November of the Soul

by George Howe Colt

  When I met Dana, she looked like a different person from the one she was in her drinking days. She was slim, pretty, and neatly dressed. Although she was witty and sharp, able to make others laugh easily, her own laughter came self-consciously, and her defensiveness and anger occasionally flared. Her biggest problem, she told me, was loneliness. She had few friends at college, and though she remained close to some of her Four Winds friends, she spent much of her time by herself. “I’ve still got a long way to go. It takes a long time to break an eighteen-year habit. At Four Winds, when Terry and I started working on how to relate to people, I was at ground zero. And in two and a half years you don’t exactly become proficient at making bosom buddies. But it’s only going to get better as my confidence grows and I get more used to doing things and not caring so much about what people think.” Dana laughed. “’Cause I still care what Joe Schmo thinks, and who the hell is he? I don’t even know him!”

  In the first few months after Brian’s death, Mary Hart visited her son’s grave several times a day. It helped her to stand there and talk to him. “I could say things to him, and he couldn’t talk back.” Sometimes she would shout at him, “Why did you do this, you dumb kid? Why?” For a long time she and her husband believed that if Brian had taken his medication regularly, he would still be alive. While her husband kept his feelings more to himself, Mary felt an endless, restless need to talk about Brian’s death. The weight of his suicide threatened to crush her. “One day I found myself in the garage thinking all I have to do is to trip this button and close the garage door, and I’d be asleep, too.”

  Mary and Pat began seeing a therapist, and gradually Mary’s rage and frustration dissipated. “I had been looking for Brian around every corner. It was hard for me to say, ‘This is the end,’ but after awhile I realized that this was his choosing and there was nothing more. The therapist helped me begin to close the door.”

  Nevertheless, there were unexpected reminders: going down to the cellar to fetch something and coming across Brian’s skis; looking through her recipe file and finding a note in Brian’s handwriting on the back of one: “Ma, I’ve gone to the mall to look for some Christmas gifts”; waking at four in the morning and feeling the need to pore over the roster of people at Brian’s wake. She continued to visit Brian’s grave several times a week, but when she spoke to him, she was more gentle. “I talk about the things we’ll never know—what he would have looked like, what his children would have been like, what he might have done. And about the pain he must have gone through . . . and how much I wish we could have understood that pain more.”

  Two years after their son’s death, Sandy Martin, Brian’s English teacher at Anderson, sent the Harts some snapshots she had taken of Brian. As they looked at them, the Harts realized that these were probably the last new photographs they would ever see of their son. Pat hung one of them in the Rogues’ Gallery, a picture of Brian in a bright red polo shirt, flashing a broad smile.

  “Whatever caused Justin Spoonhour’s death, we all had a part in it,” Lora Porter, the Putnam Valley librarian, told me. “We failed him by not raising our children to be kinder to one another. Do you remember that line from South Pacific? ‘You’ve got to be carefully taught to hate.’ Well, the same thing applies to love. You’ve got to be taught to love and respect, and I don’t think we do that enough.”

  With money donated by members of the library board, Porter ordered some special animal puppets and sewed labels on them that said JUSTIN’S PUPPETS. Having worked with hundreds of children over the years, Porter was surprised at the hold Justin’s memory had on her. In her heart of hearts she still thought of his death as an accident, although her head told her it wasn’t. If Justin could only have survived adolescence, Porter believed, he would have blossomed. “He was just marking his time through childhood. In another few years he would have graduated high school and been out on his own. I think he would have come into his own when he became an adult. And I would like so much to have known him when he grew up. I would have liked to have him as a friend. The world needs people like Justin. There are too many pedestrians. Justin could fly.”

  On the day after Justin’s suicide his English class was due to read aloud the scene in which Julius Caesar is killed. As they began, the irony stunned the class for a moment, but no one said anything. The teacher took over the role of Caesar, and they finished the play as quickly as they could. In the first few days two dozen junior high school students saw guidance counselors; the second week, only a few sought help, and by the third week, recalled one administrator, things were “back to normal.” “Nobody talked about it,” said a student. “He was just crossed off the attendance list, everyone was careful not to mention his name, and it was like that was that.”

