When Happily Ever After Ends

by Lurlene McDaniel

  Shannon realized that her words were spilling out in a jumbled stream, yet she couldn’t halt them. “Maybe I’m going crazy. Are all of us going crazy?” She looked up at Madeline suddenly. “Please tell me what to do.”

  Madeline pulled her chair closer to Shannon’s and reached for her hand. “Everything you’re feeling is a symptom of grief, Shannon, and it’s perfectly normal. Your father’s death is complex. It has so many aspects—depression, suicide, his Vietnam experience—naturally, it’s difficult to sort everything out. Perhaps I can help.”

  “How?”

  “First, let me tell you a little bit about depression. I know plenty about it because I’ve experienced it firsthand.”

  “You have?” Shannon remembered what her grandmother had told her about how Madeline’s whole family had died.

  Madeline nodded. “Depression is common, but very misunderstood. ‘Severe depression’—the worst form—was what your father was dealing with and unfortunately trying to handle all alone. The person in the grip of depression is helpless against it, and its victim can no more help himself out of its depths than a victim with cancer can cure himself. Left untreated, depression sometimes can lead to the most blatant, antisocial act of self-destruction there is—suicide.”

  Hearing Madeline explain her father’s inner pain caused Shannon to wince. “You didn’t kill yourself.”

  “I had help and support throughout my depressed period. Frankly, suicide never crossed my mind, even in my darkest times.”

  “So what sort of person kills himself?”

  “There is no ‘typical’ suicidal person. But over sixty thousand people a year do it.”

  Shannon grimaced, unable to believe the families of so many people hurt inside like she did. “What else?”

  “More women try it, but more men succeed. The group with the highest rate is teenagers.”

  “Kids my age?” Shannon hadn’t expected to hear such a fact.

  “Sad, but true. The next highest group is men your father’s age.”

  “But they must have something in common. Something that sets them off.”

  “Sometimes people have a negative image of life—you know, things are bad and they’ll never get better. To the person contemplating suicide, it’s the most logical, sane solution in the world to solving problems.”

  “How could it be?”

  “Because they hurt so bad in their minds. Because even though death is an unknown quantity, it seems somehow vastly superior to the world they do know. Because they’re so depressed and unhappy that death seems like the only way out of their pain.”

  “That’s stupid! My dad had everything in the world to make him happy.” She suddenly remembered the note she’d found in her father’s desk begging to be free from his feelings. His handwriting had looked scrawled and disjointed, the words, dismal and defeated. She tried to put herself in his place, to experience his inner agony. “Yes, I guess he was very unhappy,” she said dejectedly.

  “Often, a person bent on destroying himself gives us clues, but they’re so subtle we don’t recognize them until it’s too late.”

  Shannon jerked her head. “What kind of clues?”

  “Usually there’s a radical change in behavior. The person seems different in small ways, at first. They stop doing all the things they used to enjoy doing. They say things like, ‘You’ll be better off without me.’ Sometimes, once they’ve decided to take their life, they grow serene and begin to get their affairs in order.”

  “Like organizing file drawers and fixing porch steps?”

  “It’s much more than spring cleaning,” Madeline said, “but yes, little and big things. Some people prepare thoroughly for their departure. Almost like they’re trying to make up for leaving loved ones behind.”

  “And then once everything is ready? …”

  “Once they think they’re all caught up, they fulfill their death wish.”

  The air was very still and Shannon felt completely numb. Her father had given them perfect clues to his intentions all along. They’d assumed his bad mood would lift as had all his others. Because they hadn’t understood the depth of his depression, they’d missed the chance to save him. Shannon felt a terrible self-loathing.

  Gently, Madeline reached for Shannon and with a quiet but tender expression told her, “Please hear me, Shannon. Your father made the choice for his life. You can’t blame yourself in any way. No one in your family can. All of you have been deeply affected. What we need to talk about is your grief, and your concern for your mother and grandmother. You must concentrate on the living and forgive the dead.”

