For Katie

My cousin passed away on Tuesday. For the purpose of this post, I’m going to call her Katie.

Katie was, unfortunately, an alcoholic. I did not know, until King V told me, that her father is also an alcoholic. He wasn’t around as we were all growing up; I knew Katie’s stepfather as her father. I’m not sure when I found out about her birth father.

I didn’t know that Katie’s alcoholism was as bad as it was. I don’t know that I had ever seen her drink, but if I know anything about addiction, and I do when it comes to food issues, then Katie was likely drinking alone a lot. Or maybe she was hammered every time I saw her – major holidays, mostly – and I just never knew it.

Katie was beautiful. Blond, slim, great smile. She was very friendly, had been married but got divorced, and had a young son. He’s seven now. I’m almost 30 years older than he is and can’t imagine losing my mom as I inevitably will, but especially not to suicide. King V told me that Katie’s son knows some of what happened and that he’s seeing a child psychologist. As with Katie, I barely know her son, but knowing all of that still breaks my heart.

I didn’t know Katie’s pain. I didn’t know until sometime last year that she had three DUIs under her belt and had to live and work close to home because her license had been revoked. Last year, I recently found out, there was also some kind of accident involving motorbikes. Katie and her friend (or boyfriend – no one seems to be sure) wrecked somehow but disappeared before the police showed up. Hearing about all the details of her life as they raced towards a tragic end is surreal. A lot of my processing on Tuesday came in flashes of black screen, i.e., I was seeing the details of her life unfold in white text on a black background as they do on “Intervention.” The words always say things like “Person X started drinking when he was 12” or “Person Y drinks up to a gallon of vodka a day.” The reality that so many people are in pain to such a heinous degree is mind-numbing. The show used to be trashy television that I would get lost in because of my voyeuristic tendencies. As I began to see the addicts for their individual diseases and understood better what they were trying to escape from, the show became something of a learning experience in which I looked for clues to heal my own wounds. Now that Katie has passed, I’m not sure I’ll be able to watch the show, knowing that several people, including Katie’s ex-husband, sister, and our Aunt Verbose, had to deal with what could have only been one sad situation after another.

That Katie was an alcoholic is enough. That she bought 150 Tylenol the night before she was found and may have taken them all is enough. That she was on life support makes me stop breathing for a moment. My cousin was on life support? Her organs were failing? Her pain was so dire and inescapable that she decided to take her own life? This happens? I probably sound naive just typing that, but I’m processing my questions and my grief through tears and disbelief. Katie made the attempt on her life on Sunday. I don’t know how she knew that an overdose of acetaminophen would kill her; I don’t want to know. Maybe, as Queen S suggested when we unfortunately began talking about Katie’s death last night, Katie had researched ways to check out. There was a chance, apparently, that she could’ve pulled through. A slim chance, but a chance. Unfortunately, the Tylenol shut down her liver, which was already damaged from alcohol abuse. I don’t know how much she drank but King V told me she’d recently lost her job, so something tells me it was a lot and that she was going everywhere drunk. Katie’s kidneys were also failing. She was apparently headed to dialysis a few hours before she died. I was going to go and see her on Tuesday evening but King V called on Tuesday afternoon and said that she had passed. The hospital was taking her off life support when she went. She’d made the attempt sometime on Saturday night, it sounds like, and was found by her friend/boyfriend sometime on Sunday. She was to be on life support for 72 hours from the time of her overdose; that’s the time it takes for the drug to clear out of her system so the doctors could assess the damage, I guess. I don’t know. I’ve never known anyone who has overdosed, so this is unfamiliar territory. King V said that I wouldn’t have recognized Katie, that she was puffy or something. Maybe she was pumped full of fluids in an attempt to flush the drugs out of her system. Maybe it was the alcoholism. I hadn’t seen her in a while. I didn’t know until I talked to my Aunt Verbose that Katie had been in jail. I guess that makes sense with the DUIs, but that news never reached me. We’re not exactly a secret-keeping family; I think that my relatives’ lives unfold in their good and bad ways and that everyone sort of assumes everyone else knows what’s going on. That “I thought you knew!” reasoning was used on me for at least one relative’s pregnancy, if not others.