  There were a few official observances. At the spring concert the chorus director played Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” in Justin’s memory. His class dedicated its yearbook, Tiger ’84, to him: under the lyrics of “Perhaps Love” there were four photographs of Justin, including curmudgeonly poses from Scrooge and Outrageous Fortune, as well as his formal graduation portrait. The caption read, “Putnam Valley Junior High deeply regrets the loss of Justin Spoonhour.” At graduation Justin’s name was not mentioned. On the first anniversary of his death teachers were reminded to be particularly alert in case students remembered the date and were upset. But no one mentioned it or came to the counselors for help. And yet a visitor to the cemetery that day found that some children had left notes and flowers on Justin’s grave.

  “I’m not sure a school ever gets over something like this,” Superintendent Richard Brodow says. “It’s something you always remember, and you should always remember because it lets us know how vulnerable we are.” Brodow’s forthright handling of the tragedy was praised by parents and teachers, and over the following year, when other schools in the area experienced suicides, they turned to him for advice. Brodow wrote about Justin’s suicide in a short essay, which begins with a quote from Jean Giraudoux: “Out of the heart of darkness comes the light.” Brodow firmly believed that the school learned something from the tragedy. “Certainly there is more awareness and sensitivity on everyone’s part for youngsters who have difficulty.” But the next year, after Justin’s classmates had moved on to high school, the new ninth graders found another outcast to pick on—teasing him, calling him names, urinating in his locker.

  Mike LoPuzzo saved all the newspaper clippings about his friend’s death. He attended all the town meetings on suicide, sitting near the front, listening attentively. Although at first he thought that Justin had killed himself because of the teasing, Mike realized that couldn’t be the entire answer—Justin had endured it all his life. “He didn’t leave us a note. He didn’t want to make it easy for us. He wanted to leave us with questions. He wanted us to think about it. Maybe he was saying, ‘Take a look at yourselves.’”

  Two years after Justin’s death Diana Wolf was surprised to find herself thinking of her former classmate once more. “I wear contact lenses, and sometimes I have problems with them and have to use glasses. And when I wear them, I don’t like the way I look at all. One day at school I was wearing glasses and I was feeling bad. I didn’t like the way my hair had come out, I wasn’t wearing flattering clothes, and I was feeling fat and ugly. In English class some kids were being snotty to me, and in social studies my regular work partner wasn’t there. Usually I’m pretty popular, but this time I couldn’t find anyone to be my partner, and I felt terrible.

  “After school I was walking home alone from the bus. It was a damp, drizzly day. I felt lonely and pretty miserable because I just hadn’t fit in. It was the worst feeling, that not fitting in. I was really depressed. But I went home and took off those glasses. I showered, put on some different clothes, and managed to get my lenses back in. I felt so much better just because I accepted myself again. And then I suddenly thought, ‘What I felt like for one day is what Justin must have felt like all the time.’”

 
Anne and Giles Spoonhour quickly tried to put their son’s death behind them. Two days after the funeral they kept their appointment to speak at Justin’s Youth Group about their emergency services work. They talked for almost two hours to the children about how to handle a crisis, what resources were available, and so on—without once breaking down. Early on, Anne made a conscious decision not to look back. “My thinking was, ‘It can’t be undone, no matter who did it or why. Now what are you going to do? Let’s get on with it.’” She threw herself into her work as police dispatcher, became a member of the volunteer fire department, worked as steward chairman of the church, and wrote long letters to the local newspaper about community issues. But each night when she went to bed, the first thing she saw when she closed her eyes was the image of her son hanging from the tree.