  Shannon wasn’t sure she could forgive her father. The idea of forgiving him was too tangled, too emotional for her to deal with just now. She concentrated on the part she could understand. “I want to help Mom and Grandma not to hurt.” She wiped her eyes on the damp, soggy tissue.

  “Survivors—those the suicide person leaves behind—must deal with a triple loss. First, the pure and simple grief over losing someone you love. Second, anger—sometimes rage—over the person’s deserting you.”

  Shannon looked up. She did feel rage, fury toward her father over choosing to leave her. Madeline continued. “And three, survivors must face feelings of guilt—‘If only I’d loved him more, he wouldn’t have left me.’ ”

  Shannon heard her mother’s words of self-recrimination echo to her from the night of the camp-out. She heard Grandmother’s confession about not allowing him a way out of going to Vietnam. “Maybe it was our fault,” she said.

  “Your father was responsible for taking his own life. You are responsible for going on with yours. No one can blame someone else for their problems.”

  Is that what she was doing? Shannon wondered. Was she blaming her father for her lack of interest in training Blackwatch? “You sound like you know what you’re telling me.”

  A kind smile lit Madeline’s round face. “When my entire family was wiped out in a plane crash, I blamed the aviation authorities, the weatherman, the plane’s mechanic—ultimately even God himself. Finally I had to accept one of life’s most tragic and mysterious truths—sometimes bad things happen and there’s no one to blame.”

  Shannon nodded solemnly. War was a cataclysmic event that soldiers had to face whether they wanted to or not. People killed themselves and families had to learn to accept living without them. Madeline shifted in her chair. “What’s important for you and your family is working out your grief. Facing it, talking about it, dealing with it.”

  “But how?”

  “Support groups are a good place to start.” Madeline stood and went to her file drawer. “I have information about LOSS—that’s Loving Outreach to Suicide Survivors. We have a grief support group that meets right here in the hospital twice a month and more frequently around holidays because holidays are the hardest times of all.”

  With a start, Shannon realized that her family had yet to face a major holiday without her father. The prospect was so bleak that she forced it aside. “I don’t know if Mom and Grandma will come to a support group,” she told Madeline.

  “I can talk to Betty, but I believe the suggestion will be better received coming from you. I know they both love you very much and will do most anything for you. Please remember, it’s not a sign of weakness to seek help. It’s a sign of strength and courage. If you ask them—”

  Madeline left the sentence unfinished. Shannon wasn’t at all convinced she had the power to persuade them no matter how hard she tried. “You’re not alone, Shannon,” Madeline added, handing her some papers. “Anytime you want to talk to me, I’m as close as your phone.”

  Shannon stood, preparing to leave. Her head swam with facts and information, and all the emotions that her conversation with Madeline had evoked. “Thanks for talking to me,” she said.

  Madeline held her hand again. “I admire you, Shannon. I think you’re a very brave, loving girl. Brave because you had the courage to face your pain and confront it. L
oving because you want to help your mother and grandmother face theirs. Love is action.”

  Madeline’s praise made Shannon feel reassured. She offered a tentative smile. “I’d better be going.”

  “Do you have a ride home?”

  “Yes. A friend’s waiting upstairs in the lobby. We came on his motorcycle.” Shannon turned and hurried to meet Zack. On the way home he pulled into a fast-food place at the foot of the mountain and bought her a milkshake. “You look happier,” Zack told her as she sipped the thick, sweet concoction. “I guess it helped to talk to your grandmother’s friend.”

  Shannon did feel as if a large weight had been lifted off her heart. Just hearing about depression and suicide and knowing that others had been through such a terrible ordeal and that Madeline was available to help made her feel less alone and afraid. “It helped a lot,” Shannon assured Zack. “More than I can tell you right now. Thanks for taking me.”

  “Zack’s taxi—at your service.” His grin was quick and made his dark eyes shine.

