Patricia’s Story

“In the company or outside,” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter. I just have to get another job,” he said resolutely.

At this time our house was on the market. We were planning to move to a house that we had seen that was a little bigger, a little nicer, and a step up from where we lived. It had five bedrooms, a pool and an in-law suite. We were excited because with the way John had figured out the mortgage refinancing, it would only be a slight increase over what we were currently paying. We could handle it and felt it would be a better investment for resale in the future. So even though at times our family resources were somewhat strained, we weren’t concerned.

This was the day that he got the news—your days are numbered here. There had been lots of talk about a corporate reorganization and the possible dissolution of his department.

That morning, he had been called into a meeting with a representative of the Human Resources office. John’s boss was a kind woman who always sent gifts home to our children for the holidays. Her mother, had even made doll clothes for our girls. She liked John and knew that he had to provide for his family and she had been his supervisor for close to ten years. I am sure it was not an easy conversation for her to have with John, but her department had to cut back. She had no choice but to follow the wishes of her higher-ups, and prepare her employees for possible job losses.

“John,” she said, starting out positively, “I know that you are not happy in your position. Where do you think you would fit in the new organization?” However, the conversation plummeted as she added, “This department is probably going to go. We all need to start looking for new jobs. You probably have three to six months to find other employment.” John was devastated.

Although, there was no mention of actual firing or a severance package, the message that John heard was that after eleven years of corporate loyalty, he was disposable. He interpreted this as meaning that he was “dead wood”, a 48-year-old guy that was as expendable as a light bulb.

The night he gave me the news, he lamented, “I wonder how we’ll make it? You don’t work, and how am I ever going to get a good job at close to 50 years old? Nobody will hire me when they can hire young kids who will work for much less.” Then he added firmly with tears in his eyes, “I don’t want you to tell anyone. It’s too embarrassing.” Through the pools of tears, he said, “I guess we will make it somehow, but it is so scary.”

“John, don’t worry,” I said. “We can move out to a rural area where it isn’t so expensive. We don’t have to live in this house. We can sell this and get a place for half the cost of our $1900 a month mortgage.” Although, that payment seemed very steep, I respected John’s business acumen and always trusted his financial decisions. We had recently refinanced for a fifteen year rather than a thirty year mortgage. Payments would be higher now but our pay-off would be less interest paid over the long run.

He was adamant about one thing. “I don’t want to move ‘down’. I worked so hard all these years so our kids could live in a nice area. I could never tell people the real reason if we have to move.” We loved our comfortable lifestyle, our excellent school district, and our neighborhood. We had been here for years—cherishing all the happy memories of Easter egg hunts, family campfires, block parties, mom and tot playgroups and couples getting together for Saturday night dinners—knowing that somebody was always there to help in an emergency was comforting.

I told a couple of close family members about the impending job loss. My parents were there to support me. But, due to a complete denial that it was happening—or to disbelief, or pride—John himself did not confide in anyone. I thought it odd that he did not seem concerned about the impending deadline of August 31st. I asked him what he was going to do. “Nobody has said anything. I am just going to keep going in to my office,” he replied.

Throughout the fall, we kept busy with sports activities, going to yard sales, selling Beanie Babies, and doing homework. We transferred our three girls from private school to a public school. They were all okay with that because most of the neighborhood kids went to Council Rock. I clipped coupons and tried to save money in any way I could. My father had always told us to save a “nest egg.” Oh, how I wish that we had listened to him.

I scrambled around, trying to find an old teaching resume and any papers related to teacher certification. “Maybe I can substitute teach. That will at least help out. But I would have to get a better-paying job,” I thought. But we both knew that substitute teaching would never even begin to cover our expenses.

We brainstormed about our options. Should we downsize, sell our house, and move to a rental property? Explore home business or franchise opportunities? John was always good about analyzing the pros and cons of any decision. He usually spread a large sheet of paper on the dining room table and analyzed things from many different angles.

He thought that the best idea would be to network within the company. He scoured the listings for intracompany positions in the tristate area. Finally, after a few months, he called me from work. “I have great news. I got a new job, and it pays the same amount.” He was offered a new position within the company, on the same level. He was excited about it. No more searching. That night, we sat in a McDonald’s restaurant and talked about it.

Seemingly, our worries were over.

But that night he couldn’t sleep a wink, and became very anxious. He finally admitted to me his concerns. “I can’t work for that

lady. It would be worse than where I am now—like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.” He declined the job.

My friend, Marcie, sent us a huge box of books, like Career Starters, Whose Hiring Who and What Color is Your Parachute? I read through them all, highlighting anything that I thought would help. John diligently read the newspaper for job leads, mailed resumes, and started arranging interviews.

At my urging, we went to two job search sessions at the library. The sight of fifty middle-aged men lamenting their employment woes depressed him even more. It was hard trying to launch a job search while trying to maintain the job he had, especially when his spirits were waning. He continued to work hard at his present job, hoping for a reversal.

He wondered, “If I really work hard and master some of the new contract processes and computer programs, would they reconsider?”

I was concerned. While on a vacation with my parents, we attended a religious retreat at the local church. I hung onto the hope that a spiritual solution was close at hand. The six-month deadline had come and gone. John just kept going into work as usual.

During this initial six-month period, he was beginning to feel excluded. Less important projects were given to him; to him, they seemed like busy work. He told me, “I’m not getting invited to meetings. I’m not part of the team. Nobody wants to bother with me, and I don’t have anybody to eat lunch with.” Whether that was in fact true, or the darkness of depression coloring his perception, that was his reality.

He called me frequently throughout the day and asked if any employment recruiters had called for him. He also asked me to make exploratory phone calls for him. I wrote thank you notes for him after every interview.

I think the discouragement of the midlife blues came upon him. He looked around the workplace at the DINKS (Double Income No Kids)—his young, mid-twenties competitors, without kids and family responsibilities. There were also lots of very bright interns from local Ivy League schools who were happy to work there for the experience and the opportunity to have a foot in the door for a job after graduation.

John lamented:

“Trish, everybody there is so capable, attractive, and technologically savvy. They can work long hours, and they know all of the new software programs. I’m 48; they run circles around me. Who is going to hire me when all of the young kids know so much about technology and are willing to work overtime?”

Around this time, the company changed its dress code to business casual. This was a significant change, because John’s identity and self-esteem were tied to dressing up in a suit. Casual clothing made him feel less himself, less important. This was yet another blow to a man whose confidence in his work skills had already diminished. It got to the point where John needed his spirits lifted daily. “John, it’s all going to work out. God has a plan for us,” I would say. But I was scared, too.

Our oldest daughter, Robin, was about to have a Sweet Sixteen party. It was December and, I thought back to 1982, the year she was born. I recalled the image of a confident John beaming as he held his first baby. He had bought the obligatory pink-bowed cigars and had taken them to work to pass around. Now, I couldn’t ask for any help in planning this special event; he couldn’t handle doing homework with the kids, or even sitting and enjoying a movie. He was emotionally spent from worry.

