Collateral Damage

“Sometimes we are just the collateral damage in someone elses’s war against themselves.”
-Lauren Eden

A few days after Mark’s death when I was with my sisters, daughters, and niece on a hunt to try to find guest books for the funeral, I got a call. I did not hear my phone ring initially which was a good thing. Since that Tuesday when I had gotten the call from the police department while at work, whenever the phone would ring my heart would stop and my stomach flip. This time it was a call from the county health department wanting me to know the services available for my mental health in case I felt suicidal. It would have been comical if the whole thing wasn’t such a heartbreak. One funeral wasn’t even planned and it seemed to me that they were heading me off at the pass to stop the need for a-buy-one-get-one deal from the church. They left a voicemail, I called back and left a message that I would contact them if need be but I was a bit overwhelmed at the moment.

On the day after Mark’s funeral, when I was on somewhat of a high (if one can even say that after the suicide of their husband) because his farewell was everything I had hoped it would be, the detective who told me what happened that Tuesday afternoon showed up unannounced at my door with a person from the mental health department. He was someone I wished to never lay eyes on again, and all 6’5″ of him filled my living room. He sat on my white couch and introduced a fresh-faced women who proceeded to hand me dozens of brochures on suicide. She was all of about 25, and I wanted to ask her if she really thought that if I was going to kill myself I would stop, say, “Wait a minute, where’s that brochure with the phone number I was supposed to call,” and then rifle through the pile she gave me until all was well again. They chatted awhile, and if there is one thing that you cannot do for a very long time after death lands in your house, it’s small talk. I told them I had to cut things short because I had to go to a physical therapy appointment for back issues that I’d had for months. This opened another conversation about the detective’s own back issues and he asked me if I had ever thought of getting an inversion table because, according to him, those things really work. I smiled, thanked him, and said I’d look into that. Silently I said take yourself and your gun out of my house and don’t come back.

I would later find out that making a welfare check like that is standard procedure after a suicide. Family members so distraught over the loss of a loved one often end their own life, and information about these services has to be passed on to prevent a chain reaction of death.

Many times since last September I have thought about that conversation. How I felt like throwing up when I saw him at the door, how I wanted to blame the messenger, how this was so very wrong on every level.

Mark thought his death was the only viable plan, that we would be so much better off with him out of the picture. I have read a great deal about the suicidal mind, but because he never even came close to that in our years together, it is so difficult for me to imagine him capable of thinking that way. In the dark of night he slipped into his own darkness, unbeknownst to me, and how was that even possible? How could I, who knew him best, be unaware of where his mind had led him? My therapist said Mark did it in the way he did so that I wouldn’t know, so I wouldn’t stop him, so I wouldn’t be the one who found him. In replaying the weekend before over and over, I always imagine myself to be the hero, the one who steps in at the last minute to stop him from doing the unimaginable. In going down that road I also imagine what the aftermath must have been like and I am grateful to have been spared that.

But my gratitude is someone else’s horror and it is something I think about often. The train operator who phoned the police after it happened and the police who responded to the scene, namely the detective I want to hate. Who ever thinks that the outcome of suicide will be part of the job description? And how often in a career does that happen?

On that Tuesday afternoon at the police station, when the story was unfolding before me and I could feel my entire body collapse at the news, I was asked if I had any questions. Did I have any questions? I didn’t even know where to start. I looked up and all that would come out of my mouth was, “Did he, did he, did he……”

Did he what?

I didn’t even know what I was asking. The detective looked at me and said, “He did not suffer, Mrs. Fisher.” How does someone remember to be so kind and gentle when they have become the collateral damage in the aftermath of a war they were called to witness?