Sunshower

Contents

Prelude

Prologue

SKY

1 / Our Life—The First Beginning

2 / Early Days

3 / Johanna

4 / Hotel California

5 / Birth and Death

RAIN

6 / The Ending

7 / Dick—Scenes

8 / Passage

9 / The Questions

10 / Death of Illusion—

End of the Myth

EARTH

11 / Grief Work

12 / The Early Months—Beginning

13 / Therapists

14 / Family and Friends

15 / Messages from the World

16 / Back in Time

17 / What Now?

18 / Richard

19 / Children

20 / Shelter

21 / First Anniversary

22 / Work

LIGHT

23 / Alone-Ali One

24 / Rebirth

25 / The Path

26 / Signs of Life—Opening theDoor to Love

27 / Learning to Love

Epilogue—Happily Ever AfterIs Now

Thanks go to my family and friends, those mentioned in thebook and those others known in my heart who gave me hope,encouragement, and love, as I came through this passage; andI want to thank a special friend, Paul Brenner, M.D., for hissupport, love, and insight. I also wish to thank Judy Gingold,Editor of My Turn at Newsweek, for publishing A Survivor’sNotes (April 30, 1979); the many kind people who wrote tome after A Survivor’s Notes appeared, portions of whoseletters I gratefully acknowledge quoting here; Jane JordanBrowne, my agent, for her encouragement and confidence;and Richard Marek, my publisher, for giving tangible life tothese thoughts.

This book is dedicated to the memory of Dick,and the life he had in him, but most especially itis dedicated to Richard, our son, and all the lifehe has ahead of him.

Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

Good-morning, and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich,—yes, richer than a king,—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Not Waving But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

Stevie Smith

One night my brother and his wife took their little girl,Caitlin, who was three, outside to look at the stars.

Caitlin said, If I had butterfly wings, I would fly to thosestars.

Marcia, her mother, wanting to give her reality, said, Buthoney, birds and butterflies can fly, but people can’t.

Caitlin replied, Well, maybe I could go to the dump andfind an old pair of wings.

Prelude

Much is written about causes and prevention of suicide,but little is said about the shock, the sorrow, the shame, senseof failure, and guilt most survivors feel, and little is said abouthow life goes on afterwards. More and more families andfriends are left as survivors each day.

When someone takes his or her own life, it is seen as thesaddest statement anyone could ever make. At least in ourculture, this is so. Suicide is covered up, hidden by family andfriends. It is seen as a mark on the lives of those connected withit. But it happens. It is part of our human experience.

Sunshower is about light that comes after darkness, and it isabout the light that is, even in darkness. It is about thosesunshowers that are our release and baptism into more life.

This book is an outgrowth of an essay I wrote for Newsweek(My Turn, April 30, 1979, A Survivor’s Notes), dealingwith my husband’s suicide, and with the questions and choicesleft to me, my son, and all others in our situation.

My husband, Dick, and I had been married almost sixteenyears, and for the three before that we had been inseparable.

We had a wonderful son, Richard, who was twelve when hisfather died. We had had a baby girl named Johanna, who was aDown’s Syndrome child and lived six months. Dick worked forthe University of California in an administrative position. I dida little freelance writing and some art work. We owned a housein a fairly comfortable neighborhood. We had friends. We hadno major problems, no illnesses, no great debts.

One night, instead of coming home as he always did, Dickleft a suicide note in his car, then he must have walked aroundall night. At daybreak, as the sun rose, he jumped to his deathfrom an eleven-story building on the campus where heworked.

All dreams stopped. All reality was undone. The mirror oflife was shattered.

There were no observable clues, no threats of destruction,just a slightly noticeable withdrawal.

He was a man who seemed to have so much—thirty-eightyears old, attractive, intelligent. He was an extremely sensitive,logical, and gentle man. It always seemed he had so much togive, but how much did he ultimately give to himself? Did hethrow himself away like a piece of crumpled paper, or did hegive himself in a final offering to life? Maybe the answer liessomewhere in between.

Outwardly, he led a full, happy life. Inwardly he must havefelt terribly thwarted, pressured. Perhaps he felt grief, perhapshe felt despair.

His note to me began, Karen, This job has killed me.

