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This Is What Helps
This is what helps when your son dies a suicide. Take long walks at sunset and think of all the ways things could have gone worse. Sit in a room full of people who have lost a loved one to suicide and utter a prayer of mercy for the new one just arrived. Walk away briskly from the woman who says “don’t grieve for grief’s sake,” after your son has not yet been in the grave three months. Let there be a heaven where grandmas and grandsons sit comfortably side by side, peaceful and smiling. Wrestle the questions until you’re exhausted and then drop them one by one like pearls from a broken necklace. Let go of the time-space continuum of daily life and live on the edges of things until you hurt less.
The morning Cory died, I opened my eyes to see the back of Drew’s white t-shirt and smelled the sweet dried sweat of him. A bird landed on the window sill casting a shadow against the scrim of the closed shade. I saw the portraits of our sons, Zach and Cory standing high on the dresser. Without seeing which photo was Cory’s, I felt relief he would not be deployed to Iraq again. It was shear dumb luck that his injury turned out to be superficial— a rogue bullet caught the fleshy part of the back-side of his calf. He recovered, lying on his stomach more often than his back to keep pressure off the wound. When the four-star general came through with his fist full of purple hearts, he winced and smiled while the medal was pinned to his chest.
When Cory called us from Baghdad, Drew always spoke with him first. I took my cues from the look on Drew’s face. If something bad had happened, I had begun to learn to buck up, swallow the large lump rising up from my stomach and prepare to talk to my son with the term I had invented for myself— Baghdad psychology. At home, we had always encouraged Cory to express his feelings openly. He found this so difficult, but I insisted with gentleness that he needed to say what was on his mind. In Baghdad, I had to accept the new rules, “buck up.” The early morning we woke up and learned that Cory’s company had lost three men, I spoke carefully.
“What happened Cory?”
“The Humvee ahead of us hit an IED and it blew up. My vehicle shook like it had been hit too, but it hadn’t. We swerved to the side of the road and got out with our rifles, but there was no one there to shoot, just a smoking Humvee spattered with blood and flesh.”
I listened for his voice to break. “Are you alright? Were you hurt?”
“I’m fine, but my buddies are all gone. I volunteered to clean up the truck… just clean it up… the blood inside after their bodies were removed.”
“That must have been awful, Cory.” I swallowed hard.
“I had to do it, Mom. It was all that was left of them and I wanted them to know I cared. I put the pieces in a bag.”
Drew got back on the phone and insisted Cory stay strong and come back to us. I walked to the bathroom and switched back to American psychology and let me tears flow. My son was in a battle to survive and I hated Baghdad psychology. Cory seemed to be emotionally gasping for air that day. I felt determined that I would will him through this from the other side of the world.
Drew stirred and kissed my cheek, a routine signal that meant he was steeling himself to rise and start the coffee pot while I had another half hour of sleep. This morning I didn’t fall back to sleep. My mind was unusually alert, poised with a question I couldn’t get at. I listened as the coffee perked in the kitchen downstairs and knew Drew was reading the paper at the kitchen table. When the phone rings early, it is usually Drew’s construction crew needing instruction on what materials to pick up for the day. This morning I had the sense the sound of the ringing phone would change everything. I felt a stabbing fear when I heard the tone of Drew’s voice downstairs.
I could feel my lips part to speak to Drew at the bedroom door, the cool morning air flowing all the way down into my lungs. But I was silent. He sat down on the bed and put the weight of his head in his hands and said “it’s Cory. Cory has shot himself.” Why was my first reaction to run? I had been a peace-loving, meditating vegetarian for years and thought there would be some equanimity for such a moment. But I ran with my hand covering my mouth as though I was trying to catch something coming up from my stomach. In the bathroom, I covered my face with a towel but nothing came out. I could not breath. Just as I had coaxed myself to breath during the contractions at Cory’s birth, I now heard myself, say “breath… breath.”
