by Cathy Lamb
I didn’t hate her, I pitied her. She was an alcoholic, critical and cruel. Her son had wanted nothing to do with her, and I understood why, but she didn’t deserve this. Her grief had snapped her mind.
I did, however, put my arm up to defend myself when she swung at me, standing near the grave. When she swung her other arm, I ducked, and that did it. She tottered on her heels—one brown, one black, too drunk to know—then fell straight in and halfway landed on Aaron’s lowered coffin.
I will never forget that thunk, never forget the sound of her body hitting the coffin, then her head. Unbelievably, Rochelle was able to struggle up onto the top of the coffin, where she laid, splayed out, hugging it. She cried from the deepest, most wounded part of her soul.
“I won’t forgive you for this, Meggie bitch,” she hissed at me, minutes later, refusing to get off of the coffin. “You killed my son. This will haunt you for the rest of your stupid life.”
My family crowded around me, arms around my waist. I bent my head and lost it. I cried for a week, straight through. Guilt seared my entire body, as if someone had stuck a hot poker down my throat and burned my insides. I felt a sense of despair so strong, I thought it would stop my heart. I fell into a deep, clutching depression, much like Rochelle had fallen on top of the coffin.
Rochelle’s words echoed in my head again and again. “I won’t forgive you for this, Meggie bitch. You killed my son. This will haunt you for the rest of your stupid life.”
She was right. I am haunted. I expect the haunting to last my whole life.
I felt responsible for killing Rochelle’s son.
I certainly hadn’t done enough to save him.
Isn’t that the same thing?
“The baby’s in NICU and she’s struggling,” the doctor told us in The Room From Hell.
My mother whimpered, wrapping her arms around herself.
“My granddaughter will be fine,” my grandma said, tilting her chin up. “She’s an O’Rourke woman. She won’t give up. We never give up. Never.”
I vaguely realized that, yet again, my grandma had accurately predicted the sex of Lacey’s baby.
“How is Lacey?” I whispered. I leaned on Blake. He put an arm around me but watched my mother, whose head was wobbling from stress.
“Lacey’s recovering. We’re going to set her wrist later,” the doctor said. “It was an incredibly bad jolt, and if Tory hadn’t pushed her out of the way, we would have been in a whole different position now. A baby could not have withstood that crash. It would have been catastrophic, probably fatal.”
“Can we see Lacey?”
“Yes, soon. A nurse will come and get you when she’s ready.”
We waited again, that shriveled finger on the clock. Tick . . . tock . . . tick . . . tock . . .
A nurse came to get us. “Lacey wants to see all of you. She told me to tell you to come up.”
Blake stayed in The Room from Hell. “I’ll wait for you here, honey,” he said, hugging me, then kissing my temple. “Watch your mother and grandma. They may faint again.”
My grandma in her amethysts, my mother in her prim white blouse, I in my usual frumpy clothes, and Lacey in her hospital-issued gown had a long, tearful hug.
My mother said, her voice wavering, “I love you, Lacey. All will be well. I have already sewn the baby’s blessings quilt.” She pushed her glasses up her nose. “And booties.”
I said, “Lacey—” and I could say no more, the vision of Tory and Lacey slipping on the ice, holding onto each other, their expressions of total panic as the truck bore down on them . . . Tory pushing Lacey out of the way . . . Tory hit by the truck and flying through the air onto the car . . . the crash she made as she hit the windshield, then the banging of the truck as it smashed another car . . . Lacey gripping her stomach as she lay on the ground in the snowy street, gasping . . . Tory not moving, splattered on the car like a broken doll, blood dripping . . . it was playing again and again in my head.
Grandma said, “You’re a tough old bird and your baby is a tough old bird. You’ll both be fine. Now get your own toughness on and quit crying, Lacey.”
Her words didn’t have as much power as usual, as Grandma was crying her eyes out as she bent over Lacey, brushing her red curls gently back with an unsteady hand.
Matt hugged all of us. He was a wreck, but strong. He was The Man.
