by Liz Levine
It didn’t work. Tamara denied everything and left that night adamant that Hillary Clinton was checking her emails, that everyone should stop communicating with her that way for our own protection, and that we would see, we were all wrong about everything.
Nonetheless, we sent this email from my account:
To: Tamara
CC: Lex and Pete
Date: December 19, 2012
Dear Tamara,
Thank you so much for having the courage to come and talk with us last night. It meant a lot and is a great step forward.
With the holiday events ahead all three of us just wanted to take a moment to address how we keep these times positive and fun—they are not times to work out all of our issues. All of the disagreements and details will be addressed over time with a professional helping us. But, for our holiday time together and for our parents we need to focus on the good stuff, the positives and remember how much fun we can have together.
Looking forward to it.
Warmest,
Liz, Pete, Alexis
And she sent this as a response:
To: Liz, Peter, Alexis, Michael, and Carol
Liz. Please do not email as requested. Thank you. Tamara
This is where we always got to. That place where the only thing we could do was laugh. She was stuck in her constructed narrative about global conspiracy theories and emails being tracked. And Lex knew I’d be hurt and frustrated, so he was quick to spin it back to Peter and me.
To: Liz, Pete, Dad [he often left Mom out of these as she didn’t find solace in the humour—it hurt her]
Dear Hillary Clinton,
If you are reading this email, please know, we think you are doing great work.
Except for the whole thing with the espionage and the little underage children. Tamara told us all about it. Sounds like an unfortunate business.
Anyway, say hi to Bill.
The Levine Clan
Lex
It made me laugh. I could count on Lex for that. And so we let it settle. But Christmas with her was a shit show. So after Christmas we sent this.
To: Tamara
Date: December 26, 2012
Tamara,
We are very grateful that you made an effort to come together with the family again this holiday, and to make two holiday dinners (Chanukah and Christmas Day) peaceful and serene. Thank you for that. Thank you also for your generous Christmas gifts.
We appreciate the strong and painful emotions you go through with family. That said, we are quite troubled about [your] behaviour…
…We are speaking with a single voice and asking you to accept the help being offered. We‘ve found the professional—who seems excellent—and we’re all willing to make the time to be there. The cost is covered. It is long past time that these inappropriate behaviours—which by your own admission arise when you are uncomfortable—are resolved.
We all really do love that good, sweet, generous Tamara—our sister, our family, and our friend. We wouldn’t be going to this trouble if that were not true.
It is also true, however, that we are exhausted by three decades of boundary-crossing, attacks and manipulation. I can only imagine you are exhausted, too. Surely you want, and have expressed a desire for, a more loving, peaceful existence.
Please come on January 7th to continue the process and journey towards well-being and health. If you choose not to, if you honestly believe that you do not need to change and grow—and that everyone else does (and you will only accept help when others do), then you will be very disappointed by the consequences. Those being extremely narrow and limited family relationships—if any at all, rather than the healing, loving family we all hope for.
Alexis, Pete, and Liz
January 7th came and went, and the appointment was cancelled, and I might have lost all hope except that now that the intervention had happened it felt like I had allies.
My father acknowledged the full breadth of her illness, and for the first time Peter was really on side and understood that she wasn’t well. Lex was more proactive than he had ever been, and even my mother could no longer completely deny what I was seeing.
So I took a break from the battle. People knew. It wasn’t just me anymore. I could let go.
And I did.
That was when my relationship with Tamara really ended. I don’t think I talked about her for an entire year.
INSTINCT
I am not a religious person. I think motivational quotes are bullshit. I do not believe in self-help books, and no amount of wishing or even believing is going to bring you a Lamborghini or a cure for cancer. Despite my cynicism, I believe wholeheartedly in feelings, in connections to people and moments. I believe these relationships have the ability to collapse the boundaries of time and space.
I was connected to Judson.
“Connected” is one of those words whose definition sits just beyond our reach, and although the origin of the adjective is a place I have rarely visited, it seems somehow unwittingly selfish not to attempt it.
When I wake up on the day he is going to die, Vancouver is sunny and warm and it should be raining. I am on the road early and going to make it to work with time to spare. Despite being ahead of the clock, I have the sense I am late for something from the moment I wake up.
I pull into my parking spot with my heart pounding, the blood rushing in my ears.
And then I know.
Connected: to me, to my heart.
I am running to a studio a block away, and I think I left the door of my car unlocked, but it doesn’t matter. The elevator is too slow, so I take the six flights of stairs two at a time. I am still running when I hit the office door and pick up the phone to call the hospital. I finish dialing and can hear nothing but my heart pounding, and I think it might beat right out of my chest.
For the first time in weeks, neither Judson nor Josh answer the phone in his room. A nurse picks up the phone, and I stumble through my request to talk to Judson. Her voice is gentle, apologetic, and I am instantly angry. The stumble is gone. The anger hurls me into action. Get me to him. Transfer me. Now.