I had no idea my Aunt Verbose had been such a part of Katie’s life. I’m glad that Katie had someone in her times of need. I can’t begin to think about how she felt or what led her to the decision that would take her from us. Her mom, one of King V’s other two sisters, had passed away more than 20 years ago. I think Katie overdosed on or near her mom’s birthday. I remember King V telling me towards the end of last week that whatever day it was, Thursday or Friday, was Aunt Jeanine’s birthday. She would have been 74. I was 15 when Aunt J died; Katie would have been in her early 20s. That means she spent about 20 years spiraling downwards. I don’t know when she started to drink. Like I said, I never paid attention to what she was drinking, be it alcoholic or not, because we saw each other during holiday celebrations and who wouldn’t have a drink in their hand during those occasions? I can only imagine what losing your mother to cancer does to a person, period, but especially when you and she are so young. Aunt J was 52. Queen S was about 56 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001 and underwent radiation and a lumpectomy and THAT shit was scary enough. Luckily, her cancer was a Stage 0 and obviously caught in plenty of time, but after losing Aunt J and knowing friends whose parents had been claimed by the disease, I was super uneasy. As I write this, I realize just how uneasy I still am that her cancer will come back. It was due to Queen S taking hormones, however, and she stopped taking them after her diagnosis, so perhaps she will be lucky and cancer-free the rest of her life. I hope so. See also: Vast understatement.

Katie’s death simply isn’t real yet. I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that I am NEVER going to see her again. Like I said, we weren’t close (clearly), but that doesn’t mean I liked her any less. Knowing that she’s been hurting for so long makes me very uneasy. I hardly think I was going to ride in on a white horse and wrest the bottle from her hands but it’s human nature to want to have been some kind of savior. Her death is especially jarring because I have dealt with my own depression and been seriously suicidal twice in my life. Both times, something or someone saved me from myself. The first time, it was divine intervention. The second time, it was a phone call to a crisis center. The first time, at 19, I was living with a terrible roommate and had planned a day to die. I put it on my calendar – no lie – and watched the month unfold as I got closer and closer to my decided day. The evening of, Damien went out, as she usually did, and I got gussied up in my bathroom. I did my hair, painted my nails, put on makeup, and selected an outfit; I remember thinking to myself that I was going to look GOOD when “they” found me. I’d been drinking vodka during the primping process and stumbled towards the kitchen to get a knife. I was serious. (Some 17 years later, this whole scene frightens the crap out of me as though I wasn’t the protagonist in the story.) On the way to the kitchen, I passed through my bedroom door, past the dining area, and a short wall before reaching the folding doors that separated the kitchen from the living room. Right as I reached the first door, something turned me. I distinctly recall feeling an energy that turned me towards my right, at which point I realized/remembered/drunkenly saw our television and Nintendo. I plopped down on a beanbag chair and played Dr. Mario until I kept fucking up the game because I was too drunk to concentrate. I shuffled off to bed at some point, my plans abandoned (and, I believe, forgotten). I already believed in a higher power, especially after my discussions with God after Aunt J’s death, but after that experience, I think it was even easier to believe in energies and the forces of the universe.

The second time I was close to the brink I called a crisis line and talked to a counselor for about 45 minutes. Even though that experience was more than 10 years ago, I want to write an anonymous letter to the staff of the hospital where the crisis line was answered and thank them for saving my life. It doesn’t much matter that the person I talked to may no longer work there for any number of reasons; I still think it’s important that they know. I say of this as an explanation of sorts to Katie’s spirit that I understand some of what she was going through. I have been there, it’s terrifying, and I’m sorry that she couldn’t be saved. I’m sorry that her kid is going to have to go through life knowing his mother committed suicide. I’m sorry that Katie’s immediate family, who have dealt with alcoholism, divorce, and cancer now have to add “suicide” to their list of Things That Have Fucked Us Up. I’m sorry I didn’t get to the hospital in time to see Katie but I’m not sorry that I’ll always remember her smiling and laughing. I hope she made it to heaven (I don’t believe that people who commit suicide go to hell; I don’t entirely believe in hell in the first place and plus, hello kick-people-while-they’re-down) and I hope that she’s having a nice glass of iced tea at a sunny sidewalk café with my Grandpa and Grandma Verbose and Aunt Jeanine. We are sad and will miss Katie terribly and I certainly wish her life would have ended differently, but she’s free from all the pain she felt and for that I am grateful.