We continued to wait, ill with worry, to hear about Tory. Scotty was with her. The doctor had said that Tory was lucky to have such a “devoted, loving husband. He’s extremely upset. We may have to give him something to calm him down.”
When Tory’s doctor walked in an hour later, we all braced ourselves, holding hands tight.
“She’s not doing well, but she’s fighting,” she said. More medicalese. Basically: They couldn’t get Tory to respond.
Matt climbed into bed with Lacey and held her.
“Fight, Tory, fight,” my mother pleaded.
“You’re a ball breaker, Tory,” Grandma insisted, her voice cracking. “Break some balls and wake up. Don’t be a wimp. O’Rourke women are not wimps. You can’t let a tiny thing like a battered head get you down. Damn.” Her voice floated to a whisper, and she put her hands together in prayer. “Oh, my dear God, help us . . . Our Father, who art in heaven . . .”
After Aaron’s funeral, I wandered.
I brought the “Why?” DVD with me to punish myself and to remind me what I had done to another person, though I could not bring myself to watch it. I brought my cameras, too. I went to Montana and ended up working on a ranch. I met the owners, Tom and Avery, a husband and wife in their seventies, when they bought me a meal at a diner. They told me later I looked like I was going to self-destruct.
In Montana I met a gal named Caroline who was leaving for Mexico in a month to build churches. I went with her for four months and built churches in poverty-stricken areas.
In Mexico I met a man named Olaf, from Russia, who was going back to Russia to work in an orphanage. I went with him and worked in a heartbreaking orphanage for five months. We were good friends, that’s all.
In Russia I met a woman named Tanya who was going to the Ukraine to work in a place where girls forced into prostitution could be safe. I went with her and stayed another four painful months.
In a barn in Montana I saw Aaron. In a packed pickup truck in Mexico, I saw Aaron. I saw him in Russia in an outdoor café and in the Ukraine in the middle of a city square. It was like his soul was caught on the branch of a tree and the branch was following me.
I chased the visions down, like a scrambled-brain fool. When it wasn’t Aaron, I felt my mind slip and slide one more inch.
I forced myself to concentrate on helping others, seeing beyond my searing pain to theirs.
Helping others saved me.
I filmed this, and I filmed that, my camera offering me solace. One day, perhaps I’ll make a film out of it.
I’ll call it “Wandering to Save My Mind: If You Could See What I See.”
When I went back downstairs to The Room From Hell, I walked straight into Blake’s arms and held him.
He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t either. There was too much, there was not enough.
He felt like home.
To say that a family member or friend committing suicide is devastating is not even in the realm of truly describing the mind-shattering loss.
It is always heartbreaking to lose someone you love. But if it’s an accident or disease, you can assume that the person did not want to die. They did not choose to leave you.
With suicide, the person has a choice. Their choice is to die. Their choice is to leave you and everyone around them.
People kill themselves for all sorts of reasons. Mental illness that’s not treated, or mental illness that has been treated but the person still feel hopeless. Drug or alcohol use that has scrambled their brains. Depression that won’t quit. Bipolar that creates such enormous swings it’s like flying out of a slingshot in an arc and
crashing into a wall. Grief for someone else. Failure. Fear. Financial collapse. Divorce. A bad breakup. A belief that everyone will be better off without them. A combination.
Sometimes it’s one colossally bad time in life that makes someone kill himself. A day later, even an hour later, and he’d have made a different choice, but it’s already done.
What is left for the survivors is a mental car wreck that doesn’t heal. We’re left hanging over a churning, dangerous pit, our emotions flowing out volcanically, only a finger hooked on the ledge to keep us from falling in. Suicidal thoughts can trip through our own heads from the grief, guilt, fury, shame, and the what else should I have done and what signs did I miss and how could I have prevented this and was this my fault types of questions.
I’m a bad mother/father/brother/sister/spouse/friend.
I am bad.