I thought, I must go to Cory and pick him up and set things right as I had always done when he was a boy. I could fetch him when he cried, standing in his crib with his fat knees and rumpled crib hair and a sagging diaper. His crying would cease and he would break into a smile, tears still wet on his cheeks. A fall to the ground was so easily fixed by promptly plopping him back on his solid legs and smiling into his eyes to ease the scare in him. I loved these moments of power to ease his pain. This is what I must do. I must pick up the pieces. I raced back to the bedroom.
“He’s alright, though. He’s been shot, but he’s alright?”
“Cory is dead, Cate. We need to go help Nadia.” I don’t know how Drew summoned the courage to force these words out. I hated him for saying those words. Each one sounded profane as though a silk drape in the air had been ripped wide. I gasped and Drew caught hold of me.
I remember so little about the rest of that morning. How did I get dressed? Did I brush my teeth, comb my hair, make the bed, shut off the coffee pot? Something took over inside; something numbed me so that I could get in the car with Drew and drive to the home Cory shared with his wife, Nadia. My excitement to see Cory was palpable. This kept me sane in that first hour.
Twentyfive years ago, I was graced by some quirk of fate to have found Drew. I was newly, messily divorced. I felt crushed, wounded, cast aside like I ought to seek out a dingy trailer park and hide out with my baby son. Cory was not yet a year old and his father showed little interest in a relationship with him. I felt this pain acutely for my son and imagined building a brick fortress around him. I would be his safety. Then I met Drew who had a son, Zach, just a year older than Cory. Drew was a charming tease and he made me laugh in the midst of my emotional squalor. My laughter kindled hope. Our sons played with trucks and plastic soldiers while we coached them to share. When I had seen Drew in all four seasons, I began to feel softer, less guarded. Of course I married him. Our blended family fit me like a glove.
Zach and Cory were good compliments to one another. Zach was cocky, handsome and dominating and I worried that his swagger would get him in trouble. Cory was reserved, quiet and some times sullen. I was never so thankful for his lovely averageness. His dark hair accentuated ears that stuck out and I hoped he would never get them pinned back. His smile was crooked, as though he was begrudging you the chance to see it. It charmed me endlessly and I knew some day someone would melt when his lip turned up on one side. A year behind his brother in school, Cory caught the military bug from Zach. He wanted to join the Army. Zach had joined the marines and started training to be a pilot right after high school.
I was not political, by nature and our country hadn’t come near a war since Desert Storm, but I chafed at the thought of becoming a military family. I pictured strip mall recruiting centers and muscular officers loitering around vulnerable boys and girls and I resented their power over Cory. I desperately wanted to give him his autonomy and worried incessantly that I had not prepared him well enough. I pleaded with his father to dissuade him from the Army. The thought of an armed conflict came ominously closer after 9/11. I watched the military recruitment process rev into gear, hungry for both my sons. I began then to grieve the distance between Cory and I because I could not feign enthusiasm for the military.
Sitting in Cory and Nadia’s driveway, I summoned the courage to ask the questions. Where had Cory shot himself? Would I see his blood? Would I see his body? I put one step in front of another and followed Drew to the door. Nadia saw us coming, opened the door and collapsed in heaving sobs when we closed in around her. I let the horrible sounds in my body come forth smothered in the shoulders of my husband and my sweet, young daughter-in-law. Giving comfort to Nadia kept me sane in that second hour. We were both hollow as dried reeds, looking for a way to get through the next moments.
“How, Nadia? Where?”
Her words tumbled out like spilled water. Most of them are lost in my memory now, but I remember the paramedic declared the time of death in the garage at 6:52AM and had taken his body. The next hour was filled with fractured activity. Police at the door… Drew taking them to the garage… Nadia and I huddled together in the kitchen breathing… waiting. The officer saying we needed to claim his body… asking for a statement from Nadia… hearing Cory is an Iraqi veteran… police must notify the Army. I say to Drew that I will not see Cory’s body. Drew will go… Nadia will go… I will stay here… phone calls to make… Look for words to say… finally writing them down so I can read them as I pick up the phone.