In January, the headaches began. We thought of possible causes, such as hair spray getting into his scalp, food allergies, or a cold that settled in his head. Every evening, he came home from work and went right to bed, but he never fell asleep. He just needed to lie down. I placed warm compresses, cold compresses, and heating pads on his forehead, anything to try to alleviate the pain. But nothing seemed to help.

He wanted desperately to clear up the mystery of the headaches. “John,” I told him, “it is stress. You just need a break. Just tell Human Resources that you’re sick, and stay home for a few days.”

But he answered, “I can’t do that. The auditors are coming in and, besides, if I’m out, all of my work will be there when I get back. The other departments need my reports.”

He went to our family doctor for the excruciating headaches, and went daily to the nurse at work to check his blood pressure. The doctor warned, “You have high blood pressure and dangerously high cholesterol.”

He began to obsess about food, wondering what he could and could not eat. My ideas of eating grains, fruits and vegetables got him upset. “If I eat like that, I’ll weigh 90 pounds,” he complained.

In February, we attended a family party. He talked about headaches and food for four hours. Family members gave him their ideas on how he could get better. But he could only focus on his eating dilemma. He would discuss it with anyone who would talk about it. Food had become an obsession. What can I eat for dinner? What am I allowed to eat? Everything revolved around eating. The rest of the family was becoming stressed.

He began to wear two layers of clothing, so people would stop asking him why he was getting so thin. He bought several pocket-sized calorie counting books at the supermarket checkout counter. He checked out large hardcover medical books from the library, and went daily to the gym. He drank ENSURE, and listened to meditation and relaxation tapes. He was losing weight. He was 6’3” and had weighed 220 pounds. He was down 40 pounds, and worried sick about it.

“I am praying so much, and God won’t help me,” he complained. I was making daily visits to church myself, praying for something good to happen.

I felt like a widow, managing carpools, homework and sports schedules. My schedule changed, too. I stayed downstairs until 4 a.m., trying to teach myself computer skills, while drinking tea and listening to country music. I cleaned and washed floors, and did laundry in the middle of the night. I couldn’t sleep because I was worrying about John and, at the same time, attempting to get a business off the ground. When I finally did come upstairs, he would ask “Was I asleep when you came into the room?” I was so exhausted myself, I did not remember. He lay awake, night after night, sometimes reading to try to fall asleep, but without much success.

I crawled into bed and then within minutes, moved my comforter and pillow to the floor. I started sleeping on the floor with a few quilts because he was so restless. I often had to take two or three Tylenols to fall asleep because my mind was racing, too.

I would no sooner get to sleep when John would be getting ready for work, and I would be waking the kids up for school.

His workday began at 5:30 am. He showered, dressed and drove the girls to the bus stop. Then he would fight traffic for what would often end up being a 90-minute commute. He felt frustrated when the girls would oversleep and miss the bus and he would have to drive them to school.

Working under stressful conditions, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, frustrated by traffic and the morning routine at home, he was cracking from the pressures.

We were searching for answers for what was happening to John. I just wanted to make him happy again. On his birthday, January 7th, I had an idea. The radio and tape player in John’s car had stopped working. He had a long ride to work, and he counted on listening to music to keep his spirits up. I could see that he was sinking lower and lower.

“John, let’s go look for a new car. If we leave now, we can get there and have a half hour to spare before the dealership closes.” I rushed in to the showroom, with a plan in mind. I went up to a car salesman and said, “We’ll take the black Nissan Altima.” I

added, “We don’t need to test drive it—and we need to drive it home tonight.” I wrote out a home equity check for $16,000. The salesman was in shock. It was the easiest sale he had ever made.

I knew something was seriously wrong, though, because John did not have any reaction to my impulsivity. He really did not seem excited about the new car. It wasn’t like we had money in our budget for such an expenditure. I was just desperate to do something that would cheer him up, something that might bring back the “old John”, my husband of 23 years.

Now, I knew that John had a radio that worked and a new car that would make him feel successful. I naively thought that this might be just what he needed to get over this latest hurdle—that this would boost his spirits. I needed the car to boost my spirits, too. I had an interview the next day, with a radio talk show host that I wanted to impress. I “had” to have a new car, didn’t I? John’s car had missed the state registration deadline. What if I got stopped by the police with the lady in the car? That would have been so embarrassing. The old car was illegal to drive with the expired inspection sticker, and the last thing I needed was for a police officer to give me a citation while driving the talk show host. The interior of my mini-van looked like a landfill and smelled of sweaty sports gear.

He began to blow little things out of proportion. When my daughter had the flu, he worried that she had meningitis. Going to the Sunday flea market, which had always brought him so much joy, would tire him out and make him upset. Going to have his picture taken for his auto license renewal was stressing him out.

At work, the thought of the auditors checking his work became too much to bear. He felt anxious about contracts. He fretted about getting the required signatures; he was worried that he might not have done that before paying the vendors. The prospect of learning new computer programs and taking advanced training sessions was overwhelming.

He couldn’t concentrate—at home or at work.

“How can I do all of this—do my job, find another job, pore over classified ads, and do the taxes—and take care of the house and the kids?” he asked, with tears rolling down his face. “I feel like a rubber band is wrapped around my head. Something’s wrong with me. Is my forehead bulging out? It feels like there’s blood swelled up in my head. How do you know if you have a brain tumor?”

The medical encyclopedia next to his nightstand added fuel to his worst fears. He thought he might be dying.

Yet, the word depression never even came up for us. His health anxieties merged with his work anxieties.

“You have to get me out of there, Trish. They’re killing me. People aren’t nice. I need to be with nice people. The traffic is unbearable. My head hurts so much.”

Several times a day, he called, talking this way and pleading for help.

There were several things that did not seem normal, at this time. We went to a friend’s radio show and he was very reserved on the ride there and back, not even able to make any conversation with me. Our oldest daughter was invited to a prom. He couldn’t share in the excitement. He didn’t even try to be friendly with the boy’s parents, when they came to take pictures.

Weekends were no longer fun. We drove around, taking rides, but he was not himself. The musical audio tapes he used to enjoy no longer soothed him. He didn’t enjoy doing things with the family. He snapped irritably and inappropriately at the kids. Things were tense and confusing for all of us.

I was mad at him because he was getting very snappy. I told him he needed to contact Dr. Lily, a therapist, for help. He agreed to go. We both called her answering machine and left several messages. She said she no longer worked with our health plan. I made three calls asking other recommended therapists to see John. I seemed to be getting the runaround. I finally found a therapist that had an opening, but his fees were not affordable and he was not in our healthcare network I called another agency, and made an appointment. I wanted John to see a psychiatrist right away. They said you had to have an intake appointment first. That was scheduled, but sadly John never went…John jumped before that date.

