The green light begins to move back and forth across the screen as fast as my eyes can follow, and I think about how my body feels as I remember. I find that the more agitated I am, the faster I want the light to move. Often I feel a buzzing of anxiety rising up in my chest, around my eyes, getting more intense and then gradually dropping off. Images that are related and sometimes completely unrelated will pop into my head. After a minute or so, Kim will stop the light and ask, “What came up for you?” After I explain what I saw and what I am feeling, she will say, “Okay, go with that,” and I will continue to follow the light.
For reasons that are not well understood but that seem to be connected to what happens to our brains during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep—when our eyes move rapidly from side to side and we dream—this kind of therapy allows associations to arise and, for me at least, both the memory and its corresponding feelings are transformed. The intensely frightening and disturbing memories of Peter’s death and the months leading up to it, the condition of his house, the drugs I found there, my fear—all become softer, more muted, less intrusive. EMDR allows me to process my traumatic memories and, somehow, helps me feel better, both my mind and body. I can sleep without seeing Peter’s face the minute I close my eyes. I can lie down on my mat at the end of a yoga class with my arm bent at the elbow and resting on my abdomen—the way Peter’s arm was positioned when I found him—and not have a panic attack.
In his book, The Body Keeps Score, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk wrote that “knowing what we feel is the first step to knowing why we feel that way.” In 2007, van der Kolk and several colleagues published the results of a study they conducted that compared the effectiveness of different treatments for trauma. Patients received either EMDR, the antidepressant Prozac, or a placebo. After eight EMDR sessions one in four patients were completely cured (their PTSD scores had dropped to negligible levels), compared to one in ten for those taking Prozac. Van der Kolk reported that eight months later, 60 percent of those who had received EMDR still scored as completely cured; all those who had taken Prozac relapsed when they went off the drug.
During one session soon after I view the police photos, the phrase that sums up my state of mind is “I am powerless.” It’s the feeling that I don’t have control over anything, because if I did, how could this have happened? How is it this was able to happen right in front of me without my seeing it? In the year and a half or so before Peter died, I had found every possible reason for his erratic behavior and declining health other than the most obvious—that he was a drug addict. Stress, exhaustion, mental fatigue, poor diet, depression, bipolar disorder—all of those I considered. That he could be an IV drug abuser? That never occurred to me.
Was it my own implicit biases? Was it intentional? In the same way my brain narrowed my vision that morning in July when I found Peter on the bathroom floor, deciding for me what I could psychologically and emotionally handle, did I unconsciously or, on some level consciously, narrow my understanding of what was happening? And if I did, was that because I felt I didn’t have the power to do anything about it? Felt I did not have the power to get Peter to admit he needed help?
EMDR also allows for the “installation” of positive feelings and associations; for that, the green light moves very slowly. Near the end of this session, Kim will ask me to describe how I want to feel, rather than how I’m actually feeling. The phrase I will be working toward believing is: I cannot control everything, but I am not powerless. It will take a while, but I will come to understand—really, deeply understand—something that should have been obvious: I cannot control anyone else’s choices. As powerful as addiction is, there was a period of time—and perhaps that period was so small and the window so narrow that if you blinked you would have missed it—where Peter was not yet battling an addiction. He was just having what he considered a good time, hanging out with other people who liked getting high. But he made choices during that period, conscious choices, to keep going, to kick things up notch by notch until he was putting needles into his veins.
Whenever it was that Peter crossed that line from consciously making decisions to just responding to his addiction, it was also a point at which none of us who cared about him could have exerted any control. Nothing I could have done, nothing our children could have done, would have changed that. Something else was at play then, something I don’t understand and Peter probably didn’t either.
■ ELEVEN
July 23, 2015
IT’S BEEN TWELVE DAYS since Peter died and today is his memorial service. Jeff, Peter’s boss, told me on the phone last week that people in the office were distracted and upset; they needed closure. And Peter’s family began asking about a funeral, because they, too, needed some kind of closure. Ironically, the last thing Anna, Evan, and I want is to memorialize Peter, when we’re still trying to understand what happened. But outside of a small group of friends and family, most of those gathering here today think Peter died from a heart attack or something like it. Perhaps if they knew the truth, they would understand why closure, for us at least, is going to take much more time than the length of this memorial service.
So here we are, at the Powerhouse, a community center in the same beach town in which Peter lived. It was, actually, once a power plant, built in the 1920s to supply hot water to a hotel that’s long gone. The only thing left from those days is the smokestack that rises into the sky, overlooking the beach. The Powerhouse has a large all-purpose room, open and airy, with polished wood floors that can fit about 120 white folding chairs, which several of my friends came early to help set up and configure into rows.
It’s a Thursday afternoon, so most of Peter’s colleagues will be here; the firm is providing a shuttle from its office a few miles away. It’s been eight work days since he died, and I’m told the firm has reassigned his clients to colleagues and reassigned his secretary; his office was cleaned out and its contents delivered to his house two days ago. I offered to clean it out myself, thinking no one would willingly volunteer for such a gruesome task. I knew what he was likely doing in his office, so I thought it best if I were the one to deal with it. But it had already been done. The speed and efficiency with which the firm has packaged up and erased Peter’s existence feels breathtaking to me.
