A Time for Compassion

(source)

Like the rest of the world, I awoke to the news this week that the tragic crash of the Germanwings flight 9252 was due to a deliberate act of the co-pilot, and my heart sunk.   My immediate thoughts were for the families of everyone on board - there would be so many questions, so much pain.  All these beautiful, innocent lives lost in a horrific and random act, how incredibly unfair and what an enormous trauma for their loved ones to have to make sense of. 

Among those lost, were every day people including students, teachers, families, opera singers, tourists, university graduates, babies, journalists, business professionals and newlyweds. People with so much to live for, people who will be greatly missed. So many families who will never be the same again, so much grief. 

However my heartbreak was not only due to my sympathy for those whose lives had been lost but also because I knew I would have to brace myself for the inevitable media circus of assumptions and speculation on what lead this man to this catastrophic act. 

This is a difficult topic to write about because it ignites a range of complex and personal emotions, all of which are valid, and there is potential to offend or cause hurt to those who have been affected by similar events. There will be readers whose loved ones were taken due to the actions of others.  And there will be readers whose loved ones, for various reasons, caused others to pass with them.  So I’d like to ask you to join me in making this a safe place for anyone who might feel personally affected by this topic.

I lost my husband to mental illness, he was not of a rational or sound mind when he took his life.  He couldn't see the devastation his death would leave behind and the ongoing pain and trauma he would inflict on those of us who love him.  This is because he had a disease which robbed him of his mental capacity, logic and reasoning.  I have had to come to understand and accept this, however part of my challenge is having to face comments from people who are ignorant about mental health and use words like 'selfish' and 'weak' when speaking about suicide.  

I don’t have the added burden of other lives being lost due to his actions and couldn't pretend to imagine how difficult that would be. So my heart also aches for the family of the co-pilot who have lost a son and are now left to both try and make sense of how he came to be in such a dark place and carry the weight of the hatred and anger being directed at him.  

Please let me be clear here, I am in no way defending or excusing the actions of anyone who takes another  life. This is never ok and there is never a justification for a murder/suicide.  More often than not these horrific incidents are carried out by people who aren't just mentally unstable, but who are trying to consciously cause pain, instil terror or control others due to reasons such as religious extremism or racial hatred. 

Most of us will never know what drives someone to carry out an act such as this. However the fight to raise awareness and reduce the stigma around suicide takes a few giant steps back when public conversation jumps to the assumption that this person was evil and fails to acknowledge that these tragedies are caused by a vast range of reasons, including someone being mentally ill and not accessing the help they need.  

This doesn't excuse or justify their actions - it doesn't make it any less painful for the families left behind. But as a society that is trying to make sense of such events and identify how they could be prevented in the future, it is important to remember there could have been many different causes. 

It's devastating news and, as humans, it’s natural for us to talk about these events in a bid to make sense of them.  So of course people are going to talk about it... but I feel my face burning and my heart sinking, as words get bandied around like ‘selfish’, ‘evil’ and ‘cold-blooded killer’.  The water-cooler gossips in my office and media reports are always quick to jump to the most dramatic speculation but there is never a call to wait with open-minds and compassion, until further facts are known.  

A colleague of mine lost her good friend a few years ago when she took her life, and her daughters, in a very public way that caused shock in our community.  This woman had been battling severe depression and it is her loved ones' opinion that her actions were driven by her belief that she couldn't go on any longer and would be sparing her daughter from the grief and shame that would be associated with her mother's death.

Speculative, nasty and inflammatory comments in the media about the incident added so much extra pain to their grief. In no way is it logical or 'right' but they could never consider her to be a hateful or violent person or a bad mother and their grief was compounded with the despair that she would always, in the eyes of the public, be remembered this way.

When something like this occurs we have the mammoth task of needing to process what has happened and find some peace in a place where there is no logic.  This is not something that our brains are wired to do.  We have an instinctive need to pigeon hole or diagnose or label a situation in order to file it away in our sub-conscious and lay it to rest.  When this is not possible, when the cause is either quite complex or beyond our realm of every-day comprehension, what are we to do? 