John heard the echo of fear in all parts of his life.

What if I can’t find a job?

What if we have to move from this house?

What is going on with my headaches?

During a one-month period, he went, repeatedly, to the family doctor and the doctor at work. Biofeedback and a massage were recommended. The company doctor recommended a therapist who was affiliated with the company Employee Assistance Program. John went to her, and focused on the headaches.

On the second visit to the therapist, he came home much earlier than expected. He had only stayed for a few minutes, because he said she didn’t know much about headaches.

I then called and made an appointment for both of us to attend a therapy session with her. I told his therapist about the critical job situation which I felt was the cause of the stress and personality changes. She was shocked. She exclaimed, “John never mentioned anything about that to me!”

By now, John was sick of going to doctors. He was sick of feeling down. It wasn’t only the wintry January weather. Nothing made him laugh, not videos, our dog or funny stories.

“I’ve been to my regular doctor twenty times, my work doctor, at least ten times, a neurologist, a gastrointestinal physician, a headache specialist, a stress therapist, a psychotherapist, a massage therapist, and a chiropractor. I’ve taken all this medicine to sleep and for anxiety. Nothing’s helping me. Maybe I should go to the hospital”, he sighed.

I didn’t see how this would help. “Why do you want to go to the hospital, John?” I asked.

“They might be able to find out why I can’t sleep. I feel worse.

I don’t like the side effects of the medicine. There’s no improvement with this medicine.”

“John,” I asked, “why are you going to the doctor and the nurse at work so much? It’s just stress. You need a rest. You have to rest. We need to take a vacation. My parents will watch the kids.” He told me I didn’t understand corporate life. “Trish, it’s been so long since you worked at AT&T. You don’t remember what it’s like. You have to keep going in whether you feel good or not,” he said.

We had great kids, healthy, cute, smart and kind. Our house was comfortable, and we had a loving extended family. There was always a lot of activity in our home. We had a dog that looked like Lassie, several rabbits, and kids always running in and out the front and back doors. We had lots of fun as a family. Our weekends were filled with our favorite activities, looking at the decorated models of sample houses and going thrift-shopping or as we called it thrift-hopping. We had lots of great friends. For the past decade, John’s company offered us a great benefit package, and financial security. He seemed to be a guy who had it all!

He still couldn’t sleep, and was losing weight rapidly. Work was hard, home was stressful, and the headaches were excruciating. A couple of times in recent years, we had gone to the hospital because John felt he had something caught in his throat. I remember the first time that happened. We were at a gala event at his company’s holiday party. We were “dressed to the nines” and having a wonderful time. Suddenly, John started choking and saying he had to go to the hospital. Upon examination in the ER, there was no “chicken caught in his throat.” It was probably related to anxiety, although at the time, we did not know anything about that. That happened several times, once resulting in an overnight stay at the hospital.

We sometimes talked about the idea of him quitting the job, selling the house and “moving down.” But our feeling was that, in mid-year, it would add more stress to sell a house, uproot the kids and be without a job. Our daughter was unhappy in her new school, and we arranged for her to go back to her former school. Our third-grader’s homework assignments often went unsupervised. I couldn’t even get it together to have a neighborhood kids birthday party for him in March. We waited until June to celebrate it.

In March, our daughter had an important issue about a date for another prom. It killed me not to be able to discuss it with my husband. I knew he wouldn’t be able to handle it.

As time went on, he didn’t enjoy things anymore. He was extremely anxious about routine activities, such as being the assistant basketball coach for Ryan’s team—things that under, normal conditions, he loved to do. I thought that a trip to the roller skating rink would cheer him up. He laced up his skates without any enthusiasm and gliding to the music didn’t work either. I wanted a comeback…a comeback of my husband, but things felt different these days.

He was always worried about some ailment, and experienced sweating, nervousness, headaches, stomach pains, swelling in the head, insomnia and weight loss. His hands were fidgety, his body jerked in his sleep, and his heart—he said—felt like it was beating out of his chest. That was the main thing—the physical ailments. He was sure he had a brain tumor.

“Please, John,” I begged,” take some time off from work. It’s too much for you right now.”

His increasing upset was especially clear in his coaching. I could see that rushing to practices was unnerving him. Watching him from the sidelines, I could see that he looked wiped out, skinny, and unhealthy. He no longer had the strong, athletic presence that I knew my husband to have. He seemed timid. His face looked sweaty.

Everything was either failing or falling onto my lap—paying bills, running sports carpools, driving to CCD classes, and taking care of social activities. Family routine was far from normal. I was so worried about him.

I felt like I had a fifth child. I needed to nurture and encourage him, assuage his worries about health problems, and assure him that I could start a business that would make money. It created so much pressure.

I kept telling the kids every night, “Go to bed. I need to talk to Daddy.” We would talk. We would hop in the car and go to a shopping center parking lot and talk. I made up all kinds of errands for him to run with me, to try to keep him active. He was discouraged, and mentally and physically exhausted. Every morning, he would say, “I didn’t get any sleep.”

I confided in my mother and two friends about my worry over John. My mother recognized what she saw as signs of depression.

One friend, a former nurse in a cardiac unit said, “You have to get him out of that workplace no matter what. You don’t want to be visiting him in Temple Hospital after he has a heart attack.”

My sister said, “You better get him some help or you’re going to be a widow.”

In mid-April, he called from work. “They said that everything is safe with my job.”

My mother said, “I guess he’s really relieved.”

“No, mom,” I answered. “You don’t understand. His emotions were flat. He said it like it was just a fact. It didn’t seem to matter to him at all.”

On April 27, John called from work and said, “I’m going to go in and talk to Human Resources about quitting.” When he arrived home, he was very distressed and said, “I didn’t talk to them.”

“John,” I said, “I’m going to call them now. What’s the phone number?”

“Trish, what are you going to say?” I answered:

“I’m going to present them with a request for some kind of package that would be win-win. Let’s think of a solution that would meet their need to replace you and also give you a salary for six to nine months—with benefits for the kids’ braces and medical. I’ll tell them we need security while we work on starting a home business. I’ll ask someone to meet us at Denny’s restaurant on Route 1 to share ideas.”

I started to dial, but John resisted. “No, Trish, I’ll talk to them. That would be gutless if you called for me. I’ll talk to them in the morning.”

Under these strained conditions, the job of keeping up with the activities of four kids, worrying about the impending job loss and John’s waning spirits, it started to become a strain for both of us. One night, the routine started to break down. John was at Ryan’s Little League baseball practice. Robin and Katelyn were there, too. Kristen was at her after-school religion class, and I was home cooking. I thought it strange that John walked into the house with lots of food from McDonald’s, knowing that I was making dinner.

“They forced me to stop and get them food,” he said.

