by Curtis Bunn
“Another effective treatment is coffee enemas. It is important to remember that coffee enemas work in conjunction with juicing in healing the body of cancer. Coffee enemas work exceedingly well in detoxifying the liver by the removal of body waste thereby beginning the process of reversing cancer.”
That’s when I stopped reading.
“Enemas? Am I reading this right?”
“I knew you’d have something to say about that. Yes, enemas. What’s wrong with those? People get them every day.”
“You don’t expect me to stick something up my butt. I know you don’t.”
“No, I expect Dr. Ali to stick it up your butt, Daddy. You don’t have to do anything except what she says. You might not like it, but it’s going to help you get that bad stuff out of your body. That’s all you have to focus on. Forget about any hang-ups you have about your butt. Your butt’s gonna be just fine.”
And then she laughed, prompting me to laugh. “You promised me that you would do whatever I found outside of chemo. This is it.”
Who would I have been fooling to say I was not going to do what I needed? I was not happy about it, but if it did what it said it would do—relieve me of the toxins in my body—then I had to close my eyes, grit my teeth and let it happen.
As strong as I had been feeling, the last few days had been marked with the kind of sharp, debilitating stomach pain that the doctors warned would come. They said it would be infrequent flashes of pain for a while and then more frequent and intense over the next months.
I didn’t tell my dad or Maya about the shooting pains that were more than the worst stomachache. They were like piercing knife wounds that drove me to bend over hoping for relief. It also all but killed my appetite, which really concerned me because I loved to eat. And if the sight of me with a bald head alarmed Maya, what would she feel in the coming weeks if I started dropping weight at an alarming rate?
And then, sure enough, she asked at dinner: “How are you feeling, Dad?”
To prevent her from worry, I felt forced to lie. “Good. I get a little tired, but other than that, good.”
She looked at me as if she knew I was lying. Your children know you as well as you know them, and trying to act like all was fine was a tell that all was not fine.
“Dad…,” Maya said.
“You look nice, baby. Did I tell you that?”
“Nice try. Again, how are you feeling?”
It was amazing, the progression of my child. She looked to me for everything when she was young, got sassy when she became a teenager and thought she ran things when she became a young adult.
“Maya, I’m good.”
She stared at me for a second or two and let it go. Sort of.
“Well, I’m looking forward to Atlanta,” she said. “I think these treatments will help you feel even better. I will look at flights when I get home. I can’t believe you want to catch the bus.”
I was too busy trying to eat something to not alarm her that I didn’t even hear her. She called me out.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I was all into this food,” I said, again trying to be convincing. Didn’t work.
“Usually you devour food so fast I worry about you choking. But you’re taking your time. Pacing yourself. Maybe my complaining is finally paying off.”
I jumped on that. “Yes, it is. I’ve been reading up on healthy eating and one of the things I’m trying to practice is to have many—I think, six—small meals of fruits and vegetables a day instead of three big ones. That’s what the experts say is the best way to eat.”
That led to a conversation about weight gain and away from me, which was what I wanted. When we were done, I walked Maya to her car. She held my hand, which she hadn’t done in years. Then she pulled out her cell phone and we pressed our cheeks together and took a “selfie.”
“I’m sending this to Mom,” Maya said. “Once your scalp darkens to the color of your face, you’ll look really great. Put some olive oil on it and stand out in the sun.”
I laughed. “You want me to fry my head? That’s messed up.”
We laughed a good laugh as we walked U Street.
“I want to honor Kevin. He said he thought it would make him look cool.”
“I miss Uncle Kevin,” Maya said. “But he’d look like a big mushroom with no hair. His head was too big.”
“See, you’re wrong for that. What will you be saying about me?”
“I can’t even think about you not being here, Daddy. I won’t think about it. And you shouldn’t either.”
I wished I could let go of my prognosis. But the reminders were frequent. What I came to was that my focus had to be on life, not death.
I took that thought with me after I hugged and kissed my daughter at her car and headed to my co-worker Walter Williamson’s house in Clinton, Maryland. He had texted me during dinner to come over. I didn’t feel like it, but I had turned down two invitations for fight parties he held and didn’t want to refuse him again.
He was a history teacher at Ballou and we became friends when I learned he loved to golf. That led to a lengthy conversation on the game and us playing several rounds together. Golf is a great revealer. You learn about a person because he usually was inclined to talk about his life over four-and-a-half hours on the golf course. You also learn about someone’s character, how he held up under duress, how he bounced back from adversity and definitely his honesty.
After a dozen years playing golf with Walter, I learned that he had a great heart, but was ultra-sensitive and did not manage pressure well. All I had to do when he was about to attempt an important putt was to put into his head that it was a pressure putt, and he’d miss most of the time. But he was a good man who showed great poise when I told him I had terminal cancer.
“No matter what the docs say, cancer has been beaten,” Walter said. “You can beat this. Don’t give in to it.”
It was encouraging to hear him speak with such force. I liked to be around him because he seemed flawed and was not afraid or ashamed to express his weaknesses. I also learned pretty quickly that he did not have a lot of friends.
