A Shift of the Planet

I have so many things I want and need to say. But first, this will be my last post for a while. And when I do come back, the page will look new, the picture will be new, and I hope, it will feel like a new blog. We are leaving here in a week. When the house sold and we came back from the mountains, the whole world was a different place than it is now. I was a little sad to be going. It felt like the right thing to do but I had reservations. I would miss the house with all its endless storage space. Even with the new walk-in closet the handyman built for us in the mountain house, I didn't, and still don't, know where we will put everything we're taking.

The first week back was taken up with getting moving estimates, collecting boxes, taking care of all the leftover things from us being gone for so long. I measured walls before we left the mountains, and I busied myself with graph paper and furniture cut-outs. We walked through the house deciding what would go in a sale, and what would be taken along. We rented a storage room. We wrote garage sale ads for the newspapers. That seems so long ago.

My SO's best friend died the second Saturday we were here. He had been sick and declining for two years. We felt bad for his widow. We wanted to help her anyway we could. We spent time at her house, helped her move in her new dining room furniture, bought from us. I gave her my crystal. No place for it in the mountains. It was a sad time, but it was manageable.

Sunday the real estate agent and her husband came to take away things that they had bought. We showed them more things, and they bought more. During this time we learned that my SO's son and daughter-in-law were going to be divorced. It was worrisome but we had seen it coming for a very long time, years in fact. Their marriage had grown more and more combative, more difficult. Like so many other couples married more than ten years, they were growing in opposite directions. The real estate agent has a daughter going through something similar. We commiserated with each other for a little while.

Then the cat took a turn for the worse. We made the hard decision to have him put to sleep. We agreed that we had been living on borrowed time for four months. He'd had a good summer. We had enjoyed that time with him. It had felt like time stolen from the grip of lymphoma. I cried. I have been crying for months. I could see the effects from so much crying on my face in new lines around my eyes, a new sag to my jaw. I adored my cat. He had been a good and loyal companion to me for fourteen long years. We had been through an awful lot together. It was so hard to let him go. But I finally realized that he was suffering, and my herculean efforts to keep him alive, the money I had spent on injections and medications, were more for myself than for the cat's sake.

We drove to the vet's office on Monday morning. She was sorry to see us but she had been his doctor for some time and knew this day would come. I cried a little. I handled myself better than I had thought I would. My SO was a rock, soothing, compassionate. The cat was given a sedative. He got very sleepy. I said leaned down to say goodbye to him, and saw his eyes lock onto mine. The overdose was given. He breathed one last time. I listen as his heart stopped. It was peaceful, merciful. I thought what a shame it is that we can't by law be as merciful to our fellow humans who are dying of a dread disease. We left the vet's office after giving them instructions on cremation and the return of ashes. I was tearful but felt so positive about how it had gone. So much less traumatic than I had been imagining. I had made it through. Relief was the primary feeling.

And then -- disaster arrived.

Before we left the house, my SO had called his son to talk a little, lend support, to see if his son was doing OK. The call went to voicemail. He told me his son had turned off his cell phone. He thought about calling again on our way back from the vet's office, but didn't want to be pushy, to nose too much into their business. We have both been through divorces, and understand how hard those first days and months can be.

About 2:00, the daughter-in-law called. She was crying. I thought she wanted to give me condolences about the cat. She's an animal lover in the first degree. But no, she was wondering if we had heard from her husband. She was worried. Both his cell phones were turned off, the personal one and the work one, and she had not heard from him since morning when he had called to say some things that made her worry even more. I told her we would call when he called. I urged her to go home for the day, she was no good at work, I said, in the emotional state she was in. I hung up and my SO and I talked about the call. He said that his son was probably finding a new place to live, or home packing to go. We went on with grieving for the cat.

At 5:30, the daughter-in-law called back. She was so hysterical she could barely talk. My SO kept trying to calm her, and then he handed the phone to me. The short version is this: my SO's son had put a gun to his head and killed himself. It is shocking. Just typing he words is shocking. My SO couldn't listen to his daughter-in-law tell him this. His brain wouldn't comprehend it. He handed the phone to me. I too was dumbfounded. I finally know the real meaning of that word. I kept expecting her to say it was a joke, April Fool's. But no, she was outside her house with a chaplain. There was crime tape all around her, police cars, detectives. They wouldn't let her inside the house. She knew almost nothing. We felt completely helpless. It was as if the earth shifted on its axis.

Thirty-six hours later, we know very little more. My SO is devastated. He keeps saying how hard it is to believe that his rock-solid son felt life was so hopeless that he had to end to do this. I imagine it is a lament every survivor of a suicide -- those left behind -- have. There is an unmistakable feeling of "could I have done something to save him?" Or wondering how we could have missed the depth of his depression. We do now know he left a suicide note, but it is in the evidence room at their local police station. The contents can't be revealed until this coming Monday. Even then we don't know if the daughter-in-law will share what was written almost certainly to her. There is so much we don't know or understand, and we probably never will.

I thought I would be grieving for my cat, and I am. I still expect to find him in his usual places, or feel him creep by. I tear up easily, but it is a pure and simple kind of grief, without questions or remorse. This other grief, it is ugly and dark, confusing and tormented. I am beginning to get angry. It has ruined my feelings for this place, tainted the happy memories we have had here. It has made the future uncertain. To lose your only child, I cannot imagine the sorrow. I am sad, but my sadness doesn't even touch the sadness my SO must feel. It worries me, this sort of deep sadness. It has already caused a kind of inertia in both of us. He keeps saying that we have to hold tight to each other, and I know that he's right. I hope we make it through this black wall. The next week will be one of the most difficult in either of our lives. And both of us are eager to be gone from here, to not look back, to somehow start anew. I wish I was only grieving for my cat. But it is much more dire now. This grief feels scary and fraught with danger.