My hope is that when people hear about these events in the news and find themselves trying to understand what caused them, they come from a place of compassion rather than judgement.  This man was not well.  His family are grieving his loss as well as coming to terms with the enormity of his actions. The one thing they will know for sure is that their son was suffering so badly that nothing made sense, including his reasoning for taking the life of another.  

So I am choosing not to quickly judge something I don't and could never understand.

The Next Chapter

My husband Daniel and I on our wedding day.

When Michele invited me to write for Widow’s Voice I was incredibly honoured and also excited at the opportunity to help other widows and widowers, particularly those affected by suicide.  I was, however, very nervous about opening up and laying our story out for everyone to see; and potentially judge.  My husband Daniel was a conservative and private person, even with his cheeky sense of humour and warm, outgoing, friendly nature.  He was the ultimate gentleman – so respectful, fair, classy and not one to push his opinion on others or air dirty laundry in public (just to be clear, not that I consider depression to be ‘dirty laundry’ on any level).  

The day after he took his own life I started the never-ending, painful process of telling our world what had happened.  I had called his parents and sister the night he died, after he failed to come home from work and police officers eventually came to my door at 10pm notifying me that he was gone.  That was the most difficult call of all – telling his family.  I was in deep shock so hadn’t felt my own heart break at that point, but I heard theirs shatter and will never forget that night.

Telling our friends and work colleagues was a slightly different experience.  I needed to decide, how much would I share?  How could I say he’d died by suicide?  People wouldn’t believe it – he was so happy, popular and successful.  We were only married six weeks … they might assume he didn’t love me (and sadly, I heard that there were some comments made, questioning our relationship, but that’s for another day).  I knew he would be disappointed and embarrassed that this was his last chapter.  He wasn’t ‘that person’. It just wasn’t supposed to end like that for him.

So I decided it wouldn’t.  His story would go on because I wouldn’t let his death be his last act.  Instead, I would talk about Dan’s depression and suicide.  I would work hard to try and understand it myself and then share our story because maybe, if someone had of shared their story with Dan, he might have realised that what he was feeling wasn’t normal and wasn’t ok.  He might have been moved to ask for help rather than be silenced by the stigma of mental illness and the ridiculous notion that to admit that you’re not feeling ok means you’re weak or broken; or being an unnecessary burden; or attention-seeking.

I would look people squarely in the eye and say "I lost my husband to depression.  He took his life after five weeks on anti-depressants, after becoming convinced that he had dementia and was becoming an inevitable burden on myself and our families."  I would brace myself against the waves of pity, shock and disbelief that came when I dropped that bomb and be patient with the ignorant or insensitive comments that sometimes followed, attempting to educate others and push them out of their own pre-conceived assumptions of why people succumb to this disease that is mental illness. 

Please don’t think that because I manage to talk about my experience that I find the process easy.  I cry every day.  I couldn’t function for months … still can’t some days.  My family and friends carried me through the darkest days and the horror of his death still haunts me.  Just when I start to think I’ve finally made peace with his suicide and can now divert my energy to processing my grief, there it is again, asking ‘why’ or ‘how could this have happened’ or ‘what if’.  These questions will never go away, but I’m not as scared of them as I was before and feel better equipped to make my peace with them and let them pass.     

So above all else I am grateful that Michele has put her faith and trust in me to talk about Dan’s suicide and my grief here, in the hope that it helps others walking this path beside me.  And I’m grateful to you, for reading, for being part of this community and reminding me that I’m not here alone.  Thank you, I look forward to sharing my story with you.     

Dear Bipolar

Seth and I, before bipolar took away his amazing smile.

Dear Bipolar,

I am writing you this letter 1,622 days since you came into my life and stole my sweet husband’s soul.

