Retelling Violent Death

Edward Rynearson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135057138
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book provides insight and instruction for bereaved readers and those who work with them.

PART
I
	COHERENT RETELLING

1 CHAPTER

My Own Retelling

First telling my five-year-old son and four-year-old daughter that Julie had killed herself was the hardest telling of all. They had just lost their baby sister, and now their mother. I wondered how I could announce her dying so they could begin to form their own stories. I was afraid that they would somehow blame themselves—as small children often do when a parent dies. I couldn't bear to overwhelm them with more guilt, sadness, and confusion, but they needed to know. I decided that the words I used weren't as important as the attitude we maintained with each other—that no matter what had happened we were going to be safe and we needed to be direct and honest.

I told them what had happened as clearly as I could through my crying. When they began to cry with me, we held each other and I reassured them that we would be O.K. I remember saying that Julie loved us and would expect us to be sad after she died and would want us to be together so we could talk about her and not forget her.

Then I read them to sleep with our favorite bedtime story, Goodnight Moon.

After they were asleep I began calling relatives and friends. I told Julie's dying story over and over. Each telling was followed by a reassurance of my strength and optimism—that I would survive her dying. In telling this story of surviving I felt relieved—as if the specter of death had left with her dying.

The Reenactment Story

My relief was short-lived. In the days and weeks after her dying, that specter returned. My awareness of her suicide brought such terror and despair that my own survival story was forgotten. Each time my awareness of Julie's suicide returned, it would follow my imaginary reenactment of the last moments of her living. Once the procession of scenes began to unfold, I could do nothing to interrupt. It was like a series of spotlighted scenes drawn from one side of my mind to the other:

She walks down the ramp to the ferry and sits alone.
Now that she has written a note, she doesn't want anyone in her way.
When the island becomes a distant margin, she is ready to leave.
She walks to the lower deck and through the parked cars to the stern.
Drawing her brown, wool coat about her, she jumps into the wake.

Merged in this drama, I would imagine what she thought and felt. This imagining was an endless questioning that wouldn't stop. There was no questioning what she had done, but there seemed no limit to my imagining her last thoughts and feelings.

What went through her mind as she stood on the stern?
Was she saying goodbye to the kids and me before she jumped?
Was she welcoming the release of her drowning and the water?
What went through her mind after she jumped?
Was she frightened by the coldness and suffocation?
Did she scream for help because she realized this was a mistake?
What went through her mind as she died?
Did she feel a calmness and transcendence as she became unconscious?
Was she hoping and searching for awareness beyond her dying?

How could I expect others to understand these imaginary eruptions? I kept them secret, as they kept me from maintaining my concentration during the day and kept me awake at night. I would awake, crying and terrified as I witnessed Julie disappearing in the wake of the ferry. It would take me hours to calm myself so I could get back to sleep. There seemed to be no time or space for my mind to rest.

Now, many years later, I recognize that the reenactment fantasies after Julie's dying were fundamental to forming a story. Seeing and hearing are my primary senses for communicating an experience—with others and my own imagination, as well. The imaginative elements of the story I first fashioned around Julie's violent dying required me to “see” and “hear” what happened. Under ordinary conditions, I recognize some boundary between who I am and what I am imagining. This differentiation allows me to experience the concrete and imaginary at the same time. Under the extraordinary condition of reliving Julie's suicide, I could not differentiate myself from my imaginary story. I saw and heard the reenactment of her dying as if it weren't imagined. In losing myself, I lost ownership of my imaginary story.

In those early weeks after her dying, that reenactment story was so autonomous and powerful that I seemed possessed. Possession suggests that the experience of my imaginary story of violent death at first generated its own energy and drama. Being “possessed” was a helpless experience because I could find no role for myself in the story as it unfolded. At first I could only witness the story. The story needed my voice, but like an oracle, the story came from some source outside my control.

My Fantasy of Julie's Natural Dying

One of the first times that I retold Julie's dying story in a way that included my own voice was when I first imagined how different her dying would have been had she died from a natural cause.

“What if you had died from cancer?”

In that story, there would have been a part for me from the beginning to the end. I would have been there as the possibility of her dying was confirmed by her doctor, and actively involved in trying to save her from death. When the cancer had advanced we could join in preparing ourselves and our kids for her dying. Finally, I would have been there when she died. She would not have been alone. I would have held her and kept her from suffering by herself. Afterward, I could have said goodbye and stepped away. By stepping away, I could release my obligation to protect her, knowing that I had done everything I could.

Her natural dying would have offered a purposeful ending to a story we had constructed together. While she was dying, we might have accepted death on terms that we worked out together. That sort of affirmative ending to her life might be carried forward into my own life story. Participating in Julie's natural dying would have prepared me for my own.

