Artful Grief

Part I: Surviving
Chapter One: Suicide
October 12, 2001: Shattered

The phone is ringing and I reach over Dad to pick it up. It is 2:30 a.m. The man on the other end identifies himself as an Officer of the New York City Police Department. He asks if I am Mrs. Strouse. He asks if there is someone with me and then he says there has “been an accident.” My heartbeat quickens. Time slows. Cold. Still. I anticipate his words. I anticipate my greatest fear. “I am very sorry, Kristin is dead.” I repeat the officer’s words out loud, “Kristin is dead.” Dad begins to scream, I am rendered silent and his scream becomes my scream. I slide out of myself. I break into a million pieces. I detach from this world and observe it through some other eyes. I am gone. Dad jumps out of bed and continues screaming as he stomps wildly around the room beating his fist on his thigh and grabbing his head. I look at him and cannot grasp what he is doing. I tell him to be quiet; I cannot hear what the officer is saying. I sit quietly at the edge of the bed and take out a pen from the bottom shelf of the night table. Some part of me writes all the necessary information on the cover of the TV guide, while under the surface, the realities of the coming day’s events begin to arrange themselves in layers just beneath my skin. I believe that it is the weight of those details, telling Kimberly and Kevin, identifying your body, planning your funeral and burying you, that keeps some of me in my body. But after that, the details fall away and I become nothing, bones stripped of flesh suspended in darkness.

I take a shower. I comb my hair. I do my makeup. I see a fool in the mirror trapped in an everyday ritual at 3:30 in the morning. We are on our way to collect your body. I notice that a part of me is missing. I hear her running and screaming throughout the house. I pack a change of clothing and a few necessities in a brown overnight case. Should I wear black to the morgue? I want to tear my clothes off. I want to tear the skin off my bones. I tuck the piece of paper with the scribbled information the officer gave me into my purse. I want to fall down and have a raging fit while I lose my mind. I make my bed and put the dirty clothes in the laundry room. I write down all the personal numbers I can think of on a small white note card and fold it into my pocket. I will not remember these numbers when the time comes for me to make phone calls. I look at our little poodle, Sienna, sitting in a corner of the kitchen. She is shivering just like me. I must remember to call someone to come and get her in the morning. We walk out the door. We do not talk in the car except to reassure ourselves that it would not be a good idea to drive to New York, especially under the circumstances. Taking the train is a better idea when one is on their way to claim a body. Dad drives too fast in the darkness. I wonder where the other cars are going. I wonder if we are the only ones in the middle of a nightmare. We park in the lowest level of the train station's underground garage. We buy one way tickets to Philadelphia. We have decided to tell your older sister and brother in person. Kevin is first.

We arrive at his apartment just a few blocks from campus at six in the morning, ringing the doorbell incessantly until he answers. He can tell by our presence that something bad has happened. I look at his confused face and into his sleepy eyes and hear him worriedly asking, “What’s wrong?” We sit on the bed with him, with the soft morning light filtering through the shades. He is in his boxers and a University of Pennsylvania Tennis shirt. His six foot frame slumps forward in anticipation. I say, “We have terrible news about Kristin. She’s dead; she took her own life last night.” He falls back onto his white rumpled sheets and covers his eyes with his arms, as tears begin to stream down his face. He does not move. I look at him, feeling his senior year slipping away. We sit in the folds of his unmade bed for what seems an eternity. We tell him what we know. We pack and make our way to another train that will take us into Manhattan.

We stand at the end of a row of polished wooden pews, as 30th Street Station in Philadelphia begins to fill with commuters making their way to unknown places. They move past us, consumed in their own thoughts, while we struggle to keep ourselves together. Kevin calls his tennis coach to tell him that he will not be at practice for a few days because his sister has died. His calm voice cracks until he cannot speak. Dad finishes the conversation for him. It all seems out of place amidst the flurry of people rushing by as they make their connections. Nothing makes sense. My surroundings feel distorted as if I am looking through broken glass.

I am suddenly hungry and nauseated at the same time. I take a sip of water and feel it slide down my throat and into my stomach. Liquid moves through me as if I'm a paper straw.

I sit with Kevin. Dad sits in the seat next to me, across the aisle. The train slowly fills around us. Mercifully, no one sits next to Dad. I am sitting on a seat in a train. I am here but I am not. I am floating in pieces, moving about the space like wisps of delicate white dandelion seeds dispersed in a sudden gust of wind. I look out the window. Everything is moving fast. We decide to wait until a reasonable hour before Dad starts to make some calls, canceling everything “due to a family emergency.” We are afraid to tell anyone that we are dealing with your death. We fear the information will get out before we have time to personally tell family, and we have no idea exactly when that will be.

I feel strangely cloaked in the secret of your death. Our secret is contained and controlled for the moment. I rest in this pause because it allows me the opportunity to hope for a miracle, even through deep inside I know it’s an illusion. I close my eyes as fragments of multiple conversations get louder inside my head. These voices have no manners and talk over and around each other with no consideration.

Kristin’s dead. It’s not possible. It’ll be straightened out. It’s a mistake. Kristin’s not dead. She couldn't kill herself. It must be a joke. It's not a joke. Kristin's on a table in a morgue. They did an autopsy. They cut her body open. I didn’t give my permission. They can’t do that. She's alive. It’s not possible. Kristin’s dead. It’s a mistake. It’s not her. They’re confused. She's in her room. She's under the covers in her bed. She's alive. The person they found must be Kristin's twin. I just talked to her last night. She can’t be dead. She didn’t kill herself. She said she would never do something like that. It’s not possible. She's not in a morgue. This isn't real.

The conductor brushes by and announces our arrival at Penn Station. The door of the train opens and I watch my foot meet the platform. I know the foot belongs to me. I do not feel like myself. We are in New York.