John sat down on the couch and watched television for a few minutes; then he went to bed. I was so worn out emotionally that I had forgotten to pick up Kristen from her after school religion class, and was about 45 minutes late. I realized that I hadn’t even called Gail, to say that I wouldn’t be there to help out with the class.

I thought back to what had happened a few days before. Father McLaughlin was giving a sermon at Mass. The four kids, ages 9 through 16, were all lined up in the pew. We looked like such a nice, happy family.

During the sermon, Father used the analogy of a little green turtle trying to climb out of a glass fish bowl. I thought back to the little green turtles we had bought at Grant’s Five-and-Dime when we were kids, and the plastic bowl with the little plastic palm tree in the middle.

“It keeps sliding down. There’s no way out,” said the priest.

I don’t remember what he was talking about, but I clearly remember John’s response. He leaned over towards me and mouthed the words, “That’s me. There’s no way out.”

I had talked to the priest a couple of weeks before. “Father, my husband is losing his job and he’s very stressed out. Can you talk to him?”

He told me to have John call him. John wasn’t up for that. I don’t think John even heard that suggestion. John’s hopelessness was alarming me.

I saw John’s sister in the back of the church. “Johnny is really in a bad way.” She said, “Come over to our house right now.” She made a nice meal for us, roast beef, asparagus, and a delicious dessert. She reassured John that he would be all right, reminding him that we all go through ups and downs.

I felt like he was ruining everything because he was so stressed out. The anxiety medication and the sleep medicine were not working, and his moods were constantly fluctuating.

One night, I got so burned out that I lashed out and shouted, “You’re driving me crazy. I feel like killing myself!” The whole or-deal had become overwhelming.

I didn’t really mean it; I didn’t truly feel like that. I don’t even know where the words came from. I just said the most shocking thing I could think of, not on purpose, the words just fell from my mouth. Perhaps, unconsciously, it was to jolt him into listening to me.

I knew that things were really bad, because there was no reaction at all on John’s part, when I said this.

He never actually said anything about killing himself, but I remembered having had a fleeting thought of him standing near a bridge on his way to work. One morning, he just looked so weak. He was standing in our bedroom, wearing the same burgundy striped shirt that he had worn the day before. I remember exactly where he was standing, right by the telephone in our bedroom. I was over on the other side of the room , near the bed. There was just something about his look that day, that made me a little fearful.

For a guy, who was a “clothes horse” and an impeccable dresser, this was a bad sign. He always wore a classy gold tie bar, snazzy cufflinks and the finest of suits with crisp, starched shirts. A camel hair overcoat always finished his impeccable outfit. I felt that he was fading.

April 28, 1999

It was sunny, picture-perfect. It was bright. It was warm. It was a beautiful Wednesday morning. I heard John’s voice as I awoke from a sound sleep. “Trish, there’s something wrong with me. I just tried to kill myself. I was driving around.”

“John, where did you go,” I asked, alarmed, prickled with fear. “I went to the bridge, but I couldn’t do it,” he answered.

It was all starting to feel like a nightmare. We spent a beautiful April morning sitting in the emergency room. My husband had told me a few hours earlier that he’d gone to a bridge to jump, but couldn’t do it—then breathed in carbon monoxide from the car.

Am I really sitting in a psychiatric crisis center? I wondered. My husband should be at work right now, and I should be making beds and walking the dog.

It was a weekday. What happened to my routine?

A psychiatric worker was gathering John’s intake information, and I was waiting outside the room.

“Mrs. Gallagher, we’re now taking your husband in for an examination to check his stomach for carbon monoxide residue or damage.”

A short time later, John joined me on the orange vinyl chairs. I asked if we could go to the cafeteria. John was like a zombie. He ordered a pasta dish but didn’t even touch it.

On the elevator ride back to the waiting room, I ran into an acquaintance from my children’s school. She said, “Hi, what are you doing here?” I said I was visiting a relative.

At the crisis center, another psychiatric clerk talked to John privately, then asked me to come in. He said that John had almost all of the classic signs of depression. Next to each indicator on his list of signs, he had placed a check: 1) feelings of sadness; depressed mood/and or irritability, 2) loss of interest in activities/hobbies, 3) changes in weight or appetite, 4) sleeping too much; not sleeping at all, 5) feelings of guilt, hopelessness or worthlessness, and 6) inability to concentrate or remember things; to make decisions.

He asked John if he was planning to harm himself. John said, “No.”

I took the clerk aside, and questioned his asking John such a question. “Wouldn’t that be putting ideas into his head?” I asked.

They said that they were waiting for a room. We sat waiting there for what seemed like an eternity.

The observation sheet said:

Number of observation hours: 10 hours/40 minutes.

Diagnosis: Major Depression.

Ten hours and 40 minutes is a long time for a patient and his wife to sit on orange vinyl chairs in a hospital waiting room!

We were told that outpatient treatment might be recommended after an evaluation by a psychiatrist in the morning.

I was outraged. My thoughts were racing. How can you even consider outpatient treatment? For a man who hasn’t slept in four months, has gone down to 1593?4 pounds, and just tried to kill himself?”

I pleaded with the clerk:

“I just told you he was driving around at 6 a.m. this morning, when I didn’t even know he was out of the house. He breathed in carbon monoxide. He said he was thinking of jumping from a bridge. Please don’t send him home. I can’t watch him around the clock. I can’t do anything to help him myself.”

We waited. We sat all day and all night until they agreed at 10 p.m. to give him a bed in the psychiatric ward.

In the intake report, they had called it “suicide ideation,” because he hadn’t taken the carbon monoxide in an enclosed area. He had pulled to the side of the road and breathed the exhaust from his car. This was “ideation.”

But, finally, it was acknowledged in the Emergency report that he needed to be hospitalized.

Patient made a serious suicide attempt on 4/28/99 by sniffing carbon monoxide exhaust fumes. Patient is a danger to himself and needs in-patient hospitalization for safety of self.

I drove home extremely shaken. I felt ignored for those many hours, sitting and waiting for the elusive bed. We had watched television, while sitting there. Dr. Phil was a guest on the Oprah Show. He was talking about dieting. John didn’t want to watch it. He told me to tell the worker that he had an eating disorder. Eating disorder, what did he mean by that?

The report continued:

Patient’s wife verbalized that in the recent past, John has been obsessed with eating enough and concerned he was getting too thin. Wife identifies this preoccupation as a source of stress for patient.

I thought back to the bags of food John bought at the grocery store—and never ate. He was losing weight rapidly, while also bringing home food—food that got wasted in the refrigerator.

While in the waiting room, I called the therapist that John had seen the week before. I had seen her afterwards, myself. She asked me to call her when I got home. I called her about 11 p.m., and told her that they had admitted John for the night, and that he would be seen by the psychiatrist in the morning. We talked about the outpatient treatment plan that they had discussed while we were waiting.