The imaginary story of her suicide left me haunted with the way she had died, with no place or time or ending for me. The imaginary story of her natural dying, on the other hand, brought me the role of active caregiver and I felt relief in secretly telling it to myself.

Unrealized caring seems to be my dilemma. Her dying was so abrupt and isolated, I didn't have a chance to carry out my obligation to protect and care for her while she was dying.

Thereafter, retelling began to contain themes of myself as her protector, even as her savior. These scenarios included desperate but caring acts that I might have done had I been there as she died. I blamed myself for failing to rescue her. I retold myself stories of successfully treating her depression to reverse my failure as husband and psychiatrist. I began to appear in the retelling of her dying as a preserver, racing after her to keep her from jumping. I would rage at her as I pulled her away from the water because she had promised not to leave me this way. These stories added themes of my own remorse and anger in the reenactment. In time, the dramas of my own failure and anger in her dying became almost as painful and possessing as the imaginary reenactment. They were secondary possessions to the reenactment in which I tried to magically reverse her violent dying.

I was so preoccupied with trying to reestablish some sense of order in my own mind and my own home with my children, that I had little energy or receptivity for anything beyond. I know that many things happened in that first month—friends and family converged on us to listen and try to help. This was the first opportunity to retell with those who loved Julie. All they could do was listen and bear witness to me as I numbly recounted what had happened. They had nothing to add.

The Public Story of Her Dying

I remember the first public reporting of her suicide the day after she disappeared. I had hoped for no story at all. Suicide may be a violent death, but it isn't a crime against the public. Why should they need to know? But I was not surprised that it was reported.

December 6, 1974

On December 4th the Bainbridge Island Police Department reported the disappearance of Mrs. Julie Rynearson. It is believed that she jumped from a ferry en route to Seattle. A body was sighted by a passenger but not recovered. The Coast Guard searched the area, but no trace of her was found.

I knew that they didn't need my approval in publishing their story, but I was angry that the reporter hadn't called me before its release. I telephoned the editor to complain. He apologized for their oversight, but reminded me that her death was “a matter of public record” and the newspaper had a right to report it. The story of her dying seemed suspended between us. I wanted to tell him to “back off”. So much had been taken from me that this tug of war over the ownership of her story might have escalated. I was so angry that I knew it was safer to say nothing at all. He was sensitive to the tense silence and said what I needed to hear: “I'm sorry about this—and you have my word that we won't publish again on this story before we call you.”

In a sentence he gave me a role in her story when I could find none for myself.

I was relieved that he never called back. He could not have presented me with a story that I would have found acceptable. There would be nothing in a newspaper story that would help in my own retelling of Julie's dying. I knew more about her dying and her private motivation for killing herself than any reporter could discover and I wanted that to remain private. Their story was only a paragraph. It contained nothing but the barest description of her dying. There was nothing in the story that was inaccurate, speculative, or hurtful. The reporter and editor did their job without interfering with my own retelling. I couldn't have asked for a better public story, though I would have preferred none at all. I suppose that no one remembers the news story but me.

The Riddle of Her Dying

Six months after Julie's suicide, I arranged an appointment with her psychiatrist. By that time my imaginary story of her dying had changed. My possessions of reenactment, remorse, and anger had subsided, leaving me with the puzzle of her decision to kill herself. The inquest of her dying became my private story. Long dismissed by the media and the police, I carried on my own investigation and trial of her dying. I hoped that her psychiatrist and I might arrive at some answers together. After all, he was the last person who had talked with her. Perhaps she had left him with some clue.

Nothing had changed in his office since I had last been there, except the chair beside me was empty. He greeted me with a tight smile and tentative handshake. I told him that the kids and I were doing well, but I had been left with questions about her decision to kill herself. Was there some way we could have stopped her?

He paused as he stared at the ceiling. Without looking at me, he began a recital of the clinical facts and dynamics of her decision to die. I sank, feeling oppressed by this psychiatric autopsy of Julie, told as a clinical story from one psychiatrist to another. We were getting farther and farther from what I had come for.

I asked myself, why? Why wasn't his explanation helping? He was lost in his monologue, determined to answer my question in earnest and logical detail. In my confusion, I realized that he and I weren't going to find an answer with further analyzing. Why couldn't he tell me how badly he felt about her dying? He couldn't feel what I was feeling, but sharing some of his own hurt would have been a more compassionate way to summon our memory of her.

Now he was looking at me, and asked if I had any further questions. I had heard enough. I figured that more questions would lead to a longer monologue. I stood and we smiled and shook hands. His handshake was firmer and his voice more assured as he echoed my opening—that he was glad to hear that the kids and I were doing well and to call if I needed to talk with him again.