That’s why I made the long journey to Clinton to see him. When I got there, he did not answer the door, which happened most of the time. He was usually in the back or in the basement, so he’d leave the door open for me. This time, I went in and the place seemed eerily quiet. The TV, which seemed to always be stuck on ESPN, was not on. There was no music.
He was not on the patio in the back of the house and he was not in the basement. Walter did not answer when I called out his name. I figured he left and would be back soon. So I sat down in the living room and turned on the television and waited. After about five minutes, it struck me to call him.
When I did, I could hear his phone ringing in the house. I silenced the TV and quieted myself to hear where the ring was coming from. It stopped before I could locate it. So I called it again, and it led me to the garage. When I opened the door, I was knocked to my knees.
Walter hung from one of the garage door rails, strung up by a belt around his neck. A kicked-over chair was on the concrete floor. It looked like a suicide. I was mortified, scared, hurt, confused. But I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I pulled myself off the floor and slowly moved closer to my friend. He was lifeless, his eyes not quite closed.
I pulled out my cell phone and called 9-1-1. The operator told me to not take him down, to not touch anything, that it could be a crime scene. I knew the only crime committed was by Walter. He ended his own life.
And that realization sent angry vibes through my body. How could he do this? Why would he do this? Here I am, struggling to hang on to my life…and he ends his?
CHAPTER FIVE
FAMILY MATTERS
I sat on Walter’s front steps in tears and in shock as the Prince George’s County coroner drove off with his body. None of his neighbors came by to see what had happened. They stood in front of their houses looking, pointing. They were curious but not concerned
enough to come over and find out what happened. And that’s what drove Walter to hang himself—he didn’t feel anyone cared.
He felt alone. He felt vulnerable. He felt he had no purpose. I was not guessing those feelings. He wrote them to me in an e-mail that I discovered as I sat there at his house. Knowing I was the one he chose to write his final words to, the one he chose to find him, made me feel creepy and proud at the same time. I read the e-mail on my cell phone more than once:
“Calvin, the first time we met, I wasn’t that nice to you. I’m sorry. It was at a teacher’s meeting and I said, ‘Yeah, good luck with that,’ when you said you wanted to make a difference in our students’ lives. I was sarcastic because I had the same ambition but didn’t feel like I had accomplished anything close to that. And when I’m off my meds, everything seems worse than it is. That’s what I’m told by psychiatrists, anyway.
“I’m bipolar, they say. Not many people know it. It’s not an easy existence. Meds all the time or there’s no telling what I will do or say when I’m not on them. I hid it from the school; I was good at that. I hid it from you. But I wasn’t good at hiding the reality from myself. And right now, I just don’t feel like there’s a reason to be here anymore, you know? I’m no good to the kids I taught, even though I loved every one of them and I hope they make it in this unfair world.
“My family? Well, my parents are gone and my brother, Donovan, lives in California with his girlfriend. He never calls me. Never visits. Haven’t see him in almost ten years and haven’t talked to him in seven years. My son, Junior, he lives right in Alexandria, but he doesn’t call or come to see me. If I’m no good to my own brother and son, then who am I good to? What am I good for? I’m just tired of it all, tired of feeling this way. It’s tiring. It hurts. It’s best I rest. And I don’t deserve to be here longer than you. Who decided that you should die? That’s not fair. Live your life, brother. Thank you for being a friend to me.”
I was frozen there, unable to really process all I had read, what I had seen, what I felt. I was hanging on to life and Walter took his. That was hard for me to fathom. I viewed life as a blessing. To give it away spoke to how messed up his head had to be. Worst of all, I had no idea he was in so much turmoil.
It never showed. He was quiet mostly but engaging when we played golf and when we spent time together at school. He talked about meeting women and going on dates, which made me think his social life was active. He never mentioned a brother in California or his son; never knew he had a child. I’m guessing he was too embarrassed to bring them up when they didn’t communicate.
Ironically, I had just read an article about Lee Thompson Young, the young actor from the TV show Rizzoli & Isles who shot himself and how he had been diagnosed as bipolar. His father in the paper talked of the dramatic mood swings he suffered when not on his medication. And here was Walter saying the same thing in his e-mail to me.
Processing it all made my head spin. The image of him hanging there, lifeless, will always be in my head. I told the officers who arrived what happened. They looked at my cell phone to read my exchange of texts with Walter. They questioned me about his attitude, his mindset. Did he have enemies? I told the officer: “You know, it never occurred to me that he never talked much about friends. And he didn’t say anything about enemies. He didn’t say anything about anyone, really. He would mostly listen when we played golf and laugh. He’d mostly talk about school or students and sports. That was it.”
The cops stayed there for hours. They eventually roped off the garage and left me there alone with my confused thoughts. I didn’t know what to do. Going home didn’t seem right. But neither did staying there.
The last thing I needed was to worry about someone else with all that was going on with me. But Walter needed a proper burial. I realized that. I needed to contact his brother in California and his son. It seemed I was the only one to do it.