When we moved into our new house, we made two large bedrooms for Zach and Cory in the basement. Drew’s construction company created two bedrooms and a bathroom for our teenage boys who were less and less interested in what went on in the rest of the house. Each time Cory came home, I watched him swing through the back door and stomp down the basement stairs as I hollered hello. Sometimes I stood at the top and called down saying, “you forgot to say hello.” I felt torn between insisting he show a modicum of sociability and giving him his privacy. I worried about what he was doing by himself in the basement; what he was thinking.
Drew was not as patient. One night, Cory swung through the back door and down the steps. Drew got up from the dinner table, red-face and steaming and went after him. From upstairs I heard their encounter. The first thing I heard was Drew grabbing him bodily before he reached his bedroom door.
“Cory, I need to know what’s going on with you. Just tell me how you are, man.”
“I don’t know what you want from me.”
“We’ve got all the time in the world. I just want to hear what’s going on in your life. I’m not the bad guy here. I’m the one who loves you. I’m not leaving until you talk to me.”
For the better part of three hours, Cory finally talked to Drew. We learned he feared he could never be as “good” as Zach. We learned that he had a festering crush on a girl a year older than he who was bouncing back and forth between promises to Cory and promises to her college boyfriend. We learned he was angry at his father, Thom and that he resented the way Thom appeared only at the times when there was a big occasion in Cory’s life.
I finally mustered the courage to initiate a conversation about his father.
“Cory, are you curious about your father? Do you want to know what happened between he and I?”
“No. He seems pretty happy with his new family and kids.”
“You’re his child too.”
“He seems to have forgotten about that.”
“Your father had to find a way to move forward and create a new family just like I did with Drew and you and Zach. But he still loves you. You’re still his son and I know he’s proud of you.”
I tried so hard to say these things with conviction, but I burned with anger when I remembered my phone calls to Cory’s father asking him to spend time with Cory. These turned into bitter arguments and I finally quit trying.
Sitting alone in Cory and Nadia’s home, my first thought was that I must call Thom. It felt like sheer duty, but I thought this first call with my script belonged to Thom. His wife answered the phone and she heard the shock in my voice— knew I wouldn’t ever call their home unless it was about Cory.
“Thom, Cory has died this morning. He committed suicide.” At that moment all of my hopes and wishes for Cory collided with my anger at Thom’s neglect and I erupted in heaving sobs. Someone described death as a great equalizer. In the years it took to nurture our resentments, it took only this moment for forgiveness to pass between Thom and I. Our mutual mistakes, our years of recriminations became transparent and useless and Thom’s silent, helpless cries brought a surprising sense of relief. I expected this call to be like a reminder to attend Cory’s graduation or his wedding reception. There were no more opportunities to see our son. Now we were wide open to the questions that parents torture themselves with. What did I do wrong? Why didn’t I see this coming? Why didn’t Cory reach out to any of us?
The questions became an obsession for Drew after the funeral. Neither of us returned to work that first week. The Monday after Cory’s death, Drew sat on the bed and said, “I have failed our son. I feel like I am a failure.” A torrent of questions gushed out of him and I began to see that he wanted to solve this puzzle in his mind, if only to restore a bit of control. In a world where Cory can die completely without warning, how can we know that Zach will be safe? Why hadn’t Cory shown any unusual signs of depression? Why didn’t he call us when he felt desperate? Was he using some drug that we knew nothing about? Why did he have to choose such a violent way to die? If we had seen them for dinner that evening, could this have been prevented? I dodged my husband’s questions as though they were bullets coming straight for me. I carried a deep sense that I had not cared for my son properly and that his death was my fault. I was horrified that Drew’s questions would implicate me and I would come full face with the sense that I was responsible for Cory’s death.