The call is transferred.
I fight to keep my voice even as I ask for him again. An RN in ICU makes a call on the other line. I wait on hold, biting back the urge to scream. A nurse transfers me again, “upstairs” this time. For the third time I ask to speak to Judson; it will be the last time I ask for him and expect an answer. They tell me they can only take calls from family. Fighting back the hysteria, I tell them I am family. I ask for Kathy.
Her voice on the line is numb, absent: “We just lost him five minutes ago.”
Five minutes ago. What was I doing five minutes ago? What about ten? What if I had gone back to Toronto on the flight yesterday instead of planning to leave tomorrow? What if they were wrong? What about the plan we had to watch WWF that night with Josh—he had made the plans, and he always stuck to his plan.
Somewhere during those thoughts Kathy passes the phone to Josh. Josh sounds deadpan, like he is in shock. And I know we both need to do something. Anything. Anything that feels like helping Judson, or saving him, or bringing him back.
And there it is. The plan. A plan. The place where I am safe. Josh and I immediately make a list of friends we need to call and then break the list of phone calls in half. I have almost 30 calls to make. If I start right away, I can get through half of them before I have to be on set.
I leave it at that. I hang up, and I sit and stare at the phone for maybe a minute. I can hear the seconds ticking away on the office clock. It is quiet because I can’t talk yet. I’m not ready to say this out loud. I know that it will make it true. A new story.
The first call is the hardest. Karina makes every other call seem simple. She breaks. There is no other way to describe the wail that I hear, the clatter of her phone on her desk, the sound of her coworkers rushing to check on her, to hold her up. A nice woman comes on the phone and tells me that she is so sorry for my los
s and that they will take care of Karina, that she will call me back when she can.
With every call, I have to listen to the loss land on someone new. The range of emotion is overwhelming, from hysteria and tears to anger and absolute silence. I even have a couple of people who giggle nervously. I think around the ninth call I turn my response system off. Shut down.
Only 40 minutes until my call time. I’m like a machine. Six more calls and I’m back to work.
Teflon.
J
JUDSON
He was always tall. Even when he wasn’t, he was: long and lanky and constantly tripping over his two left feet. It was only in the water that it all came together—he swam, and he rowed. It was always surprising to me that he travelled in such straight lines this way. Water was the only place that he did.
JOSH
Today someone asked me if I think Tamara stole a life that someone like Judson was meant to have.
What?
NO!
I never thought that for a second.
People ask me if I’m angry at Tamara.
I’m not.
Don’t get me wrong, I was. For years. But once other people began to understand how sick she was, once everything became insanity, once she was in the hospital, how could I be angry? By then my anger had plenty of places to land: my parents, the hospital, the system—but none of it landed on Tamara.
In losing themselves, both Tamara and Judson had a way of being selfless. In the last months of her life, Tamara texted me over and over again to “take care of Mom.” In the last weeks of his life, Judson asked me to look out for his little brother, Josh. “Just don’t let him get lost,” he said.
I have done everything in my power to take care of my mother, from holding her hand to traipsing the cemetery measuring out family plots, because, quite simply, it’s what you do. I could fulfill that obligation. With Josh it was different.
Josh had a tough go of life in the years before Judson got sick. He lost a baseball scholarship, got too into drugs, and then got crushed by the model he was dating, who was too young to handle Judson’s death (weren’t we all?) and in doing her best might have broken his heart. The poor boy was just generally a little lost.
Judson was a much more patient older sibling than I was. Judson wanted to make sure that Josh would be OK. He wanted me to look out for him.
“You know… in case,” he said.
“Happy to help, but he’s got you. He only wants to hear that stuff from you. You’ll be back on your feet soon.”
“I need you to promise,” he said, looking at me with his once-blue eyes. I could see the panic and the pain behind them.
“I promise.”
I meant it when I said it. My present self, standing in front of him, meant every bit of it. You can’t look into the eyes of a dying friend and not mean it. But I could feel the impossibility of it. Even as I was saying it.
I spent a lot of time with Josh around Judson’s illness and death. To me, it feels like I shared this experience with him and him alone. An intimate, silent, gut-wrenching sharing. Everything between us was soaked in Judson. It still is.
After the funeral, I stuck around Toronto for a bit. My family was used to having me live away, and so didn’t expect me to do anything, and Josh’s family was walking like zombies through their own routines. So we were completely without obligations, beyond those we had to each other. Who would expect the brother and best friend of a dead twentysomething to be functional? Everyone just gave us time and space, maybe too much of both…
So we got high. We went for walks across the city that would take hours. We would set up base camp in bars from 2 p.m. until 2 a.m. We would drop by Josh’s house at 2 or 3 a.m. to pick up some snacks or drinks or to crash on the couch for a couple of hours and watch South Park. No matter what time we stopped at his home, Kathy was sitting at the dinner table doing sudoku, the house dark and only the dining room table light dimmed above her head.
