Content Warning: suicide
In the morning, the attorney and I went to the Register of Wills at the county courthouse. We sat down across from a woman who files wills all day long. The attorney, who knew her well, slid Rick’s death certificate across the desk, pointed to a box near the bottom of the paper, and gave her a knowing look. My eyesight is good and I can read upside down. He was pointing to the box checked Suicide. I imagined their silent conversation, punctuated by eyebrow movements and sad smiles.
“Look at this poor kid. Her husband killed himself.”
“She barely looks old enough to be married, let alone widowed.”
“She’s so overwhelmed.”
“I’ve seen a lot of this kind of thing lately.”
My thoughts were interrupted by the woman across the desk, who actually said, “I’ve seen a lot of this kind of thing lately.” I blinked, shaken, and landed back in reality.
Behind me, a couple was at a different desk, applying for a marriage license. Between every question I was asked about Rick, I heard laughter and happy responses from the couple answering the same questions I had answered with Rick six years ago.
I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone, filing my husband’s will and having deja vu of the day we filed for marriage. I felt abnormal.
I got the document I need to sell Rick’s car so I can pay the funeral bill. I watched the couple smile at each other. I felt abnormal. I needed to verify Rick’s social security number, so I pulled his leather wallet from my purse and saw his driver’s license staring back at me next to the social security card. As I looked away from my husband’s face, I heard the woman behind me say, “We’re so excited!” I felt abnormal.
I slunk out of the courthouse with the attorney, feeling like the last month really had to be a bad dream, because it simply couldn’t be my life. I felt abnormal.
When I got home that night, I cleaned the house. There are still thank you notes to send and bills to pay, laundry to do, and garbage to take out. When I opened the downstairs closet to retrieve the vacuum cleaner, I noticed for the first time since Rick died that he had a shirt on the closet shelf in the “Take to the Dry Cleaner’s” pile. Suddenly, I was ecstatic, grabbing for the dress shirt and pressing it to my face. It smelled just like him.
Unlike the clean shirts in a neat row in his closet, this shirt had been sitting there, waiting. I didn’t know. I started crying immediately, but I was happy too. It didn’t even make sense. I felt abnormal.
After my cry, I finished cleaning. I saw a small pile of scrap paper and receipts to throw away, so I picked it up. A yellow sheet of carbon copy paper caught my eye and I unfolded it. It was my copy of the Northampton Regional Emergency Medical Services patient advice form from the day Rick died. After finding his suicide note that day, I had collapsed on the floor and called 911. Then I spent the next 2 hours in an ambulance parked in front of my house, crying hysterically, having difficulty breathing, rubbing the sore spot in my chest where my heart was, and begging someone to help me. They put me on oxygen, shielded from any unpleasant views of my house, and the people inside and outside. I know all this, because I watched myself vividly as though I was in a movie.
I was outside myself, unable to process the trauma, the pain, the situation. My memory of that day is sharp, because I feel as though I viewed it on a screen.
The carbon paper brought me right back there. And the EMT’s instructions at the bottom of the page brought my whole strange day to a close.
If you feel abnormal in any way, call 911 or go to ER. Well, I do feel abnormal. Every day. Every hour. Every minute
I read it twice.
My husband killed himself. I was carrying his useless wallet in my purse. His useless shirt was waiting in the closet. Someone else’s marriage license would be drying on the courthouse printer again tomorrow.
Abnormal.
The word seemed almost funny now. As though there were a first aid kit somewhere for this, or a doctor’s office waiting room where I’d bide my time until I could be evaluated and made better, normal again. But no one knows how to set and heal a widow’s bones.
