9 9“Homeowners, beware. That gorgeous house you’re
about to buy may have been the scene of a gory
murder, suicide or some other stigma.”
—New York Daily News, August 11, 1995
The local media heralded the news that in 1995 New York State had joined with more than half the states in the country in passing a law exempting real estate agents and owners from disclosing the histories of the homes they sell or the apartments they rent. I had finally sold Harry’s medical office after a torturous ordeal that involved struggling with reluctant agents, an antagonistic condominium board, obstructive neighbors, and superstitious buyers. The new ruling, therefore, was too late to offer me much relief. Instead, I focused on the story of the woman featured in a New York Times article who, while trying to sell her property, had been forced to tell and retell prospective buyers the details of her husband’s shooting himself on the deck of their house.
“People have a phobia about suicide,” she explained. “As soon as I disclosed that my husband had killed himself, they didn’t want to buy.” Eventually, she took the house off the market in order to avoid having to repeat the painful story of her husband’s death. “What happens inside or outside the home has absolutely no bearing at all,” she said. “When it comes to suicide, it is a very personal matter. This is very difficult for me.”
As much as I tried to protect myself from talking about the true circumstances of Harry’s death, the reality was that his suicide could not have been more public. My husband’s office was located in a twelve-story condominium in downtown Manhattan. Within minutes of the discovery of his body, the entire area had been turned into an instant crime scene. Police officers, the ambulance crew, members of the medical examiner’s office swarmed throughout the building. Detectives interviewed me in the lobby, with curious spectators taking in every word. Police from the local precinct questioned apartment residents and members of the staff in order to rule out homicide as a possible cause of death.
Two years later, after three potential sales of the office had fallen through, my financial situation was bordering on desperate. Harry and I had taken out a second mortgage on our home in order to purchase his medical practice. The monthly carrying charges of the condominium were extremely high, and I still owed thousands of dollars in outstanding construction loans. Harry’s empty office—the site of his self-executed death—was draining not only my emotional strength but also my monetary resources.
When the first two purchasers backed off after expressing great interest in the property, I half-seriously began to blame Harry’s ghost for obstructing the sale. “I’m afraid that he is pulling me down with him,” I confided to my therapist. Logically, I knew I was speaking from the unresolved guilt that was coloring every part of my life. Yet, when a friend suggested that I burn sage to rid the office of any remaining spirits, I followed her advice. Something was spooking away the buyers.
The third deal fell apart a week before closing. I had to face the fact that whatever was going on was not a result of supernatural causes or mere coincidence. I confronted the once-enthusiastic purchaser, an internist who was just beginning his private practice. Embarrassed, he explained that he had been approached by the owner of a medical office in the building who had advised him not to buy, recounting Harry’s suicide in lurid detail. Although the young doctor expressed sympathy for my loss, he did not feel that seeing patients in Harry’s office would be a particularly auspicious beginning for his medical career.
It seemed that whatever little strength I had left evaporated at that minute. Like the woman quoted in the article, I felt as if the negative fallout from Harry’s suicide would never go away. Although I eventually was able to sell the office at a public auction, the consequences of my husband’s decision to kill himself continued to reverberate for years after his death.
“Stigma” is the real estate industry’s terminology for a property where a murder or suicide has occurred. This type of characterization serves to reinforce the shame and intensify the confusion of emotions experienced by the survivor after a suicide. We soon discover that the concept of stigma is not only a psychological burden but also a legal and financial problem that affects our ability to heal and move on with our lives.
“I was totally unprepared for what happened in the aftermath of my father’s suicide,” says Elizabeth, a fifty-seven-year-old nurse from New Jersey. “Six years ago, my father shot himself two hours before Thanksgiving dinner. My family had come to my parents’ house in Iowa from all across the country. Instead of celebrating, we spent the day cleaning up my father’s blood.”
