About Me

I have something to say... But a blog let's me spew until I figure out what it is.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Chapter 2: Unshakable

"Dad?"
His phone was breaking up and I couldn't get a clear signal. The weight of what I had to tell him was making me impatient, so the next thing that came out of my mouth was a very aggravated: "Dad, call me back from a place where you have a signal and can talk. It's important," then I hung up the phone and waited - the anger brewing.
Within a few minutes, Dad returned my call - his voice was light and cheerful as it usually is when I call him at an unusual time of day.
"Hey!" he said happily, "what's up?"
There was no turning back. This was it.
"Dad, are you someplace quiet with a signal?"
"Yes..."
"Is someone with you?"
"Yes, do you want me to be alone?"
"No!" I replied almost urgently, "No, I want you with someone."
There was an awkward pause while I tried to take a breath and tell him about George. There was no good way to say it. I was just going to have to say it...
"Dad, George is dead."
"What?"
"Big Guy is dead," I repeated.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean he is dead. He isn't living. He isn't with us anymore," I spurted. Somehow, I felt that if I told him every variation of what I was trying to tell him that there would be a) no room for confusion b) no room for error and c) nothing more to say and could hang up more quickly.
Dad's immediate reaction was anger: "What do you mean he's dead? How do you know that? Who told you that?"
"Dad, a detective from Raleigh Durham called Kristen saying that they found a deceased male in their apartment - no one was staying with them. George didn't come to work today so someone got worried and went to check on him. When they got there, there was a male in the apartment".
"So we don't know if its him, then," he replied. Clearly, dad believed that the possibility of a random homeless man wandering into their apartment and suddenly dying was just as plausible to him as it was for me. "Who told you this?" he shouted at me, "What's the phone number. I want the number... now."
I knew that if dad made a call to the detective I had been speaking with it would add more chaos to an already chaotic situation. Kristen and I had both been speaking with the detective on a regular basis and I didn't want any more people adding to the mix.
"Dad, I have spoken to her twice already. It's not going to change. She was able to confirm that George's Civic is in his parking lot, but she can't confirm his identity yet - we need to be realistic. Big Guy's car is there, he is nowhere to be found - and there is a deceased male in his bedroom."
"I gotta go," he said before the line went dead.
The house was once again silent.
Olivia's gentle breathing and occasional nuk suckling sounded over the baby monitor - the only reminder that while life was tail spinning for me, it was marching on as a usual for everyone else.
"Well, that sucked". I said trying to break the awkward quiet.
I evaluated my options for telling my mother the news but nothing seemed to be a reasonable option. In fact, it was a near impossibility. She had moved to North Jersey a few months earlier for a job and was living alone in a small apartment. A few minutes after I had told my father the news, his brother and good childhood friend mobilized and were headed to Pennsylvania to be with him - whereas my mom had no family or friends in the state to whom she could turn. For me to tell her that her only son - the apple of her eye and the person with whom she most identified - was dead - over the phone - was simply not going to happen. Dad was going to have to be the one to tell her as he was going to be the only person who could understand the pain and agony that she was going encounter instantly. The situation could, simply, not have sucked more.
Around 10:30pm (or so), I booked an early morning flight to Raleigh Durham before heading to bed and attempted to sleep.
But, as I drifted into sleep the first of many harsh realizations sprang to mind: "I am an only child."