Peter’s parents, aunt, sister, and brother are here. Yesterday afternoon I visited his parents at their hotel and steeled myself for an avalanche of tears, for this loss to have broken them open in a million ways. But his parents weren’t crying. They were sad, of course, terribly sad, but subdued and composed. Peter’s mom and I hugged, and there was mention of God’s will and of “being with the Lord now.” Ah, yes, I thought. This is what death is like when you have faith, and when that faith is the lens through which you view the world, including life and death. Peter’s parents, who were told he died of a heart infection but not how he contracted it, see his death as much as a beginning as an end, the start of his eternal life. I am certain they believe they will see their son again in Heaven. Yet it’s this word-for-word belief in the Bible that created a distance between Peter and his parents, and it was something he complained about often over the years.
Anna and Evan are sitting in the front row, holding sheets of paper on which they have composed brief remembrances of their father. We rehearsed what each of us had written before one another last night. They are holding their speeches in their hands, their faces expressionless. I know they are exhausted and not ready to do this. Neither am I.
The twelve days leading up to this service today have been a living hell of activity: interviewing financial advisers (something I didn’t even know one could do), finding an accountant capable of filing a host of tax returns that include three years for which Peter didn’t even bother filing, as well as what will be an estate tax return, and then returns for trusts that have yet to be set up. I’ve been filling out mountains of forms—financial, insurance, motor vehicle, Hea
lth and Human Services, IRS, COBRA, and on and on. It’s an overwhelming amount of information to process and a tidal wave of to-do lists. Last week Anna and Evan met for the first time with the estate’s attorney, Jenny Bratt, whom I have hired to handle the probate work. When the kids and I got to her office, Jenny and the paralegal that works with her had a handout prepared for each of us, separating probate into its various phases, trying to break down what is happening and what will happen as we move forward. It is a long and exhaustive list of items and although I don’t know it yet, I won’t even be able to get started for another three months, which is how long it is going to take for the court to appoint me executor of Peter’s estate. And the process of probate—of truly settling that estate—will take nearly two years.
I have made a list of Peter’s assets for Jenny, a list of contractors who could assess necessary repairs to his house and prepare bids, met with three realtors, two bank officers, waited in a line for a death certificate, and found trauma counseling for my kids. And that’s not even the worst of it. The worst of it was Peter’s phone.
It was on his bed when he died, a new, very large iPhone 6 Plus of which I was terrified. It sat in the top drawer of the desk in my office, and each morning at six A.M. the phone’s alarm went off, its volume steadily increasing, so that even through two closed doors—my office and my bedroom—I could hear it. I couldn’t sleep if it was anywhere near me, so instead I raced from my bed every morning into my office, trying not to wake my kids, pulled the desk drawer open, and grabbed the phone, its screen flashing urgently: “Take Meds!” “Take Meds!” over and over until I turned it off. I couldn’t figure out how to disable that alarm.
And then there were the texts from drug dealers, which continued for several days after Peter’s death. “Hey bro, need some sprinkles?” and “Where are you?” and “Hey bro, you dead?” I considered texting back: “Bro, I’m dead,” but didn’t. I could see texts going back months, to and from his dealers, a lapse in judgment it’s hard to imagine Peter making. This phone didn’t belong to him; it belonged to his law firm. I will obsess over its texts for months, having photographed them, in an effort to identify the dealers, the drugs, the timing of his death.
Peter, May 28, 9:35 A.M: “Can we also get seven of blondie?” to someone whose name was Mike. Between June 8 and June 10, Peter was trying desperately to get something “blonde.” (According to a DEA report, “blonde” is slang for cocaine.) Mike asked on June 8: “What are you looking for blonde wise? That way I can do everything at once.” Peter asked him to just call. At 6:23 P.M. Mike texted: “Going to be bummed but he said tomorrow for sure. So would you like to do everything tomorrow including the blonde?” Peter responded that he’d been waiting a week already. Mike texted back: “Yes this guy is totally reliable but I guess is just taking a few days extra because you know it’s not the easiest thing to come by always. But I know it’s totally a bummer when it gets pushed back extra days and stuff and I apologize.”
The next day, a Wednesday, a night Anna and Evan stayed at his house, Peter texted Mike: “Dude…Whatup…save me here” and finally, at 9:10 that night, Mike responded: “Should be in tonight. You up and ready?” and Peter replied: “Yep yep yep! What’s the story? Def waiting and ready tonight.” Mike texted back: “I’m ready come over.” Peter responded: “Leave here in 5. So see u in 20.” I’m wondering what he told the kids that night, or if he just left and didn’t say anything.