“He really is determined to kill himself,” the therapist said to me. It sounded so bizarre to me. Yet, I was certain that he was be-yond outpatient treatment; I told her so. She concurred, and sug-gested that I call another psychiatric facility to see if an inpatient

bed was available for the next day.

Robin and Katelyn were in their bedrooms. I didn’t know that they were listening on the telephone extension while I spoke to the therapist.

“Mom, you didn’t tell us that Dad tried to commit suicide,” they cried in horror. I had told the kids that their father had gone into the hospital that morning, and that they were keeping him overnight because he had pains.

The next morning, following a consultation John had with a staff psychiatrist, the social worker called me with the recommendation that he go home and come back a few days later for their day program. The hospital social worker was very kind, and explained that there were just a few people in the day program. She assured me that John would get good care.

“I need to think about that. I’ll call you back,” I said.

I prayed, and called the therapist again, asking, “Should he be in the day program, or go somewhere else for inpatient treatment?”

My husband was emotionally and physically drained. I called the social worker that I had spoken to during our long wait the day before. During that conversation, we had talked about the possibility of sending John to another hospital. Now, on the phone, she told me that she had called the other hospital and that there was no bed available until the next day.

The choice was this: I could either agree to their day program recommendation, which would not begin for a few more days, or go to the other facility, the following morning. Both choices meant that I had to take him home.

I thought of how we had sat in the waiting room the day before, practically ignored, until 10 p.m. There had been little nurturing, kindness, medicine, or therapy. It seemed like apathy to me.

It was also an insurance matter. The insurance provider had approved a 24-hour observation, and that’s what they were doing: simply observing him. To me, it seemed like simply ignoring him—and me.

When I got back to the hospital in the morning, I found that he was traumatized from the overnight stay in the psychiatric ward.

“They wouldn’t let me have my shoelaces, and I had to ask for a razor blade to shave. I was so afraid of the other patient in my room. He was crazy, so they moved me to another room. I’m never going to a place like that again. It’s like an insane asylum. It was scary.”

I decided to have him discharged, and to admit him to the other hospital the following morning. As we left the hospital, with a prescription for Paxil, I felt nervous. I didn’t want to go back to our house. I drove to Tyler Park where we had spent many happy hours sitting by the creek. He didn’t seem to be “with it.” I had to go to the rest room, but I was afraid to leave him. I thought, What if he gets into the van and drives away? What if he throws himself into the water? He repeated that he never wanted to go back to that hospital for fear he would be cut off from everybody.

I was on high alert. I didn’t know what to expect anymore. The John I had been married to for close to 22 years was not acting like himself, the “real John.” It seemed like our lives had gone haywire.

I asked him directly, “John, why would you do that to us? Try to kill yourself? I would never do that to you.”

His face was totally blank. It was as if he had not heard a word I said.

Going to the park hadn’t worked. Where can we go? I asked myself. Where can we go?

I drove to a monastery and went into the church—a church, where I had been going daily for about a year, praying for a job for John, a solution to his medical problems, and peace for the family.

This didn’t work. When we got there, he said, “Take me back to the hospital. I can’t cope.” I turned the car around and started to drive home. I stopped the car and parked in a convenience store parking lot. We sat in the car for a few minutes, and then I thought of a place that he normally loved to go—the Olive Garden. So I drove there. We went inside, and ordered food. But he didn’t touch his food. When we left, we passed The Sport’s Authority, and his face lit up with excitement. A new man was emerging, one I had not seen in months.

“That’s where I would love to work,” he said.

By the time we arrived home, his total demeanor had changed. It was euphoric. “Trish, I feel better. I’m back to myself. I’m going to write a book about this. I’m back to myself.” I hadn’t seen “this John” in many months. Of course, I didn’t quite believe this was real. I know drugs are good but how could all of this fear really go away after just one Paxil at the hospital this morning?, I wondered.

That day, he did a special activity with each of the kids. He took Ryan to collect golf balls from a field, Katelyn to get water ice, Kristen to the library, and Robin to apply for a job at Super Fresh. I breathed a sigh of temporary relief, and lay down to rest. Everyone was out of the house, and I tried to process the craziness of the past twenty-four hours.

A neighbor came over, concerned, “I hear John was in the hospital. Is he all right?” he asked.

I lied. “Yeah, he’s fine.” I said. “He just went in for a test.” Around dusk, John returned and then went to the store. I worried. Is that where he’s really going? I thought.

Meanwhile, Robin, age 16, said she was going for a run. I didn’t want her to go. It was dark and dangerous. She left anyway. I put my concerns for her on the back burner, and went to the store to check on John.

He wasn’t in the supermarket, but the neighbor that I had tried to avoid was. There was also a chatty lady from my church. I ran from the store and looked for John’s car. My mind raced as I wondered where he was. Maybe he went to a bridge. . . . I imagined him slumped over the front seat of his car, with a gunshot wound.

Now where? I asked myself. Where could he be? I ran into the drug store and saw him in the next aisle. I stood there watching him. My mind was racing; I was hyper-vigilant. Is he buying those pills to overdose? Those razor blades to do himself harm?

He could be just buying those razor blades for his personal shaving needs, I told myself; I shouldn’t overreact. If he saw me standing here, it might make things worse. So I left. But I was on high alert about anything that I thought might cause harm. I drove home with fear in my heart.

Robin still wasn’t home from her jog. I was worried about both of them. Much later, I found out that he had gone to the drugstore to pick up his prescription for Paxil. It was a new prescription, pre-scribed by the discharge psychiatrist that morning at the hospital. John had never taken an anti-depressant before. And Robin arrived home safely.

We both fell asleep exhausted. At around 4:00 a.m., I awoke from a deep sleep, to the sound of John pacing in our bedroom. Then, interspersed with the pacing, I heard retching sounds from the bathroom, like he was trying to cough something up.

I thought of the Paxil, and got up and gave him one. Then I went back to bed, exhausted beyond belief. It sounded like he was gagging. I just lay there, monitoring everything, mainly listening to see if he would leave the bedroom. I was waiting to see if he was going to walk downstairs, or out the door, or—to the garage.

He came back to bed and we fell asleep. I tried to put his arm around me, as he kept it every night before, but his arm went limp. It was yet another night of John sweating and shaking. It was just another sign that the “real John” that I had known and loved so much was not there.

On April 30th, around 7a.m., I went over to his side of the bed to tell him that I was going to take our fourteen-year-old daughter, Katelyn, to choral practice. He appeared dead. His face was ashen, his eyes fixed wide open, like a scared deer, shocked by headlights.

He did not respond to my screams, “John! John!” My first thought was that he had worried himself into a heart attack, and then I thought of the bottle of Paxil. I screamed to my children, “Call 911! Daddy’s dead!”

I frantically called Diana and Nancy, two of my neighbors, and said, “John’s dead.” Kristen, age 11, ran next door for help. Within minutes, Diana, an ER nurse, rolled him on the floor to jolt him out of his comatose state. His eyes flickered. He was alive.