  While Anne struggled to look ahead, Giles seemed unable not to look back. Each morning at seven he would start into Justin’s room to wake up his son for school, and then he’d remember. Each evening when he came home from work and heard the neighborhood children playing in the yard, he waited to hear his son’s voice. Although he tried to keep control, he felt broken with pain and confusion. “I was angry at Justin for not feeling comfortable enough to talk with me or with Anne. I was a little angry at Leah and Anne for not noticing it. And I was angry at myself because as a counselor, as a professional, I’m supposed to be able to pick up on things like that.” Occasionally his anger exploded. Conflicts that had existed in his marriage all along were brought to the surface by Justin’s suicide. Three months after their son’s death, Giles and Anne began seeing a counselor, who told them that 60 percent of the parents of an adolescent suicide eventually divorce.

  Leah had sessions with the school psychologist and with Anne and Giles in their therapy. She didn’t talk much to her parents about her brother’s suicide, and they didn’t force the issue. But Anne and Giles tried to watch her more closely without making their worry obvious. They went out of their way to chauffeur her to meetings and friends’ houses whenever possible. They didn’t like her to be alone at home, and since her brother’s death, neither did she. Anne felt uncomfortable in the house, too. “When I got off work late at night or went out on a call at midnight, I didn’t like seeing the damn trees in the dark. I guess I’ve sort of turned against trees. I’ve decided I like sky, a lot of sky.” Within a year of Justin’s death they moved to a house on the other side of Putnam Valley. “Anne and Leah didn’t want to stay in the old house because the memories of Justin were so strong,” says Giles. “I would have preferred to stay because the memories were so strong.”

  One of the ways Anne and Giles tried to work through their grief was by talking about it. The week after Justin’s death Anne got a call from a television station in New York asking for an interview. She said yes. “I thought I may as well make out of it what I could. Nothing was going to change the fact in this instance, but it might alter future instances.” Over the following year she and Giles told their story to People, Ladies’ Home Journal, the New York Times, USA Today, the Donahue show, the BBC, and more than sixty local newspapers and radio and television stations. They spoke at suicide prevention centers, churches, and high schools. Anne became a member of the New York State Council on Youth Suicide Prevention. At one presentation Giles was asked what advice he would give to parents. “Many teens don’t like to be held, to be touched. But I encourage parents to hold, to show love physically. Touch the head,” he said, almost involuntarily reaching out with hands that had been still for nearly an hour. “Put an arm around the shoulders—whatever seems comfortable. And even if it doesn’t feel comfortable, do it anyway. Because the more you practice, the easier it gets.”

  Anne’s and Giles’s efforts in suicide prevention had a peculiar effect on the town of Putnam Valley. Despite the outpouring of concern immediately following Justin’s suicide, the community seemed to put it quickly in the past. Two nights after the death, the meeting called by Richard Brodow at Putnam Valley Junior High was attended by more than 250 people. Two months later, when Anne Spoonhour called for a meeting on adolescent suicide prevention, only a dozen parents showed up. As Anne became increasingly involved in suicide prevention, some people in the community resented her efforts. In conversations at the library or at the grocery store there was talk that “enough is enough” and “let’s not call attention to ourselves.” Some worried that the Spoonhours were making Putnam Valley “the suicide capital of the world.” A friend of Anne’s who had helped her with her prevention work was stopped on the steps of the church one day by a prominent local citizen. “What are you people trying to do?” he demanded. “Win an Academy Award for Justin Spoonhour?” Although the Putnam Valley Mental Health Department beefed up its programs for adolescents, two years after Justin’s death Putnam Valley still had no suicide prevention program in its classrooms. “What are we waiting for?” asked one mother. “Are we just going to sit back and wait till the next suicide?”

  But something curious took place at the same time. Several years before Justin’s death there had been another teenage suicide in Putnam Valley. A high school junior had walked into the woods and shot herself. Like every other suicide in Putnam Valley before Justin’s, the death had been hushed up. “Nothing was said in school although everybody knew,” recalled Lora Porter, whose son had been in the girl’s class. “It was almost as if the entire town conspired to pretend it hadn’t happened. Then when Anne and Giles chose to handle Justin’s suicide by talking openly about it, I think they effected a catharsis for Colleen’s group. As people began talking about Justin, Colleen’s friends began talking about Colleen for the first time, saying that it was too bad she didn’t have anyone to talk to, too bad no one saw what was happening to her. They had never had a chance to talk about it before. I don’t know whether I would have had the courage to speak out the way Anne and Giles did, but I have often thought they did a very great service for this group of young people.”

