I wrote this piece recently for a live story-telling show about motherhood called Listen to Your Mother. It was a wonderful opportunity to prepare this story and then read it to a live audience in San Antonio. I share it with grief and hope. LS
It was ten years ago this March—ten years ago that the doorbell rang sometime after seven in the evening on that Saturday night. I was already upstairs getting ready for bed, feeling bulky and cumbersome at nearly 41 weeks of pregnancy. Our three-year old daughter was sound asleep, and I resented this unexpected intrusion into a quiet evening with my husband John.
Through the beveled glass of the front door I saw my parents and younger brother. Why would they just drop in unannounced when they lived an hour away?
I opened the door with a smile, trying to cover the curiosity and irritation I felt. But when I saw their faces, my stomach churned.
“What happened?” I asked. I hadn’t even invited them in.
“Is John here?” my mother inquired urgently.
“He’s upstairs.”
“Can he come down?”
“Yes, in a minute. But what? What happened?”
“Wait til John comes.”
“No! Tell me. What is it?” With each brief exchange my voice grew louder and my insides tightened more.
“Your brother . . .Tim . . .” my mom started.
“What?”
“He’s dead. He, he took his life. . .”
“No!” I yelled, as this impossible weight sought to enter my mind. “It’s not true!” I yelled. “You’re lying.”
I turned back into the house and attempted to run upstairs. “I loved him! Didn’t he know that? No!”
I stumbled on the stairs, a miserable heap of fluffy, blue bathrobe. In this quick darkness, my husband was there, tightly holding me. I craved yet also resisted this safety and comfort.
I went upstairs to get dressed—the pastor was coming over. My mom was attentive to me, so gentle and solicitous even in the midst of her own grief. I couldn’t even think about what clothes to put on, so she pulled something out for me, just like she had done when I was little.
Coming back downstairs I finally thought to ask the horrible question: “How?”
“He jumped,” she replied quietly. “He left a note.”
“Don’t blame Kristen,” he wrote to us, “It’s all my fault. See you on the other side.” Those are the last things I heard from him. My heart filled with questions that could never be answered.
And what about this baby I was carrying? How could my brother leave on the eve of such good news? A baby! Doesn’t a baby bring joy like no other? Couldn’t he have thought about me and changed his mind? And why hadn’t I called him and reminded him?
Two days later, first thing on Monday morning, John and I were at the hospital, preparing for an induction so I would be able to fly to Michigan for the funeral service at the end of the week.
Those were foggy hours. I felt like I wore a badge of grief in a place where I should be full of joy and expectation. I could do nothing more for Tim, but as the contractions intensified and the pain became white hot, I cried out to my brother, telling him he didn’t have to leave, wishing over and over he knew how much we loved him.
I listened to music that mirrored my mood—comforting lullabies, mournful tones. I sat on the birthing ball, praying, weeping. The pain that coursed through me became a welcome relief. I wanted to hurt. That was the only way I could identify with my gone brother, who was broken by pain. His years’ long struggle with depression and addiction, with so many twists and turns and darker paths, had been an agony which I would never understand. But I wanted to commiserate with him, to weep with him, to bear this aching burden for him.
* * *
I remembered how I had called Tim when I found out I was pregnant with my first child. I caught him in the bait shop, getting ready to go ice fishing. “Well, don’t fall in the ice,” I told him cheerfully, “because you’re going to be an uncle!” His joy reverberated through the shop. I heard him shout to his friends, “My sister’s having a baby!” He was so happy.
Over the next three years he proved himself a dedicated uncle to sweet Bitsy Jane, as we called her then. He changed her diaper, he fed her, he picked out bright and cute outfits for her, he took careful and priceless photographs of her. He loved her.
He would have done the same for this baby, if he could have but seen any way out of his darkness. But as a counselor told me later, “He could not see the pain that his leaving would cause. All he could see was his dark despair. Leaving, he thought, was best for everyone.”
He was so wrong.
* * *
Finally the labor pains intensified and scared me. I asked for an epidural, which barely took effect before it was time to push. For some reason my oxygen level went down, and suddenly the nurse was putting a mask on my face. Tears came then, as I thought of Tim in hospitals, Tim overdosing, Tim in a rehab center, Tim’s broken body . . . The labor and delivery nurse yelled, “What’s wrong?” Ever my advocate, my doctor placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder and spoke up clearly, “She’s fine.”
Yes, fine, because there is no other way to give birth in the midst of death except with tears. There’s no other way to embrace motherhood in the face of suicide than with a broken acknowledgment of the pain that will come.
And then, more pushes, and the words that warmed and broke my heart at the same time: “It’s a boy!”
On Friday, with a four-day old baby, we flew to Michigan for a weekend heavy with anguish and rich with family companionship. The prayers, hymns and stories at the funeral gave vent to my mourning and buoyed my hope. Henry was always in my arms, always nursing, an emblem of the persistence of life. My attentive aunts clustered around me, Tim’s wife Kristen gave me ice-packs for my painful, engorged breasts. And then it was time to go home and face the long, dark road of grief.
* * *
Tim was buried on the day after Easter. Six years later, on a beautiful green-grass blue-sky day, we met up at the cemetery with my two younger brothers and their families. The children frolicked in the grass, jumping over stones and avoiding the flowers. I watched as Henry wandered over to Tim’s grave marker and looked down. I could see his mind working. I gave a little gasp as I realized that he was going to figure out the connection between his birth and Tim’s death. I hadn’t wanted him to know when Tim died or connect any pain with his own birth. And yet, I couldn’t hide it. Henry could read, he could add and subtract.
“Oh look!” he called out, “Uncle Tim died two days before I was born.” He was matter-of-fact about it, and perhaps even delighted. It was not the fearful shadow I had made it out to be. For Henry it was a cool connection he had with his uncle, the uncle whom he had never met.
Henry has asked, a time or two over the past few years, how Tim died, and I have not yet been able to tell him. I have cried. I have stumbled over words and said, “He was so sick.” I have heard Elisabeth try to gently change the subject. How do you explain mental illness, depression, to a child? Soon we will have that conversation—Henry has just turned ten. I will consider how an understanding of his uncle—his tenacity and his frailty, his humor and his humility—will be armor for Henry, good armor, protection from the harm of self-loathing that sends a good man to his death.
I’ll continue to sing gently in his ear and heart, the words of a Michael Card song I sang nightly when Henry was so small . . .
Welcome now little stranger
To a world filled with wonder
To a world torn asunder
To a world that's in pain
My son, life's a battle
So you be a rebel
Stand ready to fight
And never stop loving the light.
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