Living through a suicide is agony. It’s a plague. It isolates you and leaves you almost paralyzed as to what to do next, how to do it, and who you are. It’s hard to think. It’s hard to plan. Your brain doesn’t work anymore. You think you’re going to lose it.
People treat you differently after a suicide than if a loved one died of a heart attack. It’s like there’s a question to their sympathy, a morbid curiosity, perhaps some blame.
Your entire life is changed. Your trajectory is changed. You are changed. Permanently.
Anger swirls around me as easily as wind swirls around everyone else. I am furious that Aaron killed himself, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop blaming myself. Was it my fault? No. Intellectually I know this.
Aaron was suicidal as a teen. He was mentally ill. He suffered from bipolar depression, anxiety, probably a personality disorder. He took painkillers and drank too much. His father was jailed when he was a small child, and his mother was a nasty alcoholic who had boyfriends in and out. I know all that logically.
But I left him. I left him knowing that he might kill himself. When he was committed the last time I refused to go home to take care of him because taking care of him had dissolved my own sanity.
How could he do what he did? Did he want to punish me that bad? Did I deserve it?
I don’t think I will ever get over this.
Ever.
“You can go and see the baby,” the doctor said to me the next day, smiling.
I was allowed into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for a few minutes to be with Lacey and her new daughter. The baby was unbelievably tiny. Way too early, I thought, not even bothering to wipe my tears away. Way too early.
But the baby was alive, and doing much, much better. She had stepped away, by the width of an angel’s white feather, from death.
I thought of Josephine, tiny and fragile, too.
Lacey held my hand. “I’m thinking about Josephine, too.”
I put my other hand to my throbbing heart. “And I am thinking of your baby. When she’s kicking a soccer ball, or twirling a baton, or tackling Regan, we’ll remember this.”
We put our foreheads together. Exhausted, hurting from labor, still bleeding, broken bones, bruising up her side, a mild concussion, panicked about her baby and Tory, and Lacey was thinking of Josephine and me.
“You are my best friend, Lacey,” I whispered.
“And you are mine.”
“And Tory is going to be our best friend, too.”
“Absolutely. She’s in the club.”
She should have been in the club a long time ago, we both knew that.
Our tears mixed as we worried ourselves sick over our tiny baby who seemed to take only the minutest of breaths, and our high-heel-stomping, wickedly opinionated, lingerie-busting club member, Tory.
Grandma, Mom, and I were in The Room From Hell—tick . . . tock—when Tory’s doctor came to see us.
“Good news!” she said, smiling. I tried not to see the blood on her scrubs. “She’s awake and telling us she wants a martini!”
“Let me explain this scenario to you, Meggie. I’ll do it slowly so you’ll understand,” Tory said to me from her hospital bed three days later. “Pushing Lacey out of the way of that truck, taking the hit, is the best thing that ever happened to me. The best freakin’ thing.”
“What do you mean this is the best thing that’s happened to you? You’ve had a bad head injury. You gushed blood like a fountain. You were conked out.” I was baffled. “You broke your shoulder and collarbone. You have purple and blue-green bruises all over.”
She sniffled. Sniffled again. “First off, it’s the best thing because Lacey and the baby both survived. I pushed her out of the way, I took the hit and I was the one who was dumped on top of a car instead of her. I’m a certified heroine. You know, like a superhero, only I’m a superhero in high heels and couture. Saving them, that’s the best, even though Lacey’s butt is big again, and I’m going to tell her that. It took a lot of strength to push that big butt out of the way. I’m telling her that, too. But”—Tory wiped her cheeks, the bravado dimming a bit—“I feel like . . .” She blew her nose, totally honked it. “I feel like now I belong.”
Now I belong.
“Oh, Tory.” I wanted to cry. I felt so guilty, so bad. “You’ve always belonged. We’ve always been family—”
“But I wasn’t born into the family. I walked in when I was five, more fluent in Spanish than English. You two had the biological sister bond. I was the adopted one, the outsider.