His first words were “I took carbon monoxide. I don’t have a brain.” Diana assured him, “John, that can’t happen. You still have a brain.” He was confused. He had taken carbon monoxide two days before.

Within minutes, as I stood there in my peach chenille bathrobe, our house filled up with paramedics, police and strangers. Neighbors were cuddling my children downstairs. The dog was jumping on everyone. The mood was somber. It was surreal.

It was a beautiful spring day. We were a “normal” family. How could all this be happening to us?

We stood him up and tried to put his pants and shoes on, for his trip to the hospital. He didn’t seem to understand how to do it himself. With help, he walked to the ambulance, and they laid him in the back. I said to the officer, “He was in the hospital on Wednesday because he took carbon monoxide.”

The man’s response startled me: “Do you have any firearms in the house? If so, now’s the time to remove them.”

Katelyn rode in the front seat of the ambulance, while I changed from my bathrobe, called my parents and comforted Ryan and Kristen. I then took the two children to Nancy’s house, so my parents could pick them up and drive them to school. Robin, who was in 11th grade, was on her way to school, unaware that all of this was happening. I jumped in my van and went to the ER to catch up with the ambulance. I remember passing my parents as they were going to Nancy’s house.

I don’t know how the children even focused that day, after having such a shock and witnessing such a commotion in the morning. Of course, the teachers could have had no idea what these two little kids had experienced only an hour before.

It was Friday, April 30th. We were en route, separately, heading back to the same hospital that had kept him overnight on Wednesday, April 28th, and discharged him Thursday morning, April 29th, with a recommendation to come back for the day program.

As he waited, on the bed, in the ER, I could tell he was not thinking clearly. He said, “Trish, they are not going to kill me, are they?” I went up to the hospital crisis worker and told him each time, I heard or thought of something that was critical for them to know. The worker responded, “Mrs. Gallagher, you are inundating us with information.” I went up to the doctor at the desk and asked, “Doctor, what happened to him this morning? Why was he unconscious in bed?” In a detached and slightly irritated tone, he responded, “First you have to get his blood pressure under control and then his mental illness.”

I went home for a few hours, to regroup, take a shower and get dressed in a decent outfit. I dabbed on some perfume, put on an attractive burlap dress, with a scarf and artfully applied my make-up. I wanted to redeem myself because of the way I looked, when I followed the ambulance in the morning. I wanted people to know that we were a “normal family’ and that we had it together. I wanted John to see me looking attractive and happy. Maybe that would make him feel better. I wasn’t used to seeing John so blue.

My immediate thought was of how insensitive he was and then I thought, mental illness…he must have us mixed up with some other family. He must be thinking of another patient. We are a normal family, no mental illness here!

A few hours later, John was placed on the cardiac floor, to treat his high blood pressure. Supposedly, he did not meet the criteria for admission for psychiatric care. He had apparently convinced the mental health crisis worker that he was not suicidal.

Patient seems anxious. Patient expressed no suicide ideation. Patient was evaluated by mental health crisis worker, and deemed inappropriate for psychiatric admission. Will admit for BP ( blood pressure) and further evaluation

Evaluated yesterday at this hospital for suicide attempt, cleared by psychiatrist for outpatient partial program.

ER arranging for a medical bed – 3 medical.

I stood by the bed, and showed him a photo album of the kids, trying to cheer him up. Something that I thought would distract him from his anxiety.

He said, “I can’t look at that. It reminds me of when I used to be happy.”

Months later he told me he had been thinking, “Everything looks so good—you, the kids, me. Everything looks so perfect, and I have so many imperfections.”

He asked me to call my mother to bring him some clothes. I left the room to use the phone in the nurse’s station.

As I walked back to his room, I heard someone scream, “Was there a patient in room 318? Someone just jumped out that window!”

I ran. The window was open. I looked down to a cement walk-way—and saw him lying face up.

I screamed, “My husband jumped out the window!”

Someone yelled, “Call 911!”

The nurse’s report described the sequence of events:

I had four interactions with the patient. At 7:00 he was admitted to the floor and oriented to his room. He was ambulatory, pleasant, smiled and made eye contact. The second time, Mr. Gallagher came to the desk and asked for a newspaper or magazine. I walked into the hallway to show him the visitor’s lounge. Shortly afterwards, I returned to his room to see if he had found anything. He had found magazines and was sitting in a chair next to his bed, reading. The third time, he again came to the desk requesting water. I walked with him to the pantry, showed him where cups and crackers were, and showed him where to find beverages. He smiled, thanked me and made eye contact. He walked back to his room. Lastly I went to question him on his emergency contact person’s name and phone number, and to find out which of his prescription meds he had taken. At this time, I sat on his bed while he was in the chair next to me. He denied taking his prescribed Paxil and Mavik. His wife came in to visit. I asked who his visitor was, and he introduced her as his wife. I got up to let her sit next to him, and left the room. This was approximately 7:15 p.m. At 7:30, his wife came screaming out into the hallway and stated that her husband had “jumped out the window.” Upon arrival at the patient’s room, the window was found open. 911 was called.

The doctor’s notes read:

Patient apparently jumped out of his bedroom (Room 318) window about 7:30 p.m. Call placed to 911 for ambulance, immediately. Patient found down on concrete in front of hospital. Patient was conscious (groaned to verbal stimulus), with adequate pulse and respirations. Airway patent and stable. Bilateral femoral fx apparent. Oxygen administered and IV fluids begun, with assistance of hospital staff. Police and ambulance arrived (approx. 5 minutes), assisted ambulance crew in patient stabilization.

I waited frantically to see him, but a nurse said, “I’m sorry, you can’t. They’re working on him.” She was kind, and asked, “Do you want to pray?” We said the Lord’s Prayer together. I went outside and sat on a bench. One of the ER doctors sat next to me, and very somberly apologized and said, “I am so sorry. I thought I was do-ing the right thing.”

I cried. “I told you he was going to hurt himself!”

I didn’t know if John was alive. They asked me what faith I was, and I said Catholic. I was then seated in a room with a priest and some of the hospital staff. My father, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law came and sat in the room with us. Then we all went to the trauma center, located about 15 minutes away. Outside, it was a beautiful, warm April evening.

I thought of the line from the nursery rhyme: “Along came a spider and sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffet away.” The spider was depression: big, black, scary. It had literally

frightened John away—almost permanently.

He had been running on empty emotionally for a prolonged period, tangled in a web of despair. The depression had stolen his sense of peace, happiness and self-esteem. And now, it seemed to be grabbing me, too.

I thought of the way he had been chewing his lip anxiously the past few weeks. He wasn’t doing his usual 50 push-ups on the bedroom floor.

Why didn’t I notice this as a sign of foreboding? Yes, that’s how I felt: all tangled up and frightened.

I needed to talk to somebody about how I felt about my husband’s suicide attempt.

