Christina’shomeremedies.com
When I read of Marie Osmand’s 18-year-old son Michael Blosil leaping to his death from his LA apartment, and the recent suicides of actor Andrew Koenig and designer Alexander McQueen, I thought of my best friend Delia, who took her life at 37. Like them, she was privileged and loved. Like them, she was young and clinically depressed. And like Blosil, she had attempted suicide before.
Delia was the girl with everything: a loving husband, two adorable and adoring young daughters, an 18th century farmhouse filled with antiques, set on lush grounds. She was smart, kind, beautiful, revered in our Westchester county New York village, active in the community. Hundreds of people crammed the sanctuary and grounds at her funeral.
Nine years before her death, when I moved to my nearby house with my first husband and two young sons, Delia came over with a bouquet of garden flowers to welcome us. I was charmed by her grace and warmth, and we soon became best friends.
Our families celebrated New Years at each others’ homes, we took our children trick or treating along the back roads where the Headless Horseman himself had traveled. We traded books, we started a monthly dinner where we prepared foods of the world. Delia and I supported each other, talked every day, shared dreams, confided about our fears.
Seven years before she succeeded, Delia attempted to take her life with an overdose of pills. Her husband called our house in a panic and we rushed over and threw her in the front seat of our van and speeded to the nearby hospital. She was in a deep coma, but came out of it. People were told she had an allergic reaction.
I didn’t see that attempt coming, and for the next years I could never really forget it or completely trust her mood. She was fragile but seemed happy enough. She completed her Master’s at Teachers College Columbia, and became a popular elementary school teacher.
About a year before she died, Delia became gaunt, her eyes haunted. She was seeing a psychiatrist, and on meds, but appeared lost and frightened. She told me she felt like she was in “a dark hole.” She said there was nothing I could do. She doubted everything she did.
I felt we were losing her, but I didn’t know what to do. And then in May, when the air was filled with the scent of lilacs -- the weekend before Mother’s Day-- she became overly happy, camping out with her daughters by her pond. Strange behavior for a woman who had never slept outside before.
And then the call from her housekeeper on a weekday morning. The police had already arrived. I was two blocks away, and ran over to see my best friend removed from her house in a body bag. The door to her car was still open from when she had rushed home from teaching.
Her husband, who worked in the city, couldn’t bear to hear the details. He had to commute for an hour, knowing she was gone, but not knowing much more -- yet. I was with him when he told his daughters, who were 10 and 12. They cried, and then went out to play. And then I called her friends, who didn’t believe me. “She had everything,” they said. “Why would she take her life?” What did her husband do to her that they didn’t know?
They were trying to find a reason. But depression can be a terminal disease. There is no "reason," any more than getting a heart attack or cancer has a reason.
Delia did leave a note. I never found out what it said. I know that she loved her family more than anyone I knew, and would not have left them if she could have endured her suffering.
Years later William Styron, the author of Sophie’s Choice who suffered from depression, came out with a thin book titled Darkness Visible. I read it and learned as best possible the terror of my friend.
Delia’s husband never remarried. Her daughters grew up to be lovely women, like their mother. Her photo is the only one on my living room table who is not a relative. She remains forever 37. Like Alexander McQueen, Andrew Koenig and Michael Blosil, she was a beloved person who died too young from a dread disease.
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Comments
well written.
Depression kills. More than we know.
The ones left behind spend the rest of their lives living with questions and doubt.
I am sorry you lost such a dear friend.
I lost a friend when I was seventeen. It has shaded my whole life. I'll read Styron's book.
some of us are more fragile than is healthy or can be handled at any given time. thank heavens for antidepressants but even those don't always alleviate everyone's symptoms. the symptoms themselves are only tentacles of the beast.
these deaths - i can't say "senseless" because I know it takes an emotional enormity I've never experienced for someone to decide with finality, "I can't bear to live with this pain".
there but for the grace of god..
The sad thing is that, because the person shows no physical pain, the decease goes unnoticed and untreated many times. Another silent killer of people and a sad one indeed.
Normal depression doesn't touch it and I'm afraid most folks equate that with this deep clinical depression.
The only reason I even remotely "get it" is because for years, in my twenties and early thirties I would get severely depressed about a week before menses. It was as if a cloud overtook me. Or I was in some sort of black pit. It was the most oppressive thing I ever felt and it was almost like someone was ACTUALLY smothering me or sitting on me or covering me with heaviness. Fortunately for me, it would last maybe 4 days or 5. I cannot imagine feeling that way every single day. I CAN imagine why suicide would feel better.