Elizabeth stayed in Iowa for several weeks to help her mother put her legal and financial affairs in order. “Suicide wreaks such devastating havoc,” she states. “Immediately after my father killed himself, the police questioned each member of the family, one by one, treating us as if we were suspects in a murder-conspiracy plot. We all sat around the kitchen feeling like criminals while they searched the house. I still have no idea what they were looking for. We had the bad luck of having an officer who believed in doing the entire investigation by the book. I felt insane, like I was part of a dark comedy or a Kafka novel. Here was my father’s body lying in the dining room until the medical examiner could arrive to pronounce him dead, the police hunting for some sort of ‘evidence,’ and my family staring at each other in total shock and disbelief.
“The next day, my brother and I had to go to court to prove that my mother, he, and I were the only heirs to the estate. Unbelievably, my father had died without a will. This was the first sign of what lay ahead as we began to discover the total disarray in which he had left his business. In order to have the body released, we had to prove that we could pay for the funeral. All day we had to deal with bureaucratic hassle. It was like trying to get your passport or driver’s license and just added to the surrealness of the situation.
“I spoke with the minister about plans for the funeral. He explained that while there was no official church position on suicide, he, personally, would not be comfortable conducting the services at my father’s funeral. He added that it would be possible, however, for my father to be buried in the main section of the cemetery. I was stunned. Maybe I was naive, but I never even considered that there would be any question about the religious arrangements. Everything I was doing was related to my father’s suicide; the fact that he had died seemed to be lost along the way.
“After the funeral, I hired a lawyer to expedite the process of naming my mother executor of my father’s estate. Until the decree was granted, their joint savings account was frozen. My brother and I had to support her during this time. As I sat in my childhood home trying to make sense of all the bills, I found my shock and sorrow turning to resentment. It wasn’t as if my father had been hit by a car and had no time to get his life in order. Yet, I also understood that his manner of death reflected the disorganization and loss of control he must have been feeling while he was planning to blow his brains out. But why do something so extreme, so devastating to my mother?
“The only bright spot was that my father had a life insurance policy he had bought years before that ended up saving my mother from being forced to declare bankruptcy. Yet, even as a tenuous kind of order returned to my mother’s life, she became more isolated from her friends and even stopped her volunteer work at the church. I know she was deeply ashamed about what my father had done, but she wouldn’t talk about it to anyone. One year after my father died, she discovered a lump in her breast. By the time she finally went to the doctor, the cancer had already metastasized to her lungs. She had no interest in fighting the disease and died within months. On a certain level, I blame my father for her death. The toll that suicide exacts on its survivors is very high, unfortunately.”
Most survivors are unprepared for the practical concerns that follow a suicide. It is impossible to imagine that the police will question us about the circumstances surrounding our father’s death or that the minister will place conditions on our daughter’s funeral or that the court will question the legitimacy of our husband’s will. In addition, the psychological implication of classifying suicide a crime complicates our response to the death of our loved one.
“My sister was killed one year ago when she slammed into a dividing wall on the highway,” says Brian, a thirty-one-year-old editor from Lansing, Michigan. “The police initially investigated the case as a potential suicide. My mother was virtually destroyed by the constant probing into my sister’s private life. Yet, even though her death was eventually ruled accidental, in all honesty there’s a part of me that believes my sister intentionally drove her car into that wall. Ten years before, our father died in a small-plane crash. My sister was always convinced that he flew into the woods near the airport on purpose in order for my mother to collect his insurance money. We were having a lot of financial problems at the time and my sister believed my father’s committing suicide was his way of salvaging the situation for the family. I used to think she was crazy, but now I don’t know. About her or about him.”
According to the book McGill’s Life Insurance, some of the early court decisions in the United States found that death by suicide should not be covered by a life insurance policy. “Suicide is contrary to many religious laws,” the book states, “and attempted suicide is ordinarily a penal offense. Thus suicide is contrary to public policy.” Although this view was later rejected in the United States, denial of life insurance as the result of suicide is still the law in England. Presently, most life insurance companies in the United States are not liable for policies taken out within two years of a suicide.