We agreed to tell everybody that he had fallen down the steps, or that he was in an accident. I remember saying to the psychiatrist, “ What are we going to tell everybody. John won’t want anybody to know.” He said, “Well, this kind of story is juicy.”

He was in the hospital for five weeks. When he was first treated in the ER, he was in danger of a life-threatening infection from the chips of shattered bones. As strange as this sounds, I thought where could John go until he recovers? I thought of renting a hotel room in a town 15 minutes away or asking the nuns if he could stay in the monastery. I guess my thought process was that we have to hide this so nobody would ask us questions.

He was seriously injured, yet he couldn’t understand why I needed to talk about it—he just wanted to forget it ever happened.

Yes, he was the one who had been in so much emotional pain for the thirteen months prior to jumping, and he was the one who was suffering with so much physical pain now. But I, too, had suffered. We all had suffered, John, me and the four children.

And, now, at this moment, there was a strange sense of relief. He is safe, he is in a hospital. We don’t have to worry about him. I had experienced total shock—looking down from the third floor hospital window at my husband’s lifeless body laying on the ground.

I started to think that I didn’t know him at all.

The next day, at home, I went from room to room, closet to closet, and box to box, and threw away everything related to his job. He blamed the company for his stress, and I wanted every reminder of that out of our house.

I got out all of our bills and personal papers—mortgage documents, insurance documents—and put them in an organized

file. I paid all of the bills. I was in a frenzied state of mind, trying to process all that had happened in the last three days.

As crazy, as it sounds, I needed to get organized. I cleaned out my closet, boxed things for the Goodwill and got all of our affairs in order. In case he did it again and died, I would be prepared.

Then, I searched all of his drawers and attaché case for any hint of a reason to attempt suicide. Was he having an affair? Had he had a baby with someone else? What shame or circumstance would cause him to hurt his kids and me in this way? Wasn’t there something dreadful going on in my husband’s life that he couldn’t tell me?

I found nothing.

I did find other, more mundane things, however. There was a notebook filled with information about a comprehensive job search plan that was unsuccessful. Lists of interview dates. The outcome of each meeting. A 12-point list of things that were stressing him out. (I was on that list.)

I found several TO DO lists written neatly on his detailed “list-maker”, scads of loose leaf paper:

get RX for Restoril, work out, Doctor G. at 8:30, Ryan baseball practice, Business Unit Meeting, Doctor C. Wednesday at 10:00., return library books, clean the shower

And then, a list of employment agencies, with contact names penciled in on the margin, with squiggly lines. And then a list of more things to do:

work out a deal with work, learn new computer programs, withdraw stock options to cover bills, do taxes, do spreadsheet analysis, analyze capital for intercompany profit, buy ENSURE, get Meritine, Sustecal, think of new way to get to work without bumper-to-bumper traffic

I stumbled upon more of his efforts to provide for the family. Ideas for home businesses:

physical therapy and recreational activities for the elderly; fixing air conditioners and heat pumps; renting machines from Shop’n Bag to clean carpets; painting; learning guitar and then teaching it; cleaning houses; helping Kristen sell Beanie Babies; a T-shirt shop; making cakes, popcorn, pretzels and cookies to sell.

There were scads of papers, with columns drawn with blue ball-point pen—his “what-if” scenarios:

WORST—I lose my job and get a severance package

BEST—take another job; if it doesn’t work out, look for another job; talk to Human Resources and ask how much longer I have to find another job

DO NOTHING - still have to do my job, still have to look for a job, department going away, will lose job, talk to boss and tell her not happy; she is calling the shots

My husband was meticulous about things—always a neat wallet, a tidy garage, and bureau drawers in perfect order. He never took off an article of clothing without folding it neatly and putting it back in his drawer. His closets were arranged in perfect order, with suits, shirts, belts and ties arranged like an exclusive men’s clothier.

And there was another thing he was meticulous about—our children’s safety. He always insisted on seatbelts. He worried about them going too far out in the ocean, or falling off of the railing of the boardwalk. He would constantly say, “Trish, watch her; she’s too close to the railing.” He would never choose a second floor rental property at the shore.

He was not a risk taker, and was certainly not impulsive. He liked to plan every detail of everything—a picnic, a job search, a vacation. Lists were made and lists were followed. I liked that about him. Nothing last-minute. It worked for us.

He was a hard worker, and rarely took a day off from work unless he was really sick. He was conscientious.

As I searched his notes, my mind wandered to stories I had read in the news about people who had hurt their families while under psychiatric care. I wondered, Would we be safe when he came home?

I went to the hospital twice daily to visit him and then, when he came home, I took care of him. It was overwhelming. Hot summer weather, plus four active children, picking up prescriptions, making doctor’s appointments, and watching him struggle to walk. It was awful.

A few people knew the truth about what happened, but we limited ourselves to only telling a few trusted friends and relatives. Although they were a good source of support, I wanted to talk. I needed to share my innermost fears with someone else.

Several weeks after the accident, I was giving a seminar at a major university, when I noticed the time: 7:27 PM. I couldn’t contain myself. It triggered the memory of John jumping at 7:27 PM on a Friday night a few weeks earlier. I lost my train of thought, and blurted out my woes to the students. I went off on a totally inappropriate tangent about my own personal tragedy, asking the group to please not repeat it, because two of my children did not even know.

Another day, I went to pick up family photos at Wal-Mart, and became argumentative with the young sales clerk who waited on me. I raised my voice, and fussed with her over a coupon offer. I was totally out of line. Then, when the store’s greeter asked about my husband in the wheelchair, I told her that he had jumped out of a window—then asked her to swear that she wouldn’t tell anyone.

I felt disloyal to my husband when I shared our business. I told about thirty people: people I knew in towns far from where we lived, the lady in Wal-Mart, the people in the class, strangers in New York City.

We had not told his father and our good neighbors and friends. I was afraid that the word would get out and get back to my husband—or that my nine-year-old son would find out the truth. I didn’t want people saying, “Why did your dad jump out a window?” or spreading rumors: “Oh, he’s the guy that tried to commit suicide.” I didn’t want gossip.

I knew that I had been compassionate throughout the past year—that I had tried to be supportive and to take care of all of the things he used to do. I didn’t mind that he slept a lot, even though I knew that it wasn’t normal. Only once, in the privacy of our bedroom, did I ask him, “How could you do this to us?” Even when I did that, I wasn’t really mad at him. I knew how much pain he was in. Most of the time, I tried to stay upbeat.

Looking back, I realize that I couldn’t have known how much pain he was in. I had never had depression. I could never even begin to understand.

Whose fault was all of this, anyway? There were times when I wanted to cast blame. Why, for example, didn’t the primary doctor call me to tell me John needed psychiatric help? Why didn’t the doctors and the staff at the hospital listen to my pleas? Why wouldn’t the insurance company approve the proper care that John required?

