Regular readers of my blog know that dealing with death is one of my most difficult challenges.
As the Captain and I sat in the outdoor dining area taking in a gorgeous Florida morning, enjoying our coffee and pleasant conversation, making plans for the day, a single police car pulls up close by a neighbor's house and walks up to the house. So the nightmare begins . . .
A man we have never seen before comes out of the neighbor's house, wildly waving his arms around . . . needless to say, something was definitely wrong. Shortly thereafter, the stranger gets in his vehicle and leaves . . . followed by the policeman.
The neighbor was an elderly gentleman, a Vietnam veteran widowed twice who was seemingly enjoying his life in the company of younger women, traveling frequently and partied hard, obviously enjoying the intoxication of alcoholic beverages. He was a friendly guy who frequented the local VFW and spent a tremendous amount of time giving back to our veterans through community service. All in all, a good neighbor . . .
The Captain and I had been wondering where he had been lately, speculating that he was on one of his long trips in the company of one of his ladies, having the time of his life. To the contrary . . . we later found out that he broke his back, had been in the hospital and returned home just days before . . .
Back to that morning . . . it had been no more than 20 minutes before we heard the sound of sirens, a fire truck and EMS. The stranger had once again emerged on the scene . . . all of a sudden, one police car at a time, they converged . . . taking up both sides of the street . . . way down the street. I had never seen so many cops and so much commotion happen in a matter of minutes . . . a sick feeling came over me from the pit of my stomach.
The Captain and I sat outside watching it all unfold like two birds up in the tree, not knowing what was going on, but knowing nevertheless . . .
It went on all day long . . . more police, more cars . . . detectives, the medical examiner . . . the yellow crime tape barricaded the property . . . then came the forensics unit . . .
We heard some of the talking amongst the police since many of them hung out in our front yard during the investigation . . . we gathered from the bits and pieces we heard that our neighbor shot himself . . . but then there was that stranger who was taken into a car with a detective . . . and the lady, who was apparently his caretaker, was also taken by two other detectives . . . neither emerged for a very long time.
Numbness took over me that morning and has not left . . . the thought of someone taking their own life makes one think of how appearances are deceiving . . . how the quality of someone's life is so important . . . and how fragile life is . . . scarier is someone taking the life of another. We can be here one minute and gone the next.
The yellow crime tape especially freaked me out . . . I bit off all of my fingernails. All of this took place as we sat outdoors having a pleasant conversation over a cup of coffee, not knowing the hell that was going on so close by and would unfold before our eyes . . . without the details, like a silent movie with no subtitles.
What makes me sad is how life circumstances can make the difference between life and death . . . I've seen it over and over again working in the mental health industry. Hope and despair take over and there only seems to be one way out in what could be a split second of thinking . . .
Sorry to be a downer . . . it is about life . . . death is a part of life . . . the key is learning how to cope with life circumstances with hope and faith that tomorrow is another day.