“Money should have been the least of my problems, but the anxiety of not knowing how I was going to support myself and my unborn child only increased my despair,” says Carol, a forty-year-old magazine publisher from Minneapolis whose husband drowned himself four years ago, when she was nine months pregnant. “I had no idea if the insurance company would pay me after Josh’s death. I just assumed that when you kill yourself, forget it. Anyway, who even thinks of a suicide clause when you buy life insurance? Even with the money from Josh’s policy, financially I still got creamed. We had used up all our savings to buy a big old house, our ‘dream house.’ I ended up selling it at a total loss.
“Suicide is like a public divorce and a homicide at the same time. It was incredible that in the middle of trying to absorb the shock of Josh’s suicide, I was having to deal with creditors, banks, insurance companies, and an endless number of lawyers. It was really quite humbling—a new house, a baby on the way. I was on top of the world. Josh’s suicide certainly showed me how fragile life can be. You think everything is wonderful and then your world blows up.
“Josh was fired from his job as an assistant district attorney on a Friday afternoon of a long holiday weekend. He never told me about it; he never even let on that he was having problems at work. Over the weekend, he was frantically trying to get the house in order even though we had just moved in. He was unpacking boxes and putting things away. I remember asking him what the rush was, reminding him—and this is very painful—that we had all the time in the world to create the perfect home for our new baby.
“On Tuesday morning, I left for work before Josh, which was very unusual. I even said to him, ‘This is a first.’ He was taking out the garbage and blew me some kisses. My husband was a meticulous dresser but I noticed that his shirt collar was frayed. It passed through my mind that this was also out of character for him, but I forced myself to dismiss my instinct that something might be wrong.
“I was on deadline and was not able to call Josh until around four in the afternoon. His secretary sounded surprised and told me that he no longer worked there. I was floored. I demanded that she put my husband’s boss on the phone. He got on the line and told me that Josh had been terminated, that his employment there had not been a good fit. As soon as I heard that, I knew in my heart that Josh had killed himself. He had wanted this job very badly and it was very important to him. I called home but no one answered. Now I had no doubt that Josh was dead.
“I felt very alone. My parents were in Europe and my sister was trekking in Nepal. I tried convincing myself that I was this hysterical pregnant woman, that Josh might become depressed about being fired but he would never commit suicide over it. Instead of going home, I drove to our old apartment in the city, which we were still trying to sell. It was my fantasy, even though I really never believed it, that I would find him sitting in the dark, waiting for me to come get him. He wasn’t there, of course.
“I was afraid to go back to our house by myself. Maybe I thought I would find him dead in there. I drove to his aunt’s house in a nearby suburb. She was eighty years old and I always believed in her wisdom. She told me that Josh was probably driving around, getting his thoughts together. I kept on calling the house but the machine kept picking up. By midnight his aunt also became worried. It had started raining hard, so we began calling up the area hospitals to see if he had been in an accident. We were up all night. In the morning, I called Josh’s brother in California. He said Josh was probably just off somewhere, cooling his jets. Yet, I knew something was wrong. Josh was always very considerate. He would never make me worry unless something was desperately wrong.
“I finally called a close friend, who left work and came right over. She called the police, who told her I should check the house before filing a missing persons report. My friend told me she would drive over to the house with me and we could walk in together. I don’t know what I expected to find, but everything there seemed so normal, so untouched. It was as if Josh had disappeared without a trace.
“I was numbed out—nothing seemed as if it was really happening to me. My friend and I then went to the police station. Although I was treated with respect, I could see that the police were skeptical when I told them about my fears that Josh had committed suicide. They were very polite but just kept on asking all these police-type questions, like if Josh had another woman or if he had been depressed. Even though they put out an all-points bulletin, they advised me to hire a criminal investigator to help with the search. They also recommended that I call everyone in his telephone book and check the hotels in all the cities and places he loved.