July 1, 5:55 P.M., a text from Peter to Mike: “Hey bro…howz blondie—ready for our date? Even a small one tonight?” He tried again on July 2 at 5:42 P.M.: “You alive there? Where is my girl blondie? Looking for my date ASAP! Lol…” And then: “Hey bro, wz sending to ur other text. Looking for a date with Blondie:-) haven’t seen Blondie in days!” Some of Peter’s texts mention “paper” which I determined means cash. June 4, for instance, Peter wrote: “What is the total amount of paper needed?” the response, this time from a phone number with the area code 808, was: “2550,” and then, “Oops I forgot 360 from the pinks. 2900. Sorry.” The two of them met somewhere about 2 P.M. that day, a Thursday. When I looked through Peter’s bank statements, I saw that he was spending more money on drugs each month, at least for the last several months, than he was paying in support for the kids and me—as much as $8,000 a month.
The texts on Peter’s phone were disturbing enough on their own, but there were photos too. One is Peter, shirtless, high as a kite, wild-eyed and silly in a bathroom mirror selfie, and photos of other people, someone standing in front of a toilet, flipping through a magazine, a tourniquet around her arm, just above the elbow. There are photos of Snowball investigating a fully loaded syringe near the edge of the bathroom sink, her little pink ears dropped back and her tail curved up like a comma. The syringe has a torn piece of paper from a yellow-lined legal pad taped around it with the partially visible words “NOT F….” written in capital letters and red marker. There are photos of white-lined notebook paper with a table drawn in Peter’s hand, containing the day, time, and dose of injections and a running total, measured in what I assume are milligrams.
* * *
—
NOW HERE WE ARE, with poignant speeches, funny stories, even music. Anna has prepared an emotionally wrenching a capella version of “Blackbird,” the only Beatles song Peter ever liked. Last night, when the kids and I were rehearsing our speeches, Anna said she wished we didn’t have to do this right now.
“I know,” I said. “I wish we didn’t have to either. But the people Dad worked with, and Grandma and Grandpa and the rest of the family, want this service too. This isn’t for us. This is for everyone else. Like putting on a play.” And it is, absurdly, like theatre. What I would really like to say to the audience is “I can clear this up for all of you in five minutes, so you can stop asking for details about what happened and why.” But I don’t—we don’t—because we are afraid to tell anyone the truth. It feels to me that Peter’s firm is tiptoeing around the circumstances of his death, and that makes me fear telling the truth to anyone beyond a very small circle of friends and family. I know Wilson Sonsini sent a firm-wide email notifying its employees about Peter’s death, posted a note about it on the firm’s website, and took down Peter’s attorney profile. But I have no idea who there, other than Jeff, knows how he really died.
It could be no one he worked with suspected anything was seriously wrong with Peter, although the needle caps, tourniquet, and alcohol wipes in his work bag suggest he was shooting up in the office. Today, however, is not about conjecture. It’s about memorializing. And I will do what I’ve been asked to do: provide closure. I have orchestrated today’s careful performance in which Peter will be canonized. And then everyone at his firm can get back to billing hours.
Matt, an associate who worked for Peter, comes up to the front of the room and takes the microphone. He has been so shaken by his boss’s sudden death he can barely speak, and tears run down his cheeks as he talks about Peter as a mentor and friend. I look around the room to see how his co-workers are taking this heartbreaking display and am stunned. The room is packed and there is a winding staircase that leads to an upper floor where people who did not get seats are standing. Many of them are staring at their phones. They are reading texts and emails, perhaps even reviewing documents on those tiny screens; some of them are actually thumb-typing. Quite a few of those sitting in the back have their heads bent toward their laps, hands clearly cradling phones. Their colleague and friend is dead—for all they know from working too hard—and they can’t stop working long enough to listen to what is being said about him.
It’s possible that this is how they are coping with the unexpected death of their fifty-one-year-old colleague. Research from Larry Richard, an organizational psychologist, former attorney and founder of LawyerBrain, a consultancy that uses data about the personalities of lawyers to enhance their performance, shows that in general, lawyers are hooked
on intellectual validation—that little shot of dopamine they get every time they solve a client’s problem. Dopamine makes us feel better; being needed by someone, even a client, makes us feel important. Maybe the attorneys here believe being needed will act as a hedge against their own mortality. How can you die if your clients are emailing you requests for opinion letters and document reviews? How can you die if you have a conference call on your calendar that afternoon? But, of course, you can.
When I took Peter’s phone off of his bed, I looked at the call history to see the last person with whom he spoke. When you’re dying, I wondered, who do you call? Peter dialed in to a conference call.
I phoned the number to identify it and found it was a conference line, the kind of number you dial and then are prompted to enter a pin number, after which you are connected to others in the conference. The last call of Peter’s life wasn’t to his kids, me, his parents, a friend, even one of his dealers. Peter—drifting in and out of consciousness and barely able to sit up—had dialed in to a work call.
He very nearly predicted this would happen. Right before Peter became a partner at Wilson, when we were still married, he told me he couldn’t see himself working this intensely long-term. “I can’t do this for the next twenty years,” he said. “I can’t physically do it.”
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