But there was no closing a window on this. Not only did their neighbors in Florida know, but their former neighbors in Michigan and Los Angeles found out through the snowbird hotline. There’s nothing like a crisis or gossip to unite the flock. And, to my utter disbelief, neither parent felt the slightest bit of shame. To the contrary, my father had even taken a moment between the pills and the failed asphyxiation to compose a short note to my brother and me, saying we were great disappointments. It was as though they had been liberated from social conventions and now felt free to brazenly display their pain and vengeance.
Like the character in my play, I chose to attend the awards ceremony rather than rush to my parents’ bedside. I asked my brother, who lived with his family in San Francisco, to go in my place. (Whereas I was enmeshed with my parents and spent many years and thousands of dollars in therapy pursuing a relationship with my parents, he remained physically and emotionally estranged from them. During college, he distanced himself as far away in the United States as geography would permit.)
My brother didn’t want to go but must have felt some sense of obligation and agreed to make the trip. I knew that his appearance would bolster their spirits, because it would be unexpected. They knew I’d show up; I was the girl, and gender determined the balance of relationships in our family. Being a girl, I was a known entity to my mother. She could take me shopping, show me how to dress, how to wear my hair and makeup, and the rest of the time anguish about the kind of man I would marry. But my brother was a mystery to her.
She once recounted the first time she saw him—or rather this foreign object called a penis—and she was terrified. What to say or do with a creature who bore this appendage? The only memory I have of my mother relating to my brother is when she’d drag him to the boys’ store in our neighborhood and outfit him with new clothes.
By the time my brother arrived in Florida, my parents had been separated and were on different floors. Although it wasn’t initially apparent, that very act was enough to sever the cord. My father seemed to be doing well, but then he fell out of bed in the middle of the night in an attempt to go to the bathroom. A subsequent physical examination, x-rays, and other tests didn’t turn up any injuries, yet he inexplicably lost his ability to speak coherently.
I arrived several days after the awards ceremony to relieve my brother from duty. I shuffled between my parents’ rooms, sleeping in a chair in my father’s room so I could be there in case he spoke. The doctor felt it was only a matter of time until his voice returned or they figured out what was wrong. There was nothing more to do until they were finally released from the hospital. I flew back to Los Angeles, confident that my parents, although not yet out of the woods, would survive.
Several nights later, I got a call from my brother. “He’s gone.”
I learned from a nurse that my mother had seen my father only hours before his death. The visit was their first since their separation, and it would prove to be their last. He had been unconscious, but when she leaned over and kissed him, he responded. Later that night, my mother awoke with a start from her drug-induced sleep and let out a cry. It was just after midnight, the exact time my father, two floors above, died. My mother’s worst fantasy, and mine, had happened.
The news of my father’s death threw my mother’s future, as well as my own, into question. My parents had sold their house and had to be out of it in a week. Where would my mother live? She was homeless, with little money, and she was suicidal. And, given her fragile state of mind, she was in no position to make any decisions. Her life was now in my hands.
If you’re going to commit suicide, it’s best to stick to the method that is most likely to produce the desired result. A bullet to the head or through the mouth, for example, is probably the best choice. Pills are definitely the worst option. Not that I knew that before this incident. To the contrary, I assumed that if you ingested a bottle of sleeping pills, you were a goner. Not so. Chances are quite good you’ll end up a vegetable rather than a corpse. In the weeks after my father’s death, I became an expert on the subject of suicide.
I returned to Florida. We honored my father’s wishes and had him cremated. I spent several days alone in their house, going through their belongings. That’s when I found the note telling my brother and me that we had failed as his children. Somewhere between the pills and the garage, he had mustered enough anger to toss out one final zinger. As I sat there knee-deep in the physical, financial, and emotional mess that he and my mother had created, I was struck by the cruelty and the irony of his sentiment.
I brought my mother back to California with instructions from her physician that I was to take her directly to a facility for psychiatric evaluation. She had committed a crime and was also considered a high suicide risk. The Florida hospital had made arrangements to transfer her to the Cedars-Sinai psychiatric unit in Los Angeles. The good news was that with her in safe hands, I could start to find her an apartment and, hopefully, some backup resources to assist her in creating a new life.
My loving and supportive husband picked us up at the Los Angeles airport. I hoped that my mother would not realize it was her wedding anniversary. However, she discovered it when she signed the hospital forms and had to ask the date. Until then, she had been docile. With knowledge of the special date, however, she snapped out of her lethargy and begged us not to leave her there. My husband, who always had a calming influence on her, explained that remaining was a condition of her release, that we’d return in the morning, and that her stay was temporary. Nothing we said calmed her. She promised to be good, sleep on the floor, or do anything we asked, as long as we didn’t leave her there. In my eyes, she had become a child who blames herself when her parents abandon the family.
Later that day, when my husband and I returned home from the hospital, we held each other and sobbed until we ran out of tears.
