WHEN YOU KILL YOURSELF

May 22, 1994

Part 2

At around 10:00am this morning a priest stopped by my room to say hello. After some small talk he asked me if I would like to receive communion or go to confession. I told him I would like to go to confession and then receive communion - which I did.

A short while after the priest left, there was a slight knock on my door and a woman walked in wearing one of those white doctor coats and dark blue scrubs. She introduced herself but I've already forgotten her name.

She told me she was a doctor and worked in the emergency room, and was on duty when I was brought in by the Chatham Fire and Rescue Squad. She said I should be very thankful that I'm alive - that when I arrived at the hospital at 1:15pm on Monday, May 16th, I was on death's doorstep, as close to death as anyone could possibly be. She then said that I was beyond hope and that all the emergency room staff could do for me was to put me on life the life support systems - as a gesture of doing their best for me and nothing more, for I was expected to die within an hour or two. Once I was on life support, the staff went back to helping those who were in need - those whose lives were not about to expire.

When she got up to leave, she stood over me and placed her hands gently on my cheeks.  With tears in her eyes, she softly said, "Tom, be thankful. You are a miracle, a living and breathing miracle. There is no medical reason why you are alive, why you are here today. You are a miracle, so please get well."

As she walked out of my room, I started to cry. And cried and cried. Tears of joy, tears of sadness, tears of relief, tears of anguish. I cried.

Shortly after 2:00pm a nurse came into my room and told me that my parents and brother were here to see me. I had been silently dreading that news all day, because I didn't know what to expect when I saw them. Were they going to be angry at me? Would they demand an apology for what I had put them through? Would they accuse me of not loving them, of deliberately trying to hurt them by what I deid. Would they call me an ungrateful and selfish SOB? Would they disown me and tell me that after today they no longer wanted to see me? Was this to be the final goodbye?

When I walked into the psych unit's large living room, there they were. I smiled and said hello, and then we hugged and hugged. There were tears in our eyes but we didn't cry, we sort of smiled and laughed awkwardly. My mother kissed me and said, "I love you."

A week ago I was so sure of my death, so sure of a successful suicide, that the consequences of not only surviving but living and having to face reality and my parents and brother on this day never once entered my mind. I was so positive of my death that if a bookie was foolish enough to offer me odds, I would have bet everything I owned that I would have succeeded.

But as we sat down in the far corner of the living room, I realized that I did bet everything and lost - lost big time. And the only thing I had on my mind and the only thing I cared about was whether or not I still had the means to once again roll the dice - roll the ivory bones and have them come up snake-eyes, dead eyes.

During the meeting my mother said, "The doctors told us you are going to be all right. You didn't suffer any brain damage and all your vital organs are normal. They said you were very lucky, a miracle." Overall the entire meeting was far better than I expected, and they were happy and very relieved that I was going to be all right.

But I was so self-centered, so self-contained within my own distant thoughts, I didn't share their joy, their relief - but did feel the sadness they went through. And I wondered how the doctors knew I didn't suffer any brain damage when my mind is so treacherous - so full of tangled thoughts and troubling torment?

After my mother gave me a final hug and told me how much she loved me, she said, "I have a question to ask you. When we went to the motel room to get your things, I noticed your vitamins on the bureau and that you had read the Sunday Globe. Why did you take your vitamins and read the newspaper when you knew you were going to kill yourself later in the day?"

For a few seconds I looked at my mother not knowing what to say. It was a good question, something I never thought about. Finally the words came to me, "Well, I take me vitamins and read the Globe everyday. And last Sunday was just another day, just another Sunday until the time came to kill myself."

My mother shook her head and said, "It makes no sense to me at all. If you knew you were going to kill yourself, what good are the damn vitamins going to do you? And the newspaper! You actually sat there and read the paper knowing full well that you would be dead in a few hours! What possessed you to care what the hell was in the newspaper for god sake?"

"I just did, mom! That's all there is to it! I just did! I just followed my daily routine without any other thoughts at all."

My mother looked at me and just shook her head