Shortly after John’s fall, however, while rummaging through his wallet and briefcase, I found two referrals from his primary doctor for him to get psychiatric care, and one for biofeedback therapy.

The truth was that John had not pursued those suggestions. He was so immersed in his pain that he was not capable of following through. He had just run out of emotional steam to figure things out on his own and I didn’t know a thing about the referrals, or depression.

Some people tried to be helpful, giving unsolicited advice. Although I am sure that their intentions were good, they made me uneasy.

Others scared me. Two people whose loved ones had succeeded in killing themselves told me that John would do it again—and succeed. I didn’t want to believe this.

After he was home for about six months, he was able to drive. I was nervous about that. I didn’t think he had adequate control of his leg muscles. When he got upset or went to bed for the day, I worried. When he left the house, and looked like he was feeling a little blue, I followed him. I didn’t want him to think I didn’t trust him, but I was scared. We had kids to raise together, and I didn’t want to miss a signal that he was depressed again.

I also hated to ask him if he had taken his medicine, because I knew that it was his responsibility—but if he forgot, we would be the ones living without him. Sometimes one of the kids would say,

“Mom, I think you better follow him. I don’t think he’s really going to the grocery store.”

The medicine he took made him tired. On some occasions, this caused alarm. Once, he went to return a few library books and hadn’t returned after a few hours. In my mind’s eye, I pictured a bridge. I didn’t know whether to call the police, or ask family members to help me look for him. As it turned out, he had fallen asleep in the parking lot.

I hoped that life would soon get back to normal. I didn’t want John’s reputation tarnished. He had coached our kids’ sports teams for several years, and I didn’t want his illness to interfere or prevent him from doing this. I feared that people would say: “I don’t want my kids driving with him. That guy’s unstable.”

And yet, I might have reacted that way myself if I were watching the situation unfold in someone else’s life.

I needed a friend who had been through this. I wanted to know what was going on.

Would it get better? Why was I feeling the way I was? Would he ever heal from the physical and psychological fallout of a major depression? Would he always need antidepressants? Would we ever snuggle together and laugh and take drives together, like in the past?

I cried for the residual damage to our family and our marriage—and for his pain. I cried for the knowledge of his future operations, and for the 13-inch scars on his legs and hip. I also cried for our emotional scars, scars wrought by the confusion and sadness we both carried.

One day, I would be sympathetic about the depression he had suffered, and the next I would be mad at him for all of the problems he was causing the kids and me. He never seemed sorry or apologetic for our pain. His pain was so great, he did not seem able to see ours.

I went to a therapist, attended support group meetings, and found comfort talking to my older children. Yet I felt alone with the family secret.

Depression was a foreign word to our family. Suicide attempts happened to other families, with problems, right? Not to a “normal” family, I thought. I had a lot to learn. My journey had just begun. Why hadn’t I known about all of the classic symptoms of depression—anger, anxiety, tension, worrying, fatigue, headaches, hypertension, indigestion and insomnia? Why hadn’t I known how dangerous these symptoms were?

I also had ambivalent feelings. “Oh, it must be so hard for you to have John in the hospital,” a neighbor said. In actuality, I felt a little guilty for thinking how nice it was.

The time prior to the suicide attempt was so chaotic for all of us. John had the depression, and we had the fallout. We had been completely centered on trying to cheer John up and most of the time, we weren’t successful. He was still so down and we couldn’t figure out what was going on. It had been going on for almost a year. John had changed. I didn’t even think of depression. That word was not even in our family lexicon.

Yet we wanted “normal” again. I didn’t feel like he was my husband anymore. He had no energy, no interest in activities. He was irritable with the kids, and didn’t even want to play his guitar. Something was terribly wrong. We walked on eggshells around him.

So, while he was in the hospital, it was nice. Neighbors brought covered dish meals, and did things to cheer us up. Our focus was on living again, not just on trying to survive. His absence gave us the respite we needed. The heaviness of day-to-day worry had lifted.

Looking back, I wish that the whole experience had not been that of a secret we had to cover up. Depression, I now realize, is a treatable illness that can be helped with the right diagnosis, therapy, and medication. It is nothing to be ashamed of.

My message to readers is to not overlook the power that stress exerts on the human mind. My husband seemed like the kind of guy who had everything to live for. Yet the pressure of an impending layoff was a situational trigger for serious depression. We all need to pay attention to the way stress affects us and our loved ones.

I still have many unanswered questions:

Did the depression cause him to exaggerate the danger he was in at work?

Was he really losing his job or did the depression make him think he was?

When and why did he lose the power to combat the dark cloud he was under?

What triggered such an act against himself?

There were many subtle warnings, but they had eluded me. Yet we beat the odds. John survived, miraculously. He was given

a second chance. I pray now that we can find the meaning in this, and use our experience to help others.

God saved his life. I am looking for answers in His mysterious ways. I am looking for the hand of God to direct us.

Right before my husband went in for a second operation, my mother gave him a card that read:

I said to the man that stood at the gate, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he said, ‘Go out into the darkness and put thine hand into the hand of God. This will be to thee better than a light and safer than a known way.’

The experience we have had reiterates this simple advice. My entire family has suffered, but like the mythical phoenix rising from the ashes—we are coming back again, with a life that is new. And yet, we know that it is not a fairy tale. John’s depression—and our sadness—did not miraculously disappear. But, along the way, we have learned something important about understanding and compassion and survival—and we hope that what we have learned can help others to “tread safely into the unknown.”

Dear Trisha,

I printed the entire book so I could read it thoroughly. I was especially touched by Katelyn’s story. She will never know of course, but I related far more than I would like to. The information was excellent but I can only assume the story was all about John. That being said, it was courageous and helpful to others. However, as I was so involved with you at the time, the aspect I believe would have helped families the most would have been the help you sought for yourself. I know it wasn’t easy mainly because when you saw me, I was very straight forward, insisting you help yourself. If my honesty hurt you, I am sorry for that. Your description of yourself of course was right on target right down to the denial and fear, but not what you had to look at during therapy. I don’t know the other therapists of whom you speak. I only know you were one of my toughest challenges running, running, running. You would not allow me to work with your grief and loss which in my opinion were massive pain centered. I don’t think you ever recognized your own pain in its intensity, only John’s. Remember the “moving forward focus group” that you attended? The ladies in the group tried hard to help but became frustrated with you as it was all about John. I think they played a role in helping you deal with what was going on. I am sure there were many others you have asked to read a draft of your book but most of those people were not with you during your agony. You didn’t mention divorce I believe your children did. By the way, they are totally remarkable. How are things today? The last time we met, you were separated again. What happened then? Are you still living with your mother? Where are your children? Is Katelyn still in Ireland? Please bring me up to date. I truly hope life is beginning to look brighter for you.

Dr. Yvonne Kaye

www.yvonnekaye.com