  Two years after Justin’s death the Spoonhours’ house in Lookout Manor was empty. The grass was overgrown and the swing set was rusting in the backyard. An orange TOTFINDER sticker still clung to one window. On the mailbox the name SPOONHOUR was crossed out. Anne’s father, who owned the house, was trying to sell it. He talked of going into the woods across the street and cutting down the tree from which Justin had hung, but Anne and Giles said no. They did not want to destroy a living thing.

  2

  HISTORY

  I

  PRIMITIVE ROOTS:

  THE ROCK OF THE

  FOREFATHERS

  Lo, my name reeks

  Lo, more than carrion smell

  On summer days of burning sky . . .

  Lo, my name reeks

  Lo, more than that of a sturdy child

  Who is said to belong to one who rejects him . . .

  To whom shall I speak today?

  Brothers are mean,

  One goes to strangers for affection . . .

  To whom shall I speak today?

  I am burdened with grief

  For lack of an intimate . . .

  Death is before me today

  [Like] a sick man’s recovery,

  Like going outdoors after confinement . . .

  Death is before me today

  Like a man’s longing to see his home

  When he has spent many years in captivity.

  WRITTEN FOUR THOUSAND YEARS AGO in the first intermediate period of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt, these lines are part of the first recorded reference to suicide. In “The Dispute Between a Man and His Ba,” a man who is tired of life and buffeted by bad luck considers killing himself. Angered by his complaints, his soul, or ba, threatens to leave him. The man implores his ba to remain, since to be abandoned by his soul would deprive him of an afterlife. His ba urges him to enjoy life, to surrender himself to pleasure. These lines are taken from the man’s final answer, four poems in which he deplores the greed and injustice of the times, laments his iso
lation, and speaks longingly of death. In the end his ba agrees to stay; it is not clear whether the man goes on to kill himself.

  The seven sheets of papyrus that make up “Dispute” describe an interior landscape not unlike that of almost any lonely, despairing person considering suicide today. Just as Dana Evans invented insults to reinforce her self-loathing, the anonymous Egyptian sings out his own curses: “Lo, my name reeks / Lo, more than carrion smell.” Just as Justin Spoonhour was overwhelmed by the cruelty of the world around him, the Egyptian is stung by the indifference of society: “I am burdened with grief / For lack of an intimate.” His final words to his ba, in fact, perfectly articulate the internal journey of a suicidal person: from loss of self-esteem, to despair of finding surcease from pain, to a conception of death as a refuge—“Like a man’s longing to see his home / When he has spent many years in captivity.” From these seven sheets we can trace an unbroken line of loneliness, dejection, and hopelessness that has been common to suicidal people for four thousand years.

  Yet if the interior landscape of the suicidal person has changed little over four millennia, the way we view the act of suicide has varied widely. Today in the Western world we think of suicide primarily as a psychiatric problem. We study it, search for its causes, and struggle to prevent what we consider a tragic and sometimes shameful act. The ancient Egyptian would have found this attitude puzzling. In his time and place earthly existence was considered a mere prelude to blissful afterlife. Death was not an end but a beginning. There were no social or religious prohibitions against suicide, and the Egyptian would certainly not have been considered mentally ill. For him suicide was not only an acceptable escape from an intolerable life but a path to blessed immortality. “Truly, he who is yonder will stand in the sun-bark,” he tells his ba, “making its bounty flow to the temples.” During the turbulent period when “Dispute” was written, suicide seems to have been frequent. In “The Admonitions of a Sage,” a popular story of the time, a wise man observes that suicide is so common the crocodiles are glutted with despairing people who have hurled themselves into the river.