As I write further about the week of my son's death, I need to reiterate that because I was able to do or not do certain things it doesn't mean it was the best way to do it...or the worst. In fact, I have a number of regrets that come back to me time and again, and in the end I have to face the fact that I did the best I could under the circumstances, and hopefully devoted the strength I had to what mattered most. No one can predict how they might handle these types of sudden tragic losses, and everyone needs to be allowed to handle things in their own way, unless of course, there is concern for their safety or health.
One thing I noticed right away was that even among the three members of Erik's immediate family, we seemed to have some different needs and a different set of priorities when managing the weeks events. My son Jason in particular had a very strong desire to know as many of the details surrounding Erik's death as possible, while I had learned as much as I felt I needed to know at the meeting with the police.
Because Erik had such a reclusive and limited life style, he had very few possessions that were left behind. He had always worn a cross around his neck, which Jason had asked the police about, but they had not found anything like that. However Jason became somewhat obsessed that Erik had been wearing a cross that night, and that he wanted to retrieve it. This thought then led to his desire to go to the motel room where Erik died, and his father agreed to go with him. I think they did this on Wednesday, the second day.
They were met with great reluctance on the part of the motel manager as to whether they should be allowed to go to the unit where Erik had died. I am assuming that someone from the motel must have entered that room and seen the devastating results of the night before, and had actually felt horrible for that person and the shock it must have been. I don't know if it was the same person who wound up talking to Jason and his dad that day, or not. Whoever did speak to them was finally persuaded to let them see the room, I think partly becasue Jason presented it as a search for that cross. To be honest, I'm not sure how convinced I was about the cross, or if I thought Jason just wanted to stand in that room, where Erik had last stood.
If he did just want to stand in that room, I could understand it. It was one of the things I didn't have the courage, or even desire to do right away. But as time went on, I sometimes thought of going there and making up a sentimental reason why I would like to rent Unit 5 for the night. I never did, although I several times got as far as the parking lot and sat in my car in front of the door with the number five on it.
This issue of where the suicide took place is one of the harsh delineators of suicide versus other passages of death. If a person has been ill, there is time to rally around them and provide as peaceful a setting as possible, sometimes even bringing them home to be amidst their own stuff and memories. If someone dies suddenly from an accident or shooting, people bring flowers and memorabilia to the spot, to set up a sort of shrine or remembrance area for where the person last stood on this earth.
But the venue in which a suicide takes place presents a much more complicated set of circumstances. First, again, it may be designated a "crime scene", which changes any sentimental value that might be assigned to the surroundings where someone last stood. I know many people find their loved ones in their own homes...I can't imagine or speak to how that feels, or how each family might deal with having that reminder in their home. Yet, the thought of Erik being in a strange lonely spot that night was heart wrenching to me as well. And since I couldn't see him again, there was at first a sense that he had somehow "disappeared", or wondering if it even was him. The place where a suicide takes place becomes a very dark reminder of a moment we can't or don't want to imagine, a place we don't want to revisit, and comes haunting us with flashbacks or imagined images that won't leave when asked to.
I think what we would rather embrace is the setting where we last saw our loved ones alive, or if that had been a negative moment of harsh words, then the last time we had a positive interaction with them. So for me, I drove past that motel, and still do, and I come home. In my kitchen, I can see Erik and I standing there the night before he died, as I was leaving to go out. We were bickering in a good-natured way about twenty dollars he had "paid me back" the day before, only to say he needed it again, which was a very Erik-like thing to do. I often think now he used that twenty dollars for the bullets he bought, or the cab to get to the gun store to buy the bullets. I will never know for sure, it's just one of the many "what ifs". In the end, I reprimanded him that he better not be using it to buy alcohol.
In retrospect I realize now that his heart and soul had already gone to that place of great peace and resignation I have read about so many times, that occurs when people are about to end their despair. I can still see him smiling at me. His last gesture was to say "Don't worry mom, everything will be fine", and he fondly patted me on the head, and turned to leave. And that was my last moment with Erik, the moment I choose to embrace, when fighting those other images of what I know happened later that night.
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