ask myself what I should have done differently, for forgiveness for failing him, for the clock of September 4th to be rewound. And more recently, I have begun to ask myself if I am the only person on this earth who is more interested in having a conversation about how my husband lived rather than how he died.