My brother and I knew that once my mother was released from the hospital she would try again to kill herself, and she would keep trying until she succeeded. The question was what to do about it. He saw two choices: we could institutionalize her, where she could be monitored, or we could police her ourselves around the clock. My brother opted for the former. He didn’t want her to be his responsibility, and didn’t understand why I’d want her to be mine. “You’ll walk in some morning and find her dead,” he told me. “You know that, don’t you?” Maybe he felt that our mother should live with the consequences of her behavior as some kind of retribution. “She brought this all on herself.”
I couldn’t argue with that. She’d been the instigator, but it was my father who died. I knew she couldn’t live with the guilt. That’s why she couldn’t bear going on another day, and locking her in some psychiatric ward seemed unbearably cruel and a far more painful death.
Understanding this, I believed her fate was a foregone conclusion: she was going to find a way to end her life. Nevertheless, I had to let her determine this for herself. My mother was an adult. It was her life. If she didn’t want to live, what right did I or the state of California have to force her to live? Despite everything, I loved my mother, and I wanted to keep her alive. I told myself that I’d give her as much love and support as possible and hope she might choose to live out her natural life. Anything was possible. It’s the same magical thinking and eternal optimism that has kept me in the movie business all these years.
Another thing I learned about suicide is that, unlike illness, it’s not neutral; suicide is accompanied by stigma and judgment. Tell someone that so-and-so died of cancer, and they’ll be sympathetic. Tell them that death came from jumping off a ledge, and you’ll get wide-eyed stares and macabre curiosity.
I was riddled with pain and guilt and was desperate to talk about it, yet I didn’t want to talk to my husband or friends. It had nothing to do with how close I felt to them; it was that I needed people who were going through exactly what I was going through. My brother and I were having the same experience, but our family dynamic didn’t f
oster intimacy and closeness between siblings.
The only other family was my father’s two sisters, but they had a long, contentious, on-again, off-again relationship with my parents. And, despite having been in “on” mode prior to their brother’s suicide, they went MIA and never sent so much as a condolence card to my mother.
I remembered that a young friend’s girlfriend had asphyxiated herself after he broke up with her. He attended a suicide support group and found it invaluable to his healing. I decided to do the same. I’d spent a good deal of my adult life in and out of therapy, and I’m comfortable in a therapeutic environment.
The suicide grief support group was time-limited, ten weeks, and part of a long-established mental health organization that was highly regarded in the Los Angeles area. Although my group was not racially diverse, it was diverse in other respects, such as age, income, and geography, with an equal ratio of men and women. What bound us was the specific shame and guilt that are the hallmarks of suicide survivors. At our first meeting, we went around the room to introduce ourselves and reveal the nature of the loved one’s suicide.
I admit that I possessed a large dose of the macabre curiosity I ridiculed in others. In these sessions, I listened intently to each member recount their tale. I listened as an outsider, insider, a writer, voyeur, shrink, and survivor. A heavyset guy in his mid-thirties, with dancing eyes and a warm smile, told us how he got a call that his father, whom he hadn’t seen or spoken to in months, had slit his wrists and was found in a tub full of blood. He blamed himself for not being a better son.
A petite, impeccably dressed, soft-spoken woman in her forties, who lived a cultured, enviable life of financial comfort, told of coming home from work and finding her husband hanging in their bedroom. Hoping he might still be alive, she cut down his six-foot body, only to have it fall on top of her, pinning her to the ground. Despite the fact that, the day before, they had enjoyed a night out on the town to celebrate their anniversary, she blamed herself for not being a better wife.
A sixty-year-old mother and widow had been coming to these groups for seven years. Her only son had overdosed from heroin. They had always been extremely close, and unlike my father, who had left behind a sentence or two blaming my brother and me for their actions, her son had left her a beautiful, loving letter “gifting” her the only thing that meant anything to him: his dog. She blamed herself for not seeing the signs.
A young mother in her late twenties lived with her husband and newborn baby in a high-rise apartment in downtown Los Angeles. Her sister was going through a nasty divorce and had moved in, planning to stay until she got herself sorted out. It was great for the new mom because her sister adored the baby and was very helpful with the chores. One night, this sister went out on an errand and didn’t come back. She had taken the elevator to the top of the building and jumped. The distraught young mother said she was in this group to figure out what she had done to make her sister do this.
As I ranked the stories, the worst was the pregnant twenty-six-year-old whose husband asphyxiated himself. It made me wonder if there was a pattern emerging: asphyxiation seemed to be the method du jour for the thirty-and-under set. So why didn’t it work for my parents? Were they too old?
It was all too complicated.
As I sat there ranking these personal tragedies based on their level of drama and loss—always the screenwriter—I began to wonder what kind of person I was. From as far back as I can remember, my mother compared me to my friends or her friends’ children. It began with my beloved friend and neighbor, Barbara King. My mother never understood why I didn’t keep myself as neat as Barbara. It started there, but it never ended.
As I grew up, I picked up where my mother left off, always holding myself up to others and coming up short. Now I had real evidence of my worthlessness: I measured people’s grief. I weighed their suffering or guilt against mine, and it made me feel better. It also filled me with shame, so I kept the “game” I was playing to myself.