“My friend wanted me to move in with her, pleading with me to think of the baby. But I felt safer staying with Josh’s aunt. The next day, I had my childbirth class. On the way over, my friend confided that she had a gut feeling Josh would be waiting for me there. But I knew he was dead; I had no hope. After class, I called his father. He told me that the pressure of Josh’s being fired could have put him over the edge. Then I called his sister, who is married to a psychiatrist. She and her husband both thought I might be right, he could have possibly killed himself. For the first time since Josh disappeared, I felt validated.
“My parents came home from Europe two days later. When I saw them, I collapsed in tears. I moved in with them right away. From that moment on, they didn’t leave me alone. I think they were afraid I would kill myself. Yet, as much as I wanted to die, I knew I wanted to live. I was not going to make two tragedies out of this.
“I went back to work. I forced myself to go to the ballet, to get a manicure, to restructure some kind of normal life. I would not let myself fall apart. One of my friends advised me to leave a message on my home answering machine for Josh, asking him to come home, that all was forgiven. I said, No, I’m still on the map. He knew how to find me. Besides, it was Josh who was missing, not me.
“The next Sunday, almost two weeks after Josh had left, the police came to my parents’ house. Boaters had discovered Josh’s body in a lake around five hours from where we lived. He was wearing weights on his ankles and wrists, and his knapsack was filled with barbells. I was at a friend’s house when my parents called to tell me. My mother said, ‘Really bad news, Carol.’ I answered, ‘How did he kill himself?’ It was as if I had known all along.
“Josh’s car was found on a deserted road near the lake. Inside was a suicide note dated the day he disappeared. The police gave me a photocopy because they have to keep the original on file. Josh had addressed the note to me. ‘I really fucked up,’ he wrote. ‘We should not have bought the house. Was the baby a boy or a girl?’ He also mentioned his insurance policy, how he hoped I would find another man, and that he loved me very much. The note was three pages long.
“Two weeks after they recovered Josh’s body, my daughter was born. Childbirth was anguishing, both physically and emotionally. I saw all these other husbands with their wives. I missed out on the bliss. I missed out on the tenderness of having a husband to give me a back rub or kiss my forehead as I was giving birth to our baby. Here I was with my mother instead of my husband. For the first time, I let myself be angry at Josh and everyone else around me.
“My numbness cracked after the birth of my daughter. Josh’s death finally became real and I felt very much alone. My first reaction was terrible fear—I did not see how I would be able to make it work. My parents kept saying they would help me out, but I knew that if I continued living with them I would feel like I was a sixteen-year-old kid with an illegitimate baby. I wanted to establish an independent life for my daughter and me. Three months later, I moved into my own apartment and went back to work.
“It has taken me a long time to straighten out the practical details of my life. In a way, conducting such mundane and ordinary business matters as selling my house, settling my banking matters, and finding child care for my daughter protected me from having to think about what Josh had done. As the dust begins to settle, his suicide is starting to seem less black-and-white and more gray. I find myself trying to incorporate many of his good qualities, like his patience and caring, into my relationship with my daughter. What I can never forgive him for, however, is the legacy of abandonment he has left behind. My daughter will have to live with his rejection for the rest of her life. Suicide is such a mess. It is unbelievable how one person’s decision can affect so many lives.”
Like Carol, survivors must use every ounce of strength to fight against being swept away by the swirling chaos that suicide leaves in its wake. As we try to assimilate the shock of losing a person we love in such a violent and bruising manner, we crave for the return of what used to be our normal routine. Putting our legal and financial affairs in order is often the first step toward restoring a sense of wholeness to our shattered lives.
The night before I finally closed on the sale of Harry’s office, I stood alone in the empty darkness at the exact spot where he had killed himself. “I am letting this go, Harry,” I spoke out loud. “You will always be in my heart. But I have to move on. I don’t need turmoil not to forget you. I want to start remembering the good parts—and there were many, many good parts.”
The sale went through, allowing me to pay my bills, including the long overdue accounts extended to me by my compassionate lawyers, accountant, and therapist. Clearing my debts, relinquishing my responsibility for Harry’s office, closing the books on my legal fees and consultations was the beginning of my moving on. I was tidying up the remains of what Harry had left behind and looking forward to living, once again, in the present tense.