“And Mom doted on me more probably because she felt sorry for me and could see that I didn’t fit in with you two, and that made you jealous.” She waved a hand. “But now neither one of you will forget what I did. I feel like I showed you, both of you, how much I love you even though you are an uptight, workaholic perfectionist who isn’t that much fun anymore and you dress like a hag, and Lacey is like a fire hydrant, always on high and spitting.” She sniffled. Two tears snuck out, which she wiped away impatiently saying, “Oh, pish on these tears. What am I, a baby?”
“Tory, you were heroic. Absolutely heroic. If you had not pushed Lacey, you both would have been hit. She was on your right side, and she would have taken the first hit, and pregnant, oh . . .” I groaned even thinking about it, shaky hand to forehead.
“Don’t you see, though? Hello, are you thinking?” She tapped my head. “This is now all about me. Me, me, me, Tory, me. I wanted to be close to Lacey and to you. And because of this, I’ll be included now and I’ll be included in Lacey’s family, too. This—” She ran her hand from head to foot—the casts, the bandages on her head, where they’d shaved her hair away, the bruising. “It’s all worth it. The baby’s alive, Lacey’s alive, and I can start over with her and with you.”
I bent my head and cried, the ugly cry, with snot and a red, blotchy face. Tory’s so difficult, harshly blunt, like a sledgehammer, rude like an avenging vampire, yet all this time she only wanted in with Lacey and me.
She brought up a bruised hand and stroked my hair. “Your hair is a wreck, Meggie. Honestly. It’s a disgrace. It’s dry, it’s scraggly, the ends are awful. I can hardly touch this mop. I can’t believe you cut it yourself. You are no hairstylist.” She kept stroking my hair, so gently. “You and I are going shopping together and we’re getting your hair and your nails done. What, you don’t know what a lipstick is?”
“It’s not flattering, is it?” I choked out.
“When I’m outta here, we’re going to add color to your life again. You’re going to funk out like you used to. Agreed? You’re so beautiful underneath the frump.”
There had been too much red and black. Too much pain. Too much being in the pain, and I couldn’t tolerate myself any longer. “You’re right, Tory. I think I need to get myself some color and funk.”
She raised a scraped-up, bruised fist in the air and shook it. “Victory. You need a makeover like gorillas need bananas. Let’s get drunk, too. They won’t bring me a martini here and it’s pissing me off. Can you bring me one?”
I stood up to leave when Scotty—lanky, tall, and smiling, holding
at least three bouquets of flowers—ambled back in. Earlier, the nurses had had to give him a couple of pills to calm him down.
Tory flung the one arm out that wasn’t broken, her face lighting up like nothing I’d ever seen before. “Baby!”
He hugged me, then enfolded Tory ever so gently in his arms.
I heard what Tory said loud and clear: “Take off your clothes quick, get your monster out of your pants, and get in bed with me. I need to get laid.”
Before I shut the door she yelled, “Get me that martini, Meggie!”
I know why I decided it was time to watch the movie that Aaron made me. It was because of a particularly gruesome nightmare that left me in a pool of sweat at one o’clock in the morning, five nights after the accident.
This time Aaron was chasing me as I ran through the slums of India, the dilapidated homes of a small village in Alaska, and across the freeways of Los Angeles. When he caught me, inside our apartment, he had a DVD on top of his head in a Baggie. His hands turned into rat claws and he scraped my skin, making deep gouges. He shoved the DVD into one of the bloody gouges on my neck.
He bent down to kiss me, again and again, soft and sweet, then he stuck his tongue in my mouth. His tongue went down my throat, down my neck, into my body, suffocating me.
I fell down through a whirling spiral. On the sides of the spiral were pills, pot, alcohol, and someone yelling. When I was at the bottom of the spiral, Aaron came to me again, looking perfectly normal and sober, and handed me the DVD. “Watch it,” he said, in a friendly tone. He kissed me again, as if he loved me, as he had kissed me during the times when he was sober and sane, and hugged me close. “Watch it, My Meggie.” He flew back up the spiral on black, broken wings, black feathers falling all around.