Had his job, which did not not suit him, but which hecontinually tried to rise above, finally swallowed the lastremnant of spirit in him?

If he had been able to somehow fight back—take the risk ofdropping out, of killing the job—would he have had to killhimself?

If he had been able to voice his pain and frustration, and tobelieve he could find a listening ear, could he have been saved?

If those of us who knew him closely had seen him, reallyseen him, and not just our illusions of him, could he havelived?

Sunshower is not the story of why he did it, because there are

no real answers, only real questions. It tells of living beyondloss and shock, beyond a world turned inside out. This is not abook about death. It tells the story of coming back from thevalley of dying, of letting go and making a choice for living.

I write this book for everyone, for we all tread a line betweenlife and non-life everyday—life is fragile, love is fragile—and Iwrite it for those who have had to grapple with devastatingmysteries, who have had to find their way in the void, who havehad to find a light switch in the darkest of rooms.

Maybe that light won’t be found as soon as we would wish, orcome all at once, and maybe many steps will have to be taken,one by one, in order to reach it, but we, the survivors, do havea common goal—to work toward a release into life, just as ourmate, parent, child, or friend worked toward a release intodeath. By facing what has happened, not denying it or ourfeelings, and then going on, ironically the event can push usinto life deeply and transform us. Each day we live, we arechoosing life, creating life. That is the essence of this book.The word, sunshower, seems to crystallize something veryessential to me—the union of sadness and joy, of dark andlight—the point where we live.

It is just my story, not a story with answers. It is a mysterystory in the sense that life is a mystery. It is one person’s story,but I feel that all our struggles and all our joys are somehowone.

We all suffer when we lose someone we love. Those we loveare extensions of ourselves, and so when they die, we feel thatpart of us dies too. That is hard enough, but when that deathwas chosen, then as survivors we are terribly wounded. In ourstruggle to understand, we also have to cut ourselves free fromthe act itself—not from the person, or our love for him orher—and we have to realize that each person is ultimatelyresponsible for his or her own destiny. And I believe we haveto learn and grow beyond the pain—go on from such an act,even nurture ourselves with it. That is the creative act.

This is the story, pressed through the screen of my memoryand emotions, of Dick’s and my life together, and it is the storyof the aftermath—the survival and recovery of my son and me.

This is a story of loss, but it is also a story of rebirth.

Prologue

When I was five or six I was tap dancing with two other littlegirls on the stage at Central Grade School in Guthrie,Oklahoma. Everything was going fine—piano tinkling, ourtaps sounding on the hardwood floor, curls bobbing, smallpainted lips smiling, our green and red dresses bouncing—when suddenly without warning I fell flat on my face. In aninstant I was up, catching the dance step again, secretly hopingI had popped back so fast no one would notice. The crowdclapped and cheered. This was surprising and strange to me,and I knew then, of course, that they had noticed.

Later my mother told me she was amazed. She expected meto run off the stage crying. But I just wanted to keep dancing.The music hadn’t stopped, and I didn’t want to either.

K. Kenyon

SKY

I am afraidyou will knowme

and no longer seeyour vision of me,

so

I will tryto run ahead

away from a hell or heavenI can’t enter.

I move in sleep

and roll close to you

seeking my own fantasy,

and I awaken to the sound of rain.

(November, 1974)

1 / Our Life—The First Beginning

Memory, illusion, dream—it all exists only in my mind now.The circle of our life is complete. I pull out fragments, scenes,and scattered pictures—a mosaic of days …

I first met Dick at a Roaring Twenties party. It was 1959, atthe University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque. It was instantlike, if not yet love. He wore a derby on his thick dark hair, afake mustache, a red vest, and a garter on one arm. He wasslim and tall, and every now and then his soft green eyescaught mine. His manner was unaffected, his movements non-chalant. He was nineteen, and I was twenty.

The several strands of long beads I wore with my greenfringed dress clanked and swung around as we danced.

God, you’re really too much with all that stuff around yourneck, he teased. It was the kind of playful insult thatsometimes comes with long-term friendship, and this endearedhim to me, caused me to feel close to him. At the same time theteasing seemed to mask a certain shyness, I thought. Irecognized it. It was in me too.