This letter will reach you 908 days after you physically took my husband from me.

Since you have done this to so many peoples lives, you probably don’t remember me. I will try to refresh your memory.

1,622 days ago, you came into my life, uninvited. You were not invited in, I know I did not leave a door or window open, yet suddenly you were there. You stepped into my husband’s soul, turned my amazing and vibrant husband into a depressed, angry, anxiety ridden, empty shell of a person.

You caused my amazingly bright and creative husband to see dead people, hear voices, and caused him to think about suicide daily. Your voice was in my husband’s head. You ridiculed him at every turn. “You’re not good enough” you said.

You took the sparkle out of his eye.

You took the pep out of his walk.

You took away his smile. How could you take away that amazing smile??

You took away his trust and faith in the world around him, causing him to think the world was after him.

You even made my husband think I was out to harm him.

You entered our life when we were just getting started. You see, we were happy. We didn't need YOU. Yet, you kept working on my husband. Bit by bit, destroying him.

908 days ago, you put a gun to my husband’s head and took him away from me.

Left me widowed at 29 years old.

When I am angry about my husband’s suicide, I blame you.

My husband would have never killed himself. But you were happy to do it.

Bipolar, I hate everything about you.

I hate your games, your mania, your depression, your psychosis, even your name. Bipolar = Two polar opposites. Did you leave something out when you created your name? I think you did.

Because of you, I do not get to see my “happy ending”. I do not get to live to be old with my husband. We will never have children or fulfill our dreams and goals.

Bipolar, your day is coming. I might not live to see that day. But your days are numbered.

A cure is coming.

It might be in the form of a pill, a shot, surgery, or hell.. maybe even a microchip.

When I get to the other side, my first duty is to get rid of you.

I will not let you destroy another person. I will not let you destroy another family.

Mark my words, your days are coming to an end.

And I will be watching, with my husband’s arms around me, with a huge bowl of popcorn and a huge beer when it all comes crashing down.

Sincerely,

Melinda

(If you or someone you know suffers from mental illness (Including if you have a parent that is mentally ill), PLEASE consider organ donation to the Harvard Brain Bank <-- Click here.

They are trying to find a cure for mental illness, but need organ donation.

Seth wanted his brain donated to the Harvard Brain Bank, unfortunately I could not fulfill that wish.

Please help with the research and study of mental illness for future generations.)

A pocket full of cash

My favorite picture of Seth. This was on our wedding day.
I look at his face, and he looks so happy, and completely lost in love.
August 12th, 2005

When I got home from work and saw all the prescription bottles were gone...

I just knew.
My deep, dark, fear, was becoming my reality.

I felt like from August 12th, 2008 to April 1st, 2009, was just a waiting game.

I knew deep down in my heart, that one day, the love of my life was going to try (or succeed) to kill himself.

I never wanted to admit to myself that I knew this and how much fear I had bottled up inside my heart and soul.

When Seth didn't come home that night, I knew he was somewhere...
Trying to take his own life.

I didn't sleep at all that night. Every noise, I would be up, looking out the window, hoping the noise I heard was my husband pulling in the driveway.

He never did.

The next day, I had a email from my bank. My account had been overdrawn.

I checked my account online, and found $1,200.00 had been withdrawn.
I had $300.00 in NSF fees within only a 12 hour period.

I called the bank, and they confirmed, that Seth had withdrawn the money.

Now my husband is missing, I'm not even sure if he is alive, and I don't have a penny to my name.
I couldn't pay the mortgage.
I couldn't even buy food or put gas in my car.

The police didn't pay much attention to my cries for help. "He's an adult, he doesn't have to come home if he doesn't want to." "We don't consider it a missing person case until 72 hours has passed".

I begged and pleaded with them. I told them I knew he was going to try to kill himself.

I knew he was in trouble.

They took my information, but did not issue a missing person report.

I went to work that morning. Knowing I couldn't sit home and hope he pulled into the drive way.