I tried not to let this get to me: how sad Kathy looked sitting there, and how small. How much cocaine we were doing, how badly I was breaking my promise to Judson.
But still that promise stayed with me, always. As I flew back to Vancouver and stepped back into my life, I did keep up with Josh. I texted him. I visited when I was in Toronto. I pushed him to see me, to come out, to speak, to talk about Judson.
At one point we had a conversation about how hard it was to see each other, how much Judson was present in every exchange between us. And so we took a break for a little while.
But even that year we exchanged texts on Jusdon’s death-iversary.
LIZ
Sending you love today
JOSH
Thanks. Always needed on this day
And then Tamara died.
Josh promised he would come to the funeral. Or at least for drinks after. He didn’t do either. Later that week, he admitted to me that it was all too much. And I understood.
Because I do understand now: I remember how much Judson defined his life, and I know hard this all is. I get why he was drinking so much, why he is slow to respond and often a no-show, and why Karina and Kathy are always on about him. I also understand that he’s surfacing. I can see how close he is to winning this battle. And maybe, just maybe, I am starting to understand how I can help him. I have learned to listen, to accept him for who and how he is now.
Through him, I have learned, finally, not to judge.
Somehow, I am finding the patience and love to do for him what I could never do for her.
JOKES?
Death can bring out the best in people. It can also bring out the worst.
As my father stood in his kitchen that morning with tears rolling down his face, it brought out the worst. The first thing my stepmother, Donna, said to him was, “I can’t believe she didn’t copy me on the suicide note.”
And I wish that were the worst of her moments…
The evening before the funeral, Mom has everyone over to the house for dinner, and she includes Donna, of course. As we sit down together, Mom begins to explain the layout of the funeral home—seven seats in the front row on each side of the aisle—and she wants the blood family to sit together. She suggests that everyone’s partners can sit in the row behind. This will allow them to console and support and be in touching distance, but it will also allow Mom and Dad to grieve for their daughter together and to be surrounded by their surviving children. Everyone agrees this is a good idea.
Well, almost everyone.
As Dad and Donna get into the car to go home, sleep, and prepare for the funeral, Dad thanks her for being present and supporting my mother’s decisions. She slips into the front seat of his BMW to head home to their mansion and manages only, “The second row? I feel like Rosa Parks.”
JUMP
It has been 11 months. Lex just posted a suicide awareness ad on his Facebook wall. It features a young guy who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. One of the very few survivors. It’s a good ad, I guess. It says all the right things and ends with encouragement to reach out for help.
But it’s a miss for me.
Tamara reached out for help. In retrospect, she reached out for help everywhere. She showed our first cousin R her suicide note in October, she messaged and texted all of us, and a month before she died, she posted publicly on Facebook, writing, I had a mental and physical breakdown on July 31st that resulted in a month in hospital and diagnosis with a delusional disorder. By sharing this so publicly I am trying to reduce the stigma and isolation… Despite amazing support from friends and family I have felt really isolated and alone and at times suicidal.
But the problem is that when everything that comes out of someone’s mouth is incoherent and a plea for attention, by 20 years later, you stop listening. Maybe these ads should teach us how to listen instead of encouraging us all to speak…
So I’m learning to listen in a new way. I’m trying to hear Lex: Why did he post this? And I’m trying to hear myself: Wh
y can’t I shake it? And what I hear, when I listen, are the details.
It’s about how he (the subject of the video) felt that everyone around him was out to get him, trying to hurt him, and trying to kill him. And about how Tamara had those delusions too.
It’s about how he vividly remembers writing his suicide note. And about the 11,000-word letter she left for all of us.
It’s about the 25 stories of his fall. And the 29 stories of hers.
It’s about how the minute his hands left the railing, he instantly regretted his decision.
I think about Tamara, and how much we, the survivors, regret ours.
K
KNOWN
The last I spent any real time with Tamara was in March of 2016, almost eight months prior to her death.
I am in the middle of shooting a VW commercial when she comes to Vancouver. I don’t really have time to answer her calls, or anyone’s, but I have sent her a text and we have made a plan for her last day in town.
March 5, 4:42 a.m., she leaves me a message, and the vibrating of the phone reaches into my sleep. I have been home and in bed for less than two hours. I don’t listen to the message until I wake up in the morning.
And when I do, it makes my blood run cold. It sounds more animal than human. She’s sobbing, howling into the phone and crying my name over and over again.
I call her en route to the Airbnb she is staying at. I ask her about the voicemail message. She says she just had cramps and was calling to whine about them.
I know that’s nowhere close to the truth.
I pick her up and get her luggage into the trunk and take her to the Alibi Room for breakfast. The conversation is normal in parts and crazy in others. She excuses herself to go to the bathroom at some point. She’s gone a long time. Long enough for me to check my email and send a couple of texts. Long enough for me to notice. When she comes back, she asks me if the lights in that washroom tell me when to turn my head to the right or the left.