I recall being drawn to Dick, and felt that if he cared for me,

I wouldn’t say no to him, that this was it. The feeling was sostrong it almost frightened me. Intimacy was there from thestart. I felt a sense of knowing Dick that went beyond words.

At the same time I sensed what felt to me like a small darkcloud over his head. It was as if there was a little lost boy inDick. He had a trace of cynicism about him that he tried tocover with the humor—something skeptical—something al-most disillusioned about him. I remember being touched bythis aspect of his personality and feeling that the skepticismmust come from his wanting to believe so much.

This cloud seemed small though, mixed in with the light ofhis intelligence, his sensitivity, the teasing, and the fun.

I soon forgot the touch of darkness, the deep sense ofvulnerability I sensed in him, and didn’t think of that particular image of a cloud again until everything was over. I pushedit away, and saw him in some ways as he was, and in some waysas I wanted to see him.

I believe I was attracted to him initially because his wit liftedme and gave me a feeling of happiness, and of closeness tohim; and I fell in love with him because his personality wasriding gently on top of enormous sensitivity—so strong youcould almost touch it, so quivering it stuck out all over him—and because he cared—about other people, about events, aboutwhat had happened, about what was happening, and aboutwhat was going to happen. I fell in love with him because hewas so alive, because when he looked at me, or anyone, youcould almost see inside him. He was not outwardly revealing,in fact he seemed to avoid that, but it was possible to catchglimpses. These glimpses he gave of himself were fleeting, andyet there was no real veil of pretense, no hostility guarding thegate of his soul, just a guarded hesitancy. And there was a lookof almost innocence about him, that he himself was innocentof.

A few weeks after we met, a friend called to tell me Dick wasin the hospital. He’d had an emergency appendectomy. I wentto the hospital to visit him. Another girlfriend of his waswalking down the hall from the room as I approached. Myheart began to beat faster. I began to think I shouldn’t havecome.

Dick was a little groggy from the medication, but seemedglad to see me. He also was feeling very annoyed at the wayone nurse had been treating him—in a condescending, almostmotherly way.

He asked me to pull the curtain all around his bed so that wecould have privacy.

The next day I came back, and soon after I came in he toldme to open the bedside table. When I did, I saw that hisfraternity pin was in there—carefully placed.

It’s for you, he said. If you want it.

Then, even though the curtain was once again drawn, wemust have steamed up all the windows on that floor.

From then on, we were inseparable. We spent as much timetogether as possible, in between studying and part-time jobs.

We seldom disagreed. In fact the only quarrel I can recallduring those days took place one evening on the sidewalk ofthe campus. Dick had thrown away several greeting cards I hadmade by hand and given him. In his house cleaning hehadn’t chosen to keep them. I suppose my feelings were hurt,and I wanted some indication that the cards and I meantsomething to him, thinking somehow those cards stood forlove. It was a quiet snow-fallen evening. Dick was anxious toend the discussion, to go to a class or a meeting, and so hewalked away before anything was resolved.

I went to the library to wait for him. The quarrel ordisagreement wasn’t finished, and now was held in limbo forthe two or so intervening hours. I remember worrying as Iwaited, thinking fearfully, this is the end. He’d never justwalked away, never left anything emotional unfinished before.

Time passed, and in a couple of hours I looked up from mybooks. Dick was standing there with a serious look on his face.Let’s go, he said. We talked, and I know I felt reassured,though I don’t recall now what he said. The fact he came backwas everything, and the fact he was so decisive with me meant alot. It was, I think, the only time, in all the years I was with him,that I ever doubted what we had—that I ever doubted hewould come back, or feared he wouldn’t be around. I alwaysfelt so totally he was there that it never occurred to me hemight someday be gone.

Several times during our college years he surprised me withbouquets of roses—not just one or two but a dozen—and eachtime a card would be included with words of love and of hisown happiness, in small, cramped handwriting.

Because Dick was in Naval ROTC he was required not tomarry until he graduated and received his commission in theMarine Corps. He complied, wanting what he felt was best forus in the long run. It seemed important to him to followthrough with what he had planned and what seemed right.One of his fraternity brothers, also in NROTC, had beensecretly married for a year, and I often wished, romantically,that Dick could be so daring—that we could take that risk. Ioften felt he was stubborn, and I knew he was immovable oncehe really made up his mind about something.