Once released from the hospital and living in her own apartment, my mother made another failed suicide attempt. I took her to more doctors, and they adjusted her antidepressant meds—as if she didn’t have ample reason to be depressed. I even convinced her to attend a senior grief counseling group. True to the maxim “Let no good deed go unpunished,” my mother returned from that grief group further regressed, because a widower ten years her junior had hit on her. She was an extremely vain and beautiful woman who, with her square jaw, high cheeks, and creamy skin looked gorgeous at every age. A man, let alone a younger man, finding her attractive would normally delight her, but she viewed this romantic advance with horror. She would never be comfortable with another man. She didn’t want another man. She wanted my father. She never returned to the group.
What scared me most was that she would do it again, incorrectly, and leave herself in a vegetative or equally horrific condition. She didn’t announce the date or the time; she didn’t have to. It wasn’t a matter of if my mother would kill herself, only when.
Meanwhile, I was meant to fly to Washington, DC, to accept a media award from the American Bar Association. Once again life imitated my stage play. I was about to receive recognition for my achievement as a writer and a producer of a film, and instead of enjoying the moment, I was upstaged by another parental crisis. I secured a vow from my mother that she wouldn’t try and off herself in my absence. I then arranged for her to stay at the home of a widow she’d known for many years.
When I got to Washington, I couldn’t relax. I was eager to pick up the award and go home. Anytime I heard a phone ring, I jumped. During the ceremony, my thoughts drifted to my father. He’d gone to law school, but after the war he went into business. It’s what the clever young Jewish men were doing when they came home. If ever there was a man not cut out for business, it was he, as his subsequent fortunes bore out. His “failure” (as he always referred to it) had reversed itself in recent years. He came out of retirement and began to practice law, preparing wills, handling easy divorces, and such. He was enormously proud of this accomplishment and particularly pleased because it brought in much-needed income. I wondered if he’d be proud that his daughter was receiving an award from the group he held in such high esteem.
Sitting in that room in DC, it finally struck me: the battle was over, and I had lost. I would never have my parents’ approval. Nothing I had done before or would do in the future would change that. Even faced with what he believed were his final moments on earth, all my father could leave my brother and me were a few cruel words. There would be no tearful goodbyes, no expressions of love, regrets, or missed opportunities—the chapter with my father was closed.
My mother’s final chapter was still a work in progress.
I returned to Los Angeles and found my mother exactly as I left her—eager and ready to join my father. Again, I urged my brother to fly down and see her one last time, but he declined.
The following day, my brother’s premonition came true. I found my mother’s body. She was clever and had bought a book on suicide, which signaled to the world, primarily me, that she was serious. I cut the plastic bag from her face, in the event she was still alive. She wasn’t. She appeared to be asleep. Her cheek felt cool and smooth, like marble. I kissed her forehead and apologized. I told her that I was sorry that she had been so unhappy, that her life hadn’t turned out the way she’d dreamed, that she’d never believed or understood how much I loved her and would miss her. I left the apartment as I found it, in case the police wanted to check the glass where she had mixed sleeping pills and alcohol. And then I went home, an orphan.
To understand what comes next, you must understand my grief yardstick. I’m crappy at math, so I couldn’t quantify it, but I put my situation as worse than Heroin-Overdosed Son, but not nearly as bad as Young Pregnant Widow. In any case, it was time to return to my suicide group, and I was going to walk in and trump everyone. Even Young Pregnant Widow. I was not happy about this. I consi
dered avoiding the subject, or casually referencing it in the course of a story, something like “… with both parents gone …” But it seemed counterproductive to be in a suicide group and not mention the fact that your mother had just joined your father in heaven or hell or, in the case of my parents, in an urn on my piano. I considered saving my mother’s suicide for the next group that was being formed, but I didn’t want to spend another ten weeks measuring a fresh batch of guilty grievers. I had no choice.
It was customary for the leader, herself a survivor, to ask if anybody had anything they would like to say. We had recently passed a milestone: when the leader asked that question the last several weeks, somebody had always spoken up. Not so this time. Everybody shifted in their seats, looked at their hands or feet. It was as though the silence screamed out to me to speak, telling me the longer I waited to make the announcement, the more difficult it would be.
“I’d like to say something.” I then proceeded to do what my husband always accuses me of, qualifying what comes next. “I realize this isn’t a competition. I mean, I’m not trying to upstage anybody.” I took a deep breath and continued, “My mother killed herself the night before last.”
It was a hot summer night in a building that had no air-conditioning. The fluorescent overhead lighting buzzed, emitting heat and radiation, making the already stifling environment even more so. Forget the bullshit that dry heat is better. Extreme heat sans humidity is just as miserable. It was claustrophobic. The room was so quiet I could hear people sweating. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the man whose father had died in the tub said, “Well, that’s a showstopper.”
The room erupted into laughter. Even the group leader couldn’t restrain herself from joining in. It was as if somebody had pricked a balloon, releasing all the air. Tears rolled down the faces of people whom I had never seen manage the slightest of smiles. It marked a turning point for the group. Because despite all the intimacy that such a group implies, we had not yet allowed ourselves to laugh in our time of unimaginable grief, for fear we’d be seen as callous or cruel. Breaking that unspoken taboo liberated us. Before this moment, we were connected by grief. Now, we were connected by something equally as powerful: laughter.
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