***
About 3 hours into sleep, I woke up and started making my way out the door. Somehow I miscalculated my time and only left an hour and a half to do a trip that regularly takes 2 hours between drive-time, parking, shuttling, and security.
I finally got into the airport and ran to the desk where I needed to check-in for my flight. Unfortunately, my flight was scheduled to leave in 20 minutes and I still had to get upstairs, take the tram to the terminal and wait in line at security before proceeding to my gate.
The woman at the front desk said impatiently: "Ma'am... its 20 minutes before your flight. This flight is closed."
"Yes, I know. I'm running late. What does that mean?"
"It means the flight is closed. You aren't going to make it."
I had a connecting flight in Atlanta and now I couldn't seem to make it out of Tampa!
"Ma'am, my brother committed suicide yesterday. I HAVE to get to Raleigh Durham."
The woman looked horrified and broken-hearted at the same time. She quickly printed my tickets and gave me directions to get to the gate as quickly as possible. I bound up the steps of the escalator so fast that I lost a shoe.
When I got in the airport, I was stuck in a security line that was held up by a little old man and his walking cane. For some reason, no one could figure out what to do with the cane and so there was a huge lot of us that were held up. I stood in line, pacing, frantic that I might miss my flight. The more I thought about missing the flight, the more I realized why I was in the airport.
Shifting my weight from left to right repeatedly, my eyes were welling with tears and my chest grew tight.
A pilot who had been standing in front of me noticed that I was getting more upset at the delay. When the old man finally cleared the metal detector, the pilot looked to my sympathetically and said "You can go... please." I hugged him with my eyes, still tear-filled, and bolted through the security screening as quickly as possible.
By only the miracle of God, I caught the flight and off I went to North Carolina.

