The husband of a fairly good friend of mine jumped off the 8th floor balcony of a midtown Atlanta hotel on Monday.
He was 60 years old, in perfect health, and was expecting his first grandchild in about 7 weeks. He was not known to be sad or depressed. He had no financial worries, and was at the top of his career as the very innovative President of a large prestigious private school in Atlanta. The capital campaign at the school was going well. Earlier in the day he had spoken at a rousing school assembly welcoming students and faculty back after the Christmas break. From school he drove into midtown, checked into the hotel and sometime later, leaped to his death.
My friend arrived home from work to find police cars in her driveway.
Tuesday morning he was front page and a lead story on local TV and radio. At first the circumstances of his death were murky and under investigation. By the afternoon, reports confirmed that this was a suicide.
I was shaking all day on Tuesday and actually left work early...I simply couldn't concentrate. His wife and I had made a date to go walking on Saturday afternoon and I had just gotten a Monday morning email confirming that. Now I learned that a cadre of wonderful women were with my friend at home, waiting for her sons and family to arrive for a funeral on Wednesday.
You know how some people secretly groove on funerals? Well, they really groove on them when there's a whiff of scandal. They love the drama. This totally turns my stomach, so over the years I've figured out what to do in a house of mourning, and even what to say to people who are in complete shock. In 22 years as a rabbi's wife I logged plenty of hours at funerals and shivas. I roll up my sleeves and start cleaning, packing up leftovers and being bossy...in a good way! I also talk to people quietly and in so doing, I learn alot.
In the early days of our marriage, if I knew that we'd have several nights of minyans ahead, Mex (my ex) and I would plan what we called "shiva dates." If I could get a babysitter, Mex would lead the shiva minyan, and I'd go along -- extra brownie points to bring the wife, and always good for the rabbi's image. We'd stay the minimal time and beg off eating the cold cuts, and then go out for dinner.
Knowing that my friend's husband's funeral (a graveside internment) would be a doozy, with many public people bloviating, and the rest of us just in shock, I was grateful to be enlisted to help prepare the house for shiva today. I arranged the platters of food and in a bizarre twist of events, ran to the store and buy gallons and gallons of water because a water main in their neighborhood had and been turned off for 3 hours and we desperately needed to flush the toilets! I left at 2:00 pm just as the limousine drew up to take the family to the burial and went to work.
Jewish law is not especially mushy and loving when it comes to suicide. The Talmud says:
"For him who takes his own life with full knowledge of his action [the Hebrew word is b'daat] no rites are to be observed. . .There is to be no rending of clothes and no eulogy. But people should line up for him
[at the end of the burial ceremony] and the mourner's blessing should be recited [as the family passes through] out of respect for the living.
The general rule is: Whatever rites are [normally] performed for the benefit of the survivors should be observed; whatever is [normally] done out of respect for the dead should not be observed."
My friend and her husband belong to a Conservative Jewish congregation with wonderful rabbis (husband and wife!) who are compassionate, modern, and deeply spiritual. And I am certain that they take a more lenient view of someone who has been driven to suicide by a deep mental break. The Talmud also says:
"A second category includes those who act on impulse or who are under severe mental strain or physical pain when committing suicide. Jewish law speaks of an individual in this second category of being an anuss, meaning a "person under compulsion," and hence not responsible for his actions. All burial and mourning rites are observed for him."
But here's what I really want to say on the day my friend's husband was put to rest. I am hurt, I am sad, and I am deeply angry at him! As the ex wife of a public figure I know how people thrive on gossip and the fall from grace of a respected figure. Life has taught us all that "you never know what goes on inside the lives of a family." But this was a sweet man, an educated man, a community leader, a PhD, a prince! Though obviously in unimaginable pain, surely he knew that an act like this, so public, indeed so pre-meditated (there were notes...they didn't say anything, but they were started), would make headlines and would bewilder and punish his family and put them in the spotlight, and NOT in a good way. It seems to me -- forgive me for saying it -- an incredibly cruel and hostile act.
I looked at all of them today and they are clueless! The wife used those very words with me, "I'm clueless!" She didn't see it coming. Not at all. Nobody I met today had the remotest idea that he was depressed or psychotic. Family members had seen him at Thanksgiving, and last week over the holidays, relaxed, making plans for a golf trip with a colleague, excited about the new baby, full of projects. Maybe that's just a form of denial. Maybe that's what grief does. But what suicide does is worse.
With suicide the question "why" will always linger. The grief will be forever punctuated by the punishing questions, "if only I knew" and "how could I have missed it?"
I am determined to be there for my friend after the initial shock abates, and beyond. She will need so much help, and I really do hope she will be able to connect with her own anger in time. If you get stuck in grief and victimhood, you are doomed. I think the searing heat of anger is a healthy emotion that burns out the denial and helps incinerate the crud. If my friend is lucky and has a good therapist, (we're already working on that) it just might take her down the long and winding road to acceptance. That's what I pray for today.
May time heal my friend and her family. May her husband's memory and legacy be a blessing. He really was a good guy. May the family be comforted among the mourners for Zion and Jerusalem.