Several years ago, my best friend of twenty years killed herself. We had done our psychology internships together. Although we came at the practice of psychology from different perspectives (she was strongly behavioral and I was much more psychodynamic at the time), we had many stimulating discussions about our work. She and her husband also became an integral part of our family and became "Aunt Sheryl" and "Uncle Gary" to my two young children.
Gary was a physician in a fast-paced high-pressure trauma center. Years in that setting eventually wore on him, and he took a job with a small practice in northern California. Sheryl moved out there after handling the sale of their home on the east coast. She had practiced psychology only intermittently after internship, and hadn't completed the requirements for licensure, so still had to be supervised by others in her work. She spent the rest of her time in community and charitable work.
The move to California was hard on Sheryl. She was thousands of miles away from family, had no friends there, and no professional identity. While she had had some vague physical ailments over the years, her health took a definite turn for the worse after the move. Gary spent much of his free time researching possible diagnoses, but to no avail. To say that he became frustrated is to put it mildly. Sheryl, on the other hand, became quietly despondent and withdrawn.
The details of the night I got the call is forever seared into my brain. As soon as I heard Gary's voice, I knew Sheryl was dead, but I instantly assumed it was an auto accident. As he went through the details of coming home from work and finding her body, I was enveloped by a whirlwind of emotions--indescribable pain, anger, loss, bewilderment. I also knew that my life was forever changed by her act.
As Gary and I talked by phone during the next few days, more details came to light--the manner of death, how Sheryl had staged her death scene, the amount of planning she put into her suicide, and that Gary was even briefly considered a suspect in her death. To make matters worse, her family back East also accused him of somehow being responsible for her death, that perhaps he had neglected her after the move or hadn't done enough to ease the transition for her.
I was ready to get on the next plane and head to California to be with Gary and help him with whatever arrangements needed to be made. He asked me to wait a couple of months until he felt ready to face the task of going through her possessions. Of course, I honored that and actually shared a very special time with Gary when I finally did visit. He turned over the task of sorting her belongings to me. We sat around and talked and laughed and cried. Gary and I remain good friends. He has remarried, a very special lady who has introduced him to an entirely different way of life.
The thing about suicide is that, so often, you never get what it was really about. Sheryl left a very lengthy, cryptic letter to both Gary and me. I read that letter over and over on my way home to my family. I concluded it actually raised more questions than it answered, and I even wondered if that was Sheryl's intent in writing it. Certainly Gary and I kept second-guessing ourselves. What had we missed that might have saved her life? I read and reread her emails to me over the last few years of her life to see what was between the lines that I didn't pick up on. And I found nothing. I don't know whether that was a blessing or not. To think that I might have been able to do something, but failed to do it, would have flooded me with a sense of lifelong guilt. On the other hand, to find no clues as to her state of mind, what the tipping point between life and death was for her, has left me with a sense of helplessness that I'll carry forever.
