One Pill Makes You Stronger: The Drug That Scorched My Soul by Jill Stegman

Author:Jill Stegman [Stegman, Jill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Health & Well Being, Medical, Ailments & Diseases, Mental Health, Biography & Memoir
ISBN: 9781941799635
Google: za1-DwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1941799620
Barnesnoble: 1941799620
Goodreads: 41434257
Publisher: Pen & Publish
Published: 2019-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

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My local hospice made it clear on its website that support groups were for suicide survivors, meaning: those family and friends who had known the person who committed suicide. Not to be confused with those who had “survived” a suicide attempt.

88

Guilty as Charged I got lost trying to find the address and stumbled onto a Christmas party. It was a warm evening and people wearing Santa hats were gathered on the front porch of a festively decorated house.

Frank Sinatra was singing “Joy to the World.”

I barged in on a circle of conversation. “Excuse me. Do any of you know where hospice is? I thought it was this address?”

“It’s just down the street,” someone said. “That big two-story on the corner. But if you can’t find it come back and party with us.”

The people on the porch looked like college students, and I wanted to join them, to go back in time to those days.

The hospice building looked like an unkempt halfway house.

The gray paint and cracked steps gave off an unwelcome vibe, while cheerful sounds came from the direction of the party. Hospice probably didn’t go for much glitter around the holidays. It was a time of depression for the mentally ill. I had to brace myself to enter. I understood why Anna had decided to go to a gathering with her friends.

Inside I found the meeting room and joined a circle of eight men and women, like a knitting circle. Instead of needles and yarn we held boxes of tissue. Everyone except me was crying, not the wailing of the first discovery, but the experienced tears of the anguish that follows. The quietness of the expression of grief was what impressed me. Our counselor, Mark, explained briefly that he was mostly going to observe, to remain in the background. It was our meeting. We were the leaders and ministers.

The first to begin was Madelyn, who had received a call from her brother while she was watching a movie. She didn’t answer the call, but at the end of the movie, which was about the plight of killer whales kept in amusement parks, she began crying and had to remain in her seat while everyone else left the theater. “It was a sad movie, but not that sad. No one else was carrying on like me.” Later, when she tried to call her brother back, he didn’t answer. “I think he was calling to say goodbye and I missed his last words. Maybe I could have stopped him. Talked him out of it.”

I wondered if I should tell her about Whale Rock Reservoir.

How I sat for hours suspecting Don was there? That should make her feel better.

Cynthia was around fifty with a pixie face and short blonde hair.

Through her tears she and her husband had adopted seven children 89

Jill Stegman

and raised them on a ranch in Montana. She said both of her sons had committed suicide. The first one had PTSD from service in Iraq. The second son had shot himself only two years later.

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