I'm sorry that you lost such a dear and caring friend.
A sad story, touchingly told.
(Harry, there is a reason for everything. Just not usually because someone is mistreated. People look for concrete answers. We still don't know why these things happen, but of course there is hope that in the future we can find the answers.
I guess we who have our ups and downs but don't have that particular brain chemistry are just very very lucky. William Styron by the by, never recovered. His daughter wrote something I thought better left alone because his book gave so much hope. But according to his eldest, he was sick until he died, never recovered as that book made us believe. Thank you for this portrait of Delia. She is not an anomoly much as we'd like to think so. Condolences to all of us who've lost dear ones to such a death.
as someone who has lived either in or near the edge of the abyss, it is difficult to put into words how one is feeling disconnected, isolated and hopeless. it makes no sense to those around us.
another problem is the exhaustion that depression causes: physical as well as emotional. all during cait's illness i coped by putting my head down and doing what needed doing. now it is harder.
I have read that spring time is actually the worst time for suicides. There is a spike at Christmas, but early spring is the most common. I have ideas on why this must be. I have tried to write about it, but haven't yet.
Depression just sucks all of the joy out of you - as well as any rationality. It gives even the sweetest things a dark tinge.
I was never as lost as your friend Delia, which is why my wife's love and support helped me get through it. And when I mention to people that I've suffered from it, I'm surprised by how many tell me they or something close has been treated. I keep my eyes open now for signs - either in myself or people I love.
RATED
I never got to find out what my brother wrote either. I'm sure it would not have answered anything though.
R
I was so angry with him. We had both come out of what could only be generously classified as a disadvantage childhood, he fromt he tobacco farms of Georgia and South Carolina, myself from mexican labor camps in South Texas. We clung to each other as oldsters working our way thru the academia system and got pretty good jobs. We had made it! Or so we both thought. Like many of the others here Victor's behavior began changing. At first he only had a few questions about my choice to become a Jew but then he would berate me when I visited. I pulled his wife aside and asked what had happened. It seems he had joined the Catholic Church, which, locally, was pretty charismatic and aggressive about it's outreach. Like others here I blamed myself that perhaps he thought I was abandoning our friendship (not a shred of truth or reality to that) or that he genuinely felt my soul was in danger ((not that I knew of)
and, finally, as I spoke with some of his department colleagues the more Victor climbed, the worse his behavior became, drinking endlessly, using coke. It hurts my heart to think of him even yet after all these years. I remember once when he was in his cups, he cried and said, " I'm a whore! I've become a whore.!" I told him no one could take away those values he held dear and that the way to not be a whore was to not bend over and hold those value cards in your front pocket right under folks' noses. I don't think he ever learned to play the game. I miss him still...and thanks for the space to talk about him a bit.
i'm moved by the warmth.
Thank you for shining a light on a dark subject -- both the extreme sadness that drives people to suicide and the pain that suicide inflicts on those left behind. I've known people who've killed themselves, others who've tried and several survivors who were left behind when family members committed suicide. It leaves a deep mark that never can be erased. But as you explain, for many people, it feels like the only relief from pain that hasn't yielded to treatment (of course, it also sometimes is a horrifyingly abrupt and careless decision in the wake of an immediate hurt, especially in the young).
I once knew someone who, like your friend, seemed to "have everything" including many people who loved her, and killed herself in her early 40's, the prime of her life. That people still feel no choice but to end their lives in those situations shows exactly how powerful depression is.
Lucy
As you know, because you've been kind enough to have read, I have written about my friend who died too young---also by her own hand in a way---a hand that held too tightly and too often to a bottle.
I loved the image of her photo with the ones of your family---and of course, the image of her caught at 37 forever.
what a great thing Lea that you really understood your friend. She was lucky to have you in her life.
She certainly had a good friend in you...but no friend or relative can fill the void when there just isn't any answer.
-rated-
This is a beautiful tribute._r
Monte
It has been my observation that the closer one is to perfection, the less tolerance one has for imperfection -- but then that's applying logic to what is obviously an irrational act.
R
Leaving many echoes for those to ponder why,
How could we be touched by the beautiful ray,
and have it abruptly vanished and go away.
No choice, no voice, just memories treasured
Not to be replaced, none to equal in measure,
Alas! we resolved that it was their choice not ours
Like a rose in full bloom, when we still see it flowers
It was not ever ours to hold, there's no one to scold,
For how could we ever imagine that this would unfold,
Just a flicker of light, inevitably that's you and me,
Twilight's best splendor - reserved for us, in eternity.