I was obsessed with the bad luck of timing. If I had called Nadia and Cory that night, surely I would have picked up the sense of despair in my son’s voice. How is it that one bullet could pierce straight through the calf of his leg and he could be fine, but another shot to his precious, beloved head could never, ever be fixed. I pictured myself picking up bits of brain and skull and pushing them back into place, sure that I could have fixed something had I been close at hand. That image was followed closely by the smell of his head as a baby, his warmth against my body in his little sleeper. I began to imagine that Nadia was inattentive and I cried because I was so angry at her while I knew how deeply wounded she was.
Drew began poring over web sites on post traumatic stress disorder in veterans of armed combat. I saw Cory the day he returned from the hospital in Germany and he reacted with some of his characteristic detachment. He seemed to want to stay sufficiently removed from me and at the same time, I knew he was glad to see me. Was he sparing us the agony of what he had seen in Iraq? We knew the day he had been shot that two of his close friends had been killed. It was one of the better announcements coming out of Iraq that day— only two American deaths. But I was frantic when I got the call from Cory from the Green Zone ER. He had been shot, but he was okay. We knew he had seen horrific things that he found difficult to describe to us.
I felt that Cory was too silent for his own good and I wanted him to let go of Baghdad psychology and begin to open up to us. He put us off; he put off Nadia and we saw him isolate himself for long hours in his room. I was so relieved when Nadia announced that Cory would begin training for a new job the night before he died.
How long is a mother a mother? How long does a mother carry death in her heart? A litany of questions were spinning inside when the Army recruiter got out of his car with a chaplain that second day after Cory’s death. I let them in knowing this script was different than the ones they had to make most often. Words of comfort… questions regarding the state of Cory’s mental health on his return from the hospital in Germany… details about military protocol at a funeral… I met this recruiter at Cory’s induction into the Army as I stood proud of my son with his close cropped, dark hair and his brand new green uniform. I thought for a moment of raving about the idiocy of war and of having a military, but I was filled with empathy for them. They were wretchedly uncomfortable and I didn’t pressure them to stay any longer than necessary. When they left, I wished them well. I cried when I saw their car roll away because they would not be back. They held a little part of Cory that I had no access to and I wanted them to come back and help me find my son.
I wondered if their sons were in the military. I felt singled out for loss and for the first time, I wanted to rage at our government. I prayed the president would not come to our city and seek an opportunity to visit military families because I would scream at him and I would look awful and crazy and I wouldn’t care if they put me away. What would he know of the unique pain I felt after getting my son back in his own home only to lose him again by his own hand?
Cory has been gone now for nine months and four days. I asked Drew to turn our digital clock away from me after he got up so I wouldn’t have to see the numbers 6:52 click into place as I lie in bed. In the moments while I am between sleep and wakefulness, I imagine that Cory is just injured and recovering in Germany. When I come to wakefulness, my stomach begins to churn and I will myself to picture Cory in heaven holding my grandma’s hand and she tells me she is taking care of him and he smiles a crooked smile at me.
This morning I dreamt I got in my car and drove to Cory and Nadia’s house filled with the anticipation of seeing Cory. He looked at me through the front door window with his half smile and opened the door. There were no questions. There was no drama, just the simple joy of knowing we were going driving together. He grabbed his khaki jacket and we got in my car and sat while I drove the streets of our neighborhood. We were content to sit and comment about the new houses being built, the new family moving in, the tidbits of family news. There was no hurry, no worry about endings. Cory turned to me and spoke clearly, “I have to go back now.” I understood that he meant he had to go back to the place where I had been missing him for months now. I did not protest. I was at peace. He was going on his own terms. I drove back to the cemetery where we interred his ashes nine months ago. Cory got out of the car and came to my window and reached in to hug me. Then he turned and walked back across the green grass, the coolness of the wind rumpling his khaki jacket. I woke and with clear deliberation turned the clock back to face me... 6:53AM. Cory has been gone now nine months, four days and one minute.
Stephen B. Starr, March 12, 2008