Around noon, I got a call from a doctor in a hospital that was 5 hours away from me.

Seth was in the ICU.
He took all the pills he had.

The following is Seth's writing about his attempt. It is the exact writings he did about this. 

- Warning - This might be too graphic for some readers.

I have bipolar disorder and went into a depression and got some professional help. They put me on a drug called Lamictal. It helped a little but I still thought about suicide daily. I took the pills for a few months and then one day decided I did not want to live any more. So I planned trip in week to go kill myself. When the day came I had just refilled my prescription and had a shit load of pills. I grabbed the pills emptied my bank account and took off to Zion’s National park to kill myself. Somehow I ended up at Arches National park instead, but that didn’t really matter. I found a back dirt round that was rarely traveled. I had 11,000 milligrams of lamictal on me so I crushed it up and drank it with a drink. Then I waited to die at peace in the front seat of my truck in the middle of no ware. Then all of sudden I started vomiting like there was no end. My vision started to flicker like an old tv and then I went blind. I panicked and started my truck and drove it right into a sand dune. I continued to throw up nonstop all night. I tried to get out of my truck to dig it out of the sand but found I was paralyzed from the waist down. I crawled across the desert floor on my elbows until I reached my tires. I still couldn’t see my vision was flickering very fast and I can’t really explain that part. I got to the tire and tried to dig my truck out of the sand. After digging for a while I crawled back to the door of my truck. I still could not move my legs. I also noticed at this point that I no longer had control of my fingers. I tried to open the truck door but it seemed impossible without the use of my fingers. I finally got it open and pulled myself back into the truck. All I remember from this point on is vision going yellow but I could see. And I kept vomiting and coming in and out of consciousness. I must have passed out with my foot on the gas because I blew my engine.

When morning came around I just remember wakening to the sound of a jeep. It was a National Park Volunteer. I wondered over to her and asked her to call me an ambulance. I park ranger showed up first and confiscated my hand gun and just kept me conscious until the ambulance got there. The ambulance just gave me a hydration IV, nothing special needed. I had vomited all the Lamitical I took out of my body already.

When I got the hospital the nurse was really nice to me but the doctor was a jerk. I do not think he likes suicide attempts. 

Even though I was completely shattered that my husband had just tried to kill himself, I was so relieved to know he was alive. What happened, we could get through.

The doctor said Seth didn't want to talk to me, he wasn't ready. That he wanted me to know he was ok.

 I was then handcuffed and driven to the Mental Hospital at the U of U by a sheriff. He made me were shackles and cuffs the entire way. He was a really nice guy. All my clothes were covered in throw up and I stunk real badly, but he didn’t care. When I got to the U of U they committed me to 5 West Mental Ward. 

Seth was in the psychiatric ward for two days before he called me. With psychiatric wards, you have to have a password to call the patient or go see them. If you didn't have the password, the hospital would tell you they didn't have a patient under that name. I had to wait for him to call me before I could go see him.

One nice thing about the ward, was that with the password, not just anyone could call or go see him. He didn't want me to go see him. And he defiantly didn't want his family there.

When he gave me the password, he asked me not to give it to his family, that if he wanted to see them or talk to them, he would call them. 

When his family asked me about going to see him, I told them that he asked me not to give the password out, and that he would call when he was ready.

His family didn't believe me. They called the psychiatric ward asking to speak to him, and (because they didn't have the password) they were told they didn't have a patient there under that name.

I was angry. I felt like his family didn't believe me or trust me. That I was trying to keep their son and brother away from them. When really I was respecting his wishes.

I knew Seth was there to get treatment, and if he didn't want people there, that was his decision. 

When I went and saw Seth for the first time, he was medicated to the point that he would slur his speech. He would forget what we were talking about mid sentence. 

He was distraught. He would sit and cry, and ask me if I was going to divorce him.

During that time, I never once thought about leaving my husband.