  Later, they rode up the mountain trying to carry on a conversation above the roar of the motor and the rush of the wind. Shannon hugged Zack tightly, reveling in the warm sun, fresh air, and summer sky. The higher the cycle climbed, the more she noticed signs of approaching autumn. Some trees were tinged with red, others were turning golden, and wildflowers that only appeared in the fall were blooming along the roadside.

  Zack turned onto her property and stopped by the back porch. The moment he cut the engine, her mother hurried out the door. “I’m so glad you’re home,” she blurted out. “I’ve just called the vet. It’s Black. He’s in bad shape.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “It’s laminitis,” Dr. McClelland said, straightening up after examining Black’s badly swollen hoof.

  Shannon felt a sickening sensation in her stomach. Laminitis—more commonly known as founder—was a threat to every horse. Black’s head drooped and his eye held a dull, pained look. She scratched behind his ears, but he didn’t respond.

  “How bad is it?” Mrs. Campbell asked, chewing worriedly on her lower lip.

  “Bad enough,” Dr. McClelland said, wiping his hands on a towel.

  Shannon felt a chill go over her. “He’ll be all right, won’t he?” she asked.

  Dr. McClelland rested his work-worn hand on her shoulder. “It’s too soon to answer—you know that this condition has to run its course. There’s plenty of congestion in the hoof right now. The blood flow’s jammed and he’s hurting, but at least it’s not infected. I’ll start him on antibiotics as a precaution, and give him a shot of adrenaline to slow the flow of blood. Let’s hope it will ease his pain.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Keep ice packed around his foot for the night. I’ll stop by in the morning to check on him.”

  Dr. McClelland withdrew vials of medicine and a syringe from his black bag. Zack stood in the far corner of the stall watching, while Shannon and her mother held Black’s halter. “What’s ‘founder’?” Zack asked her as the vet prepared the syringe.

  “A disease of the hoof,” Shannon explained. “Blood congests in the hoof and causes swelling and pain. Horses stand up all the time, so anything that goes wrong with their hooves is serious.” She winced as the doctor slid the needle into Black’s neck vein.

  “But how did Black get it?”

  “Feed that’s too protein-rich can cause it.”

  “I feed him the same stuff every day.”

  “Excessive work or not enough work. Founder just happens sometimes.” She felt tears sting her eyes. “Why did this have to happen to my horse?” The horse my daddy gave me, she thought.

  Dr. McClelland repacked his bag and snapped it shut. “Shannon, remember founder’s a crazy problem. It can leave as quickly as it came. I’ve seen horses really bad with it one day, and then do a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turnaround the next. It can happen to Black that way, too.”

  “But if it doesn’t?”

  The elderly doctor held her eyes with his. “Then we’ll have to put him down.” Shannon’s heart lurched with a spasm of fear. If he didn’t get better, Black would have to be destroyed.

  “But he’s the most valuable horse in my stable,” Shannon’s mother said, sounding alarmed. “What’s more, Paul and I gave Shannon this horse.”

  Shannon exchanged glances with her mother, feeling almost sick to her stomach. Unspoken between them was the realization that Blackwatch was all that remained of the good times they had known with her father.

  Dr. McClelland hoisted his bag. “I know, Kathleen, and I’m sorry. But I think it’s best to level with you. All we can do now is wait it out and hope for the best.”

  The doctor left, and her mother took Shannon by the shoulders. “We’re going to do everything we can, honey. We’ll save Black somehow.” Shannon nodded, hearing her mother’s determination. If anything happened to Black—

  “Zack, come up to the house with me and we’ll load up a chest with ice,” her mother said forcefully. “We’ll pack his foot every two hours through the night.”

  “I don’t mind staying tonight and helping,” Zack said. “I’ll call my grandmother and tell her you need me.”

  Shannon’s mother agreed. “We’ll take shifts. I’ll relieve you about midnight.”

  “I won’t be able to sleep,” Shannon insisted. “I’ll stay up all night with him.”

  “Then we’ll keep you company.”