Three years passed, and on a crisp, bright day, Valentine’sDay, 1963, the snow glistening on distant mountains in themid-winter sun, we were married. Dick wore his uniform. Twodays earlier he had been commissioned a second lieutenant inthe Marine Corps. Now the four-year ROTC scholarship toUNM was to be paid back by spending four years in the MarineCorps. Dick had sought independence from his parents bytaking that scholarship. For the next four years he would haveto fulfill a role that always seemed incongruous.

I wore a white dress, a veil of French lace. My mother wasthere, trying to show happiness, but her eyes held that blend ofjoy and sadness mothers often feel at the weddings of theirchildren. I was her only daughter, and we had been close. NowI was leaving—moving across the United States. Dick’s parentsand his family came from Illinois. My brother gave me away.

It was the beginning of what we expected to be a happy life.I felt that whatever happiness was—it lay on the other side ofthose vows. I felt everything was ahead of us. One of ourfavorite songs had been Somewhere, from West Side Story. Wewere always waiting for that place for us.

As soon as the ceremony was over and we walked down theaisle, tears came to me—of nervousness and happiness. Now

we were one. Now it was until death do us part, but whoever listens to that line?

Going back is not to solve a mystery, or to find a cause.Perhaps going back is to see the gift that was there, and toretrace the steps that lead to today.

Our honeymoon was our drive from Albuquerque to Quantico, Virginia. We spent most of our first married year therewhile Dick was in basic training, learning to be a Marine. Iadjusted my life and learned how to be a wife—how to spendmy days, how to clean my house—a very different life from mybusy, active one before, involving work, school, my family,friends, and Dick.

We were close and playful the way newlyweds can be. I spenta lot of time during the day thinking up interesting dinners,and hours cleaning the house, trying to do everything right.We always had candles on the table. We went to plays, movies,and the National Gallery, in Washington, D.C. We playedtennis, and when I didn’t play well, which was usual, Dickwould encourage me, challenge me to do better. We found alittle puppy and brought her home, filled the house withplants, and lived the good life of a young officer and his wife.It seemed we really belonged together. We were a match. Webounced off each other well, and we came together well. Atnight we always slept with our arms around each other, and myhead lay always on his shoulder. Our favorite song was MyFunny Valentine.

Dick never found fault with me—never complained aboutfood, the house, or me personally. In fact he was neverdemanding of me. Sometimes I would become a bit angry athim—perhaps because of his occasional stubbornness, or per-haps because he had a certain passivity about him, andsometimes I wanted more interaction. I suppose on some levelI felt I couldn’t reach him. But even if I became upset, henever responded to me outwardly in an angry way. Sometimeshe would pace around, but a quarrel seldom, if ever, occurred.Those times of even slight disagreement were rare. For themost part there was much compatibility. We had a real sense ofbelonging together.

We were in totally new surroundings. It was an exciting timeto be around Washington. The Kennedys were in the WhiteHouse, and their aura seemed to permeate the air.

It was also a time of contrasts—the black freedom march inWashington was held. Our new marriage was born in thesetimes of beginning changes for everyone. And yet as I lookback I sense a glossiness to those early days, as if we lived thefantasy we expected, as if we had somehow found home andnow nothing could harm us or stand in our way.

Soon we both began to want a baby—to complete us, Ithought, and myself, to fill us out as a family—but a pregnancydid not soon occur, as we both hoped and anticipated it would.

The days at Quantico were in general a blend of the days oftraining and the days off, which Dick always wanted to takeadvantage of. We’d drive to Washington or to historical sitesnearby, and Dick’s insatiable curiosity would devour all theinformation he could find. When in Washington he woulddrive all over, find obscure places I would never have been ableto find. He never wasted a day or a chance to do or seesomething interesting. He always seemed to know all aboutand have a great interest in the outside world.

During the actual training, Dick never dropped out. Hecould endure. On the long marches and on the obstacle course,others would fall away, but Dick seemed to have the ability toset his mind and not give in to physical pain. During those dayshe would often come home looking tired beyond belief, as ifhis very soul were covered with the grime of playing war.

If I said, It must have been awful, he’d say, "No sweat,Karen. You should