I loved him, he was alive, and that's all that mattered.

At least in the psychiatric ward, he was safe.

But I need roller blades!

There is one memory that sticks out in my mind.

I had gone to see Seth at his apartment. He had no furniture or dishes.

He slept on the floor.

He asked me if he could move “our” bed to his apartment, so he could have a bed to sleep on.

My answer was “Umm.. No, you moved out. If we get divorced we will separate our belongings at that time”.

He was angry with me.

Told me it was my fault he was sleeping on the floor in his apartment.

I remember looking around his apartment, and noticed a box of brand new roller blades. I asked him how much they cost him, and he said “$300”.

I said “You know, rather than sleeping on the floor, you could have bought a bed with that $300.”

He got angry and said “But I need roller blades!”

I said “So having roller blades and sleeping on the floor makes more sense?”

I could see it “clicked” in his head.

What I was saying made sense to him.

I could see the anger subside. He realized I wasn’t the enemy. I was trying to help.

I was pretty baffled how something that was common sense to me wasn’t common sense to him.

This wasn’t the Seth I knew.

The Seth I knew would have thought about this rationally. The Seth I knew wouldn’t sleep on the floor in order to have roller blades.

He asked me if he could borrow $300 from me to buy a bed.

I was angry.

He made WAY more money than I did, yet he wanted to borrow money from me, to buy a bed.

After he just barely bought $300 roller blades.

He wanted me to sleep on the floor in our house, so he could have a bed at his apartment.

In a manic episode, it made sense to buy roller blades, and ask his wife to sleep on the floor, so he could have a bed to sleep in and have his roller blades.

I lent him the $300 and made it very clear he owed me the money. After all, we weren’t “together”. He lived somewhere else so it was no longer “our” money. It was MY money, and he owed me every cent of it back.

Surprisingly, he paid me back.

The roller blades now sit in my garage, being used only once.

After our counseling session, I knew the truth behind Seth’s strange behavior.

Shortly after that counseling session, Seth called me and asked if he could move back home.

I answered “Of course, if you get medical treatment”.

Seth moved home just before Halloween 2008.

We took him to the doctor, where he was diagnosed with bipolar type 1. Wanting a second opinion and confirmation of sorts, we took him to two other doctors, and ultimately receiving the same diagnoses.

After his diagnoses, I read everything I could find on bipolar type 1.

Unfortunately, I knew the suicide rate with people that have bipolar type 1.

The suicide rate is 70%.

Seth started treatment. The medications seemed to help some but also seemed to make some things worse.

He always had an underlying depression.

The depression wasn’t the scary thing for me. It was the mania and psychosis.

At least with the depression he could think clearly. He would sleep and be depressed, but he still had a clear head.

When he was manic, he was all over the place. He would start 20 projects, had brilliant ideas, he was always on the go. However, with the mania came the hallucinations and voices. He wouldn’t sleep or eat for days. He would get paranoid, overwhelmed and scared. He said he had about 5 different voices in his head. They were always whispering and he could never really make out what they were saying.

Then came the depression.

The projects he started wouldn’t get finished. He would sleep, eat, and drink too much booze.

He would then feel like a failure because his projects never got finished.

He rapid cycled between mania and depression. Sometimes he would cycle monthly, sometimes daily. Because he cycled so fast, getting him stable was always hard.

With the rapid cycling, by time we got him to the doctor, we were already a day or two late.

Every day was a struggle. We kind of just bumped along, hoping to get him stable.

He was put on lithium (which was the best medication he ever took), antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiety medication, sleeping medication, and an “emergency” medication that would pull him out of mania quickly.

April 2009 rolled around. He still wasn’t stable.

It was April 1^st. I was at work. For some reason, I had a horrible feeling something was wrong with Seth.

I left work and went home.

When I walked through the front door of our house… I knew…I just knew.

I looked for his medications that I had just filled the day before; all the bottles were missing…

And so was he.