***
After about an hour in the air, I arrived in Atlanta and headed to my connecting gate. At the time, Kristen has been living and working in Atlanta so we happened to catch the same flight from Atlanta to North Carolina.
She looked tired - like something was propelling her forward. After a weak "hello" to one another, we headed to the smoking lounge to kill the hour-long layover and make some phone calls.
It was in this smoke-filled room that I realized that no one in George's life knew that he was gone. For some reason, I couldn't shake the idea that George had died in his apartment on, presumably, late Saturday/early Sunday morning and there was an entire world that didn't even know that he was gone. His closest childhood friends (the ones that I was familiar with) Ethan, Alan, Dave, Chris - "the gang" woke up on a regular Tuesday morning and started their days like any other. I was about to call them and tell them that one of their closest friends had died.
I did the best that I could given that I had no phone numbers. Fortunately, most of his friend's numbers were listed in Facebook and, nervously, I began making these difficult phone calls.
They say that God only gives you what you can handle - I believe that God knew that I couldn't handle hearing the live reaction of George's closest friends. Every number I called went to voicemail - and so it was on voicemail/text message, that I told some of George's dearest friends that they would never hear from him again.
I can still remember how awkward it was for me to call these people. They were the people who loved and cared about my brother like their own family - some of them I had known for years as we all attended the same school. Some I barely knew. The reality is, you aren't usually close with your siblings friends. What little you know of them is that they would attend band rehearsals in your basement and invite your brother to their house for birthdays. Beyond that - they were people who were not a true part of your life... but a real, personal, part of siblings life.
We boarded the flight to NC, trying to find our way through the subjects that were "safe" to discuss and what was too uncomfortable. Ultimately, we came up with a "safe word" that we could use so that at any time if either of us was too uncomfortable with the conversation, we could use the word and it would stop the conversation immediately (we could revisit it later).
From the time I had learned about my brother's death, I was not entirely convinced that he had committed suicide. It seemed easier to process the idea that he accidentally overdosed or that he mixed something he shouldn't have. No matter how I split it, I knew that he was depressed and unhappy - I believed he was likely self-medicating but it just didn't seem to work in my head that he had intentionally killed himself. After all - there was no note.
But there was.
At some point during the flight, Kristen shared with me that he had left a note. It was short and un-involved from the sound of it, but it was there all the same - and from that moment, the idea that George had done something stupid morphed into the reality that brother elected to stop living.
When we arrived at RDU airport, I called my father. It was his intent to arrive at mom's house by about 730am to tell her about George, so it was our plan for me to call as I deplaned in North Carolina.
To add insult to injury, mom and I had been fighting, rather intensely, for a few months leading up to the weekend preceding my brother's death. She had been living with me prior to her move to New Jersey and it hadn't ended well. After she moved out, we still were not in a great place in terms of our relationship and so, on the morning of the day that I would ultimately learn that my brother had died, I sent my mother an email telling her that I didn't want to have a relationship with her anymore. Looking back on this, it's hard to believe that I wrote her an email of that weight innocently tied up in our bad relationship - not knowing that George was already gone.
When mom answered the phone, her voice was weak and breaking. Within minutes, the conversation took an ugly, angry turn - so I tried to end the conversation as quickly as I could. It was obvious that mom was angry - that she believed that George was not at fault for his suicide, but I was not in a place or position where I was prepared to start passing judgement. After all, George made his own decision. He couldn't help who he fell in love with. He couldn't help who he chose to pine after. He chose to move in with her. He chose to stay with her even with the relationship was nearly impossible. He chose to marry her. Before anyone thinks that what I am saying now is said with any malice, I should point out that I fully supported my brother's choice to marry this particular person. She and I were very close when we were growing up and I believed that love that they shared was intense and unique. I don't believe she ever thought that it would "come to this". I don't believe that she ever believed that George was this sick. I don't believe that she was invested enough in the relationship, however, to see how sick he was. She is not the first wife to miss the signs - and she will not be the last. I guess that because she knew George since he was 12(?), I expected her to have more insight into who he was and how he processed things... but just because I expect something does not make it so.
On this day, just minutes after finding out about the death of her son, mom was not so prepared to give anyone the benefit of the doubt and finger pointing began. It was uncomfortable as I stood there listening to mom say angry, ugly things about Kristen who was sitting right beside me. I did everything I could to alter the direction of the conversation, but there were few alternatives.
"How can you sit next to her, Jenn? How can you sit in the same room with her when she is the reason he did this?"
I was at a loss for words. How do you respond to that? You are, first and foremost, the daughter and sister... you are second, someone's best friend and you are, least of all (at that moment) wanting desperately not to sit in judgement of other people.
Kristen had friends in Raleigh with whom we were invited to stay - their names were Trisha and Erik. I didn't know much about them, but I recall George mentioning Erik and speaking of him with fondness and appreciation.
We arrived in the late morning - Trisha and Erik met us on the porch and opened their arms widely as Kristen approached the porch. Their beautiful house was tucked back on a piece of property at the end of a short road that dead ended. The property on which their house sat was beautiful and, for the first time, I could see why George and Kristen loved living in North Carolina. The air was clean, the weather was crisp and unopressive even in early September and, on this particular piece of property, it was peaceful and quiet.
Despite their incredible warmth and overwhelmingly sincere welcome, it was hard for me to comfortable with Trisha and Erik. For my part, there was a mental block against being vulnerable with them. Afterall, these were two people who knew Kristen and George as a couple. They knew them well, hung out with them regularly, and had been invested in them as friends. It was hard for me to let go of the idea that they had never met me, but that they were meeting me on the worst day of my life - and it was nearly impossible for me to feel that it was appropriate to mourn this key loss in my life while living under the roof of someone who had never met me but was coping with their own loss. Still, I was thankful that Kristen had these incredibly warm, unassuming, non judgemental people that should could depend on. She was estranged from her own family and in this very difficult time, it was going to be extremely important to her that she have friends that she could depend on.
The chaos of the day moved along. I spoke with each of George's friends - each more heartbroken and in more disbelief than the last. I spoke with my parents as frequently as possible.
Around midday, I had an opportunity to speak with the detective at length. She was a woman who seemed to understand depression and suicide and she spoke with me candidly about her experience with this topic while remaining compassionate.
It was my intent to head to North Carolina to meet up with mom and dad and to handle the details associated with the disposal of my brother's body so that my parent's didn't have to. What I didn't know when I got on the plane in Tampa, was that mom and dad would never make it North Carolina - that there would be no disposal to arrange, and no affairs to close out. What I didn't know was that the details surrounding my brother's sudden suicide would be, for lack of a better word, unshakable.

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