Thornell had met Walter a few times on the golf course. I gave him a call first while sitting on Walter’s front porch. I was relieved he answered; it was close to eleven o’clock at night.
“Man, you’re not going to believe this.”
“What? The doctors said something?” Thornell said, assuming my news had to be about my condition.
“No, dog, it’s my man, Walter, who played golf with us a few times.”
“The history teacher who works at your school?”
“Yeah, him,” I said. “So, he texts me to come visit him at his crib. And I got here and he was hanging from the garage rail. He killed himself.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Yeah, crazy. He killed himself, man. He was hanging there, his neck snapped and his eyes were half open. On top of that, he sent me an e-mail saying that basically he was bipolar and didn’t feel a need to be here anymore.”
“I can’t believe this,” Thornell said.
“You can’t believe it? Imagine walking in and seeing your friend hanged, dead. I’m not even sure what to do with myself. What to do about this whole situation?”
“What do you mean?”
“He said he has no family other than a brother in L.A. and a son right over in Alexandria that he hardly speaks to. No woman. Parents passed away. He e-mailed me and texted me so I could find him. He deserves a proper burial. And looks like I’m the only person to do it.”
“Call his brother. Call his son. Let them know what’s happened. Maybe they’ll step up. And why didn’t they talk anyway?”
“Not sure. He didn’t say. But, I mean, do I go and look through his stuff to find his brother’s and son’s info? I don’t want to violate him, even if he is dead.”
“If you’re the only one who is really his friend, then you have to take charge. I know that’s probably the last thing you want to do right now…”
“You damned right. I don’t even know where to begin. But I’m going to see if I can find his brother’s info. I’ll start right there. Let me go back into his house and see what I see. I’ll call you back.”
After the police wrapped up their investigation, which took much of the night and some of the next day, I went back into Walter’s three-bedroom home in search of…I wasn’t sure what to search for, actually. The police took his cellphone as part of their investigation. And because I viewed privacy as something sacred, it was hard for me to rummage through his belongings.
But if I was going to do what needed to be done, I had to do it and get out of there because I suddenly felt spooked out. I turned on every light I could find. I stood in his kitchen and after a few minutes, I finally decided to start in a bedroom he seemed to use as an office. It had two bookcases, a file cabinet and a desk and chair. On the desk were self-evaluation forms he started but did not complete. Everything was so neat. It was as if he cleaned up before taking his life.
Next to a pile of books that included a dictionary and a Roget’s Thesaurus was a stack of AT&T phone bills. I was hesitant to go through them, but maybe he had called his son and brother and their numbers would be on the bill. I was grateful Walter resisted technology and did not receive his bill online. So I opened the most recent bill. There were calls to Gardena, California, which I knew was very close to L.A. And there were calls to Alexandria, Virginia. I didn’t want to take the bills with me, so I wrote down the numbers and hoped that they were the ones I needed.
Before I left the house, I was glad I found Walter’s keys on a hook in the kitchen. I didn’t want to leave his door open, knowing I’d likely have to return. I picked up a photo Walter had of him and his parents. They all looked so happy. The smile on his face was as wide as the picture frame. He looked to be about eighteen. I wondered if he’d ever been more content.
I set it back down, turned off the lights and made it to my car. I was not sure whom to call first, but chose Walter’s brother, Donovan; he lived in California, so it was only about nine at night instead of midnight like in D.C.
I dialed the number without knowing what I was going to
say. And instead of hanging up, I figured I’d come up with the right words if he answered. He did.
“Hi. Is this Donovan?”
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
“My name is Calvin Jones. I live in Washington, D.C. and I’m friends—was friends—with your brother, Walter.”
“Yeah. And?”
“Well, tonight, I’m sorry to say, Walter killed himself. He hung himself in his garage.”
“Really?” Donovan said. There was not any shock in his voice. Worse, there was no sorrow. I refused to say anything.
“OK, well. Thanks for calling me,” Donovan finally said.
I was immediately angry. “Wait, that’s it? I tell you your brother killed himself and that’s all you have to say?”
“Walter had problems, OK?” he said. “I haven’t seen or spoken to him in years.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not your brother. Did you know he was sick, was bipolar?”
“Of course I knew that. Listen, I don’t mean to sound uncaring. Walter was fine on his meds. When he did not take them, he was irrational and hard to be around. And most of the time he didn’t take them. So, it was best to just stay away from that behavior.”
“Best for you, not for him. Not being in his life contributed to his troubles. You said you haven’t talked to him in years, but he’s been calling you, as recently as last week. I looked at his phone bills. So he tried to let you know he was troubled, but you didn’t call him back?”
“Who are you again?”
“I’m Calvin. Walter and I worked together; we taught at the same high school. We played golf together. And he asked me to come to his house tonight. I found his body hanging in his garage. He wanted me to find him.”
“Well, I don’t know what to say,” Donovan claimed.
“Are you going to come here and give him a proper burial?”
“Ah, when? I’m not sure. What’s his insurance situation?”
“I don’t know. But a family member should be taking care of this, not me.”