I walked across the parking lot outside his office toward the blue Volvo station wagon. It was the same car Julie had driven the last time she left his office. As I sat behind the wheel, I felt myself in the time and place of her decision to die. What was I doing to myself? Was I trying to restore her by following and answering the trail of questions that she couldn't bear to ask any more? I was caught in the dilemma my inquest was creating. I was trying to keep her alive by reversing her dying. In that moment, I realized that I could not begin to restore myself until I stopped myself from trying to save her.

She would not blame me for her dying, which was ultimately her own and not mine.

I left some of that failed obligation in the parking lot as I drove home and began to breathe some life into her memory. Restoring myself meant retelling her living so I could release myself from the ordeal of undoing her dying. The shock of recognizing my over-identification with Julie's dying brought some release from my morbid retelling. I could tell a story that summoned a time and space of her living and that was a story I could live with.

Julie's psychiatrist was not to blame. He was a very caring, and exceedingly competent, clinician who was following my lead. We were both deluded in searching her suicide for an answer—as if her dying was a problem that could be interpreted. Our clinical training as psychiatrists hadn't prepared us to acknowledge that her violent dying was a paradox. The meeting showed me that, like any other bewildered family member after a violent death, I first needed to be reconnected with living. Helping someone after a violent death begins by restoring the living presence of whoever died. I needed Julie's therapist to rekindle our memory of Julie as a valued person whose living was of far more significance than her dying.

Changing Myself in the Retelling

In looking for external answers I was avoiding the fact that her dying was a permanent part of me, that I had to somehow redefine myself around that event. It was hard for me to admit. At first, I was intent on recapturing who I was before—when I felt safe and in control. Unfortunately for my kids, this insistence for constancy began at home. Like most bereaved parents of small children, I was determined to keep our family the way it had been. My kids were probably more aware of this folly than I was able to admit to myself.

One evening the three of us were eating dinner, and feeling drained and empty. I can't remember why I got angry, but it was probably over my cooking. It's hard to enjoy an uninspired meal and they were probably complaining about the food. At any rate, I lost it and yelled, “Damn it, be quiet and eat!” They burst into tears and ran from the table. As my anger lifted, I began to recognize how helpless I felt at times like that, without Julie. I started to cry and then began to calm myself so I could retrieve the kids and apologize. My son reappeared, and seeing my tears, crawled on my lap and hugged me. That dissolved me. I was as starved for tenderness as my kids. Hearing my sobs, my daughter peeked around the corner and made a dash for my lap where she wiped my tears and told me “you'll be OK, you'll be OK.” Then she tried to read me a story. I'll never forget her telling, for she couldn't yet read, the story of Goodnight Moon. She turned the pages and leaned against my chest. I felt a calmness as I relaxed and let them take care of me for a while.

That evening taught me that I had to stop recreating a role that no longer suited the three of us. I would be the best father that I could be, but I couldn't be a mother. I could never bring back the family that Julie took with her when she died. I couldn't be Julie, and couldn't bring back who I was before.

I also needed to stop myself from chasing who I had been. I began to acknowledge that who I am and what I will become is tentative and uncertain. Carrying Julie's suicide within me shapes and shades my vision of my future and myself. Her dying casts an ambiguity and irony over my living and me. I no longer have much patience for absolutes or ultimates.

Reconnecting Julie's Dying with Her Living

Most of my telling and retelling in these early months led to the oblivion of Julie's dying. There were several memorable stories of her living that I heard, but I quickly disregarded them. They were touching, but so unbelievable that I couldn't catch their restorative message.

It began with our laundry man within days of her death. When I answered the doorbell, I could see in his flushed face and watery eyes that he had been drinking again. In one hand he suspended several of Julie's hangered dresses, while the other cradled an unopened bottle of bourbon. He wordlessly handed me the bottle of bourbon, apparently to soften the hurt of the lifeless dresses.

“Doc, I heard what happened. I could tell she was depressed, but we all get that way. She wouldn't do this to you and your children. I know in my heart that she's still alive. She's gone off somewhere to get better—and then she'll come back.”

I could smell his leather jacket and the bourbon on his breath as he draped the dresses over my shoulder. He drove off in his battered delivery truck and I never saw him again. I finished the bourbon, but I couldn't finish his story. Her body hadn't been recovered so his drunken speculation was possible….

That same week my four-year-old daughter announced that Julie was “playing a game” with us. She had gone somewhere to hide and she would surprise us by coming back soon, because she missed us. I knew what this story meant to her—a resurrecting of Julie and denying of her death. She told the story for several weeks while I listened. I never challenged her, but reassured her that we would be OK no matter what had happened to Mom. Eventually she stopped telling it, but I couldn't forget her story.

A month later one of my schizophrenic patients told me that he had seen Julie in Seatt...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Prologue: The Retelling of Violent Dying
• PART I COHERENT RETELLING
• PART II CLINICAL INTERVENTION
• Epilogue: While I Am Rowing
• Appendix
• References
• Index