From the collected works "Transformations in Trauma & Tragedies" by K. Valencia Williams copyright.2010 (dedicated to all of those departed ones who choose their ending & those of us who remain...on the other side of the door...trying to make sense out of the pieces in the everyday midst of our beginnings).
Thank you Lea! I, too...have lost loved ones to suicide; both abruptly and the slow-stewing ones of self-destructive behavior, courting death over a period of time. That's what it is, you see & it bears worthy mention here as a reminder to all: that certainly if love is not nurtured - it leaves a space for hate to fill; and if life is not embraced with certainty...then death with be courted with a seduction that is always "final." It remains our choice!
And again, I so appreciate these comments.
Thanks for telling the story of your friend.
if i hadn't had my children i don't think i'd have lasted. but there are times after this past decade of cait's illness and death that i have to keep looking at my son and know what it would do to him.
I think the greatest gift you have given your friend, even now after her death, is in saying that you hear her and understand that her pain was tremendous. Sometimes, that is the best thing someone who suffers from depression can hear from a friend - that yes, I understand that what you are feeling is REAL.
Well-deserved EP. So very sorry for the loss of your friend, even if it is so many years ago.
My daughter with epilepsy suffered, at the onset of menses, a two year period of something that looked like a type of psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar. She would be happy making cookies with her sister and I and suddenly, as though possessed, want to jump out the window or break her fingers.
Because she already had neurologic problems we sought help immediately. This was not an teenager looking for attention or character defects. She was diagnosed with every sort of mental and emotional disorder found in the DSM-IV and we saw all the specialists who would treat her but not stop what was driving her mad. I finally found her syndrome in a neurology tome -- a temporary temporal lobe seizure-related disorder often mistaken for psychosis. She was taught to let us know "the bad brain is coming" and so we could give her chemical and, even, physical restraints until the bad brain passed. As suddenly as it appeared, it stopped after two years.
Our brain chemistry balance is so fragile and depression is a killer. Not the environmental kind that passes, but the neurochemical kind -- the kind that no matter what you do or how much therapy you get and how many medications you are prescibed and no matter how happy you are with your life and your self, it follows pathways that truly take its victim's thoughts hostage until they see no other way to end the pain than to end their lives.
We were lucky our daughter's temporal lobe epilepsy syndrome was short lived. She is a fighter for her life and yet we could have lost her if the "bad brain" stayed around long enough to convince her to not just give her the idea to suddenly break her fingers but to impulsively jump through a window or off a two story deck.
What happened to your friend is cunning, baffling, and powerful. I am so sad for her suffering, her impossible demise, and her family, friends, and you. What a beautiful woman to have known. And what a moving testimonial to Delia.
Joan, so sorry you had to suffer. So many of you have, or know someone who has suffered depression. I am not surprised, but saddened. I do recommend Styron's book. He is able to put words to something almost impossible to describe, and it is enlightening to all.
My first wife took her life, but waited until our daughter was in her 20s to do so, after two decades of self-destruction and hanging on. Depression is pervasive, and difficult to discuss, even today.
You bring such humanity to this. They were lucky to have a friend like you.
I am glad her daughters are doing well.
Depression is a hateful bastard of an illness that is too often dismissed as a character flaw or a lack of willpower. Thank you for speaking out and shedding light on this ruthless killer.
My step-daughter tried a number of times, times which we weren't aware of. I believe now, that had we known, we might of been able to do something. However, I have to let that go as well, because even if watched them as closely as you can, somehow, soneway, if they are that unhappy, they will succeed.
So in the end, there is nothing that we could of done. They are in peace now. No more black holes. For that we can grateful.
Your piece also reminded me of a time when I drove my son over to his best friend's house for a birthday party the boy's mother was having for him. Pulling into their driveway, I saw Phil's mom going here and there, fixing the balloons she'd attached to the barn and lamppost, straightening the tablecloth on the picnic table decked out with party fare and presents at one end. She was laughing and greeting the guests. Two weeks later she shot herself in the head in their home. The devastating contrast between the party and her suicide has never lessened in the fifteen years since. Phil is and will always be my unofficially adopted son in my heart.
It is so easy for some who have not experienced depression to say "just get over it." Oh, man, would that it were so for those who struggle daily, hourly, second by second to stay alive. Thanks for your post, Lea.