  While Zack and her mother were up at the house, Shannon put fresh straw in the stall. She knelt by Black’s drooping head and tenderly stroked his muzzle. “I’m sorry, Black. I should have taken better care of you.” Guiltily, she realized that his lack of disciplined exercise may have contributed to his problem. She should have continued to work with him daily regardless of her feelings of despair.

  Halfheartedly, the big horse nibbled at her shirt pocket, making her smile sadly. “I love you, Black. You’ve got to get better. You just have to.” She stood, looped her arms around his neck, and wept silently into his coarse mane. The pungent scent of him soothed her. She wished her dad were here. She knew he couldn’t have done anything more than what Dr. McClelland had prescribed, but it would have been so good to have him close by to comfort her.

  Black whinnied feebly and Shannon stroked his soft muzzle. There was nothing she could do but wait. With a heavy sigh she went into the tack room. Twilight filtered through the dust-streaked window of the room. The aroma of leather and saddle soap evoked her father’s presence in a way that tore at her heart. “Oh, Daddy,” she whispered. “I need you.”

  Sniffing, Shannon pulled herself together and quickly took a couple of old blankets from her father’s trunk. She returned to Black’s stall and spread them in a corner, knowing she’d have to wait out the night and accept whatever the morning brought.

  That night, the weather took an unexpected turn toward autumn. Feeling chilled, Shannon located an old sweater of her dad’s. She wrapped herself in its oversized folds, thinking that it somehow brought him nearer. Zack dumped pillows around the blankets, and her mother brought them a pizza and a thermos of hot chocolate. “I’ll set my alarm for twelve,” she told them, “and relieve Zack. Change the ice often and come get me if he tries to lie down. It’s important to keep him on his feet.”

  Shannon attached two tether lines to Black’s halter to confine him in the stall; then she lifted the swollen hoof, set it down in a bucket, and packed ice around it.

  “He won’t jerk it out?” Zack asked.

  “No. It’ll feel good, like stopping a tooth from throbbing.” Afterward, she crawled over to the blanket, sat cross-legged, and nibbled on a slice of pizza that by now had grown cold. “It’s nice of you to stay,” she told Zack, who settled next to her.

  “I couldn’t have left tonight if I’d wanted to,” he said with a smile. “I guess I’ve sort of gotten attached to you all.”

  She tossed the pizza aside, pulled her knees against her chest, and r
ested her chin on them. The sleeves of the sweater flopped about her arms. “Are you saying you feel ‘responsible’ for me?”

  “Is that what you think?”

  Her face felt hot under his gaze. “I’m tired of thinking. My mind gets so mixed up sometimes, I can’t figure anything out.”

  “I don’t feel responsible for you,” he said, running the tip of his finger along the arch of her neck.

  A shiver shot up her spine. “My father was responsible for Mom and me, but that didn’t stop him from leaving us.”

  “The worst thing a person can do is go away and leave another person all alone. As far as I’m concerned, desertion is a crime.”

  She heard an underlying sadness in his voice that pricked her heart. “You do know what it feels like, don’t you?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer for such a long time that she decided he wasn’t going to. “I know, all right.”

  “Would you tell me about it?” She wasn’t sure he would, knowing it had something to do with why he lived with his grandmother instead of his parents.

  “When I was ten my mom and dad brought me to grandma’s, said good-bye, and never came back.”

  He spoke so quickly and with such little emotion that she was confused as to what he meant. “Did they die?”

  “It might have been easier if they had. Then I wouldn’t have felt like I’d done something to make them hate me.”

  “Maybe they couldn’t take care of you anymore.”

  “All I remember from the time we did live together is that they drank all the time. They smashed things up and yelled. I used to hide under my bed and put my pillow over my head. One day they took me to Grandma’s and never came to pick me up.”

  Shannon was shocked. She couldn’t imagine such a life. “Didn’t they call or write?”

  “Not that I ever knew. I used to get up every morning and get dressed and put my suitcase by the front door and sit in the living room and wait for them to come. Then every night, Grandma would put me to bed, but only after I made her promise to wake me up when they came.”