Jeff Brands knocked on my door in early February. His hands were stuck way down in his pockets, and every time he breathed, steam formed around his mouth.
“Come in, come in,” I said. “Thank you for coming.” He walked through my door and looked around the living room. His hair was mussed, and he ran his fingers through it before settling his gaze on the windows. I could spot lovers of modern architecture the minute they walked in. Their eyes always wandered up to the high ceilings that were finished in old growth wood to feel like the forest was above, below, and around you. The home’s spare design was muted by the architect’s soft spot for nature. The granite countertops were the same color as the forest outside. The lighting came from soft angles, above, to the side. The room was divided by furniture, not walls.
My sister, who had returned to help with the settling of David’s affairs, sat at the kitchen table. She stood when she saw John. She came over and looked him directly in the eye. “Hello, I’m Diane. We spoke on the telephone.”
The three of us sat at the table together, surrounded by some of the envelopes that Diane considered “pressing legal issues.” John was a forensic accountant and had been referred to us by David’s attorney.
“I’m the guy who can make sense of all the numbers,” he said confidently. “I can tell you whether there’s any money left in David’s business and exactly how much he, or you, owes.”
“I’m not confident the people who owe David money will pay.” I showed him the yellow sheet David had scribbled for me in the hospital. “I called Dr. Tendale, the dentist. David claims Tendale owes him a hundred grand,” I said. “Tendale claims David didn’t finish the work on time, or up to spec, and he refuses to pay the bill.” Another client, the owners of a local nightclub, made the same claim. They said that toward the end of David’s illness, he made mistakes or got confused on the job, and his behavior and choices voided the contract.
John pursed his lips. Diane looked at him. “The bottom line is their creditor is dead,” she said. “Who could testify against them in court?”
John’s cheeks were still flushed from the cold. “Well, they may say that now, but if, when we take a look at David’s books, we can determine he was owed money, they won’t have a choice. The probate court will make them pay.”
“I can’t pay you for your time,” I said, embarrassed. “I can barely make the mortgage on this house and keep Sophie in school.”
John interrupted. “You won’t have to pay. I’ll do this on contingency. Your job is to take care of Sophie.”
I bit my lip, overwhelmed with gratitude and humility. There had been so few times in my life when I needed other people’s help. I’d always been so independent. These days, I needed humility more than pride. I touched John on the arm. “Thank you.”
Diane nodded her head. “Sheila, he’s right. It’s probably best if you let us handle this until your stress level is down. I can stay another week and get John started. Then let him take it over. Get these piles out of your house. It’s really bad for your energy level.”
I reached over and hugged her, so grateful for her brains and her heart. John pulled a pen and a pair of reading glasses from his pocket and moved one seat over, closer to Diane. They hunkered down together, the Buddhist priest and the forensic accountant. What great friends to have when you are managing a crisis.
The next morning, with Sophie at school and Diane on a walk, I climbed the stairs to David’s office. I tried to focus on the task, my task, the only task I’d been given. Clean the house. Get rid of David’s chaos. I got four plastic bins from the basement and labeled them “Probate,” “Recycle,” “Keep for Family,” and a huge question mark for the items that would need to be looked at before I could sort them away.
David’s books had been removed from the bookshelves by his sisters, but there were still some remodeling magazines that could be recycled. I pulled them from the bookshelf and dust flew into my face. My eyes stung, my nose burned, and I threw open the drawers to David’s desk to try to find some Kleenex.
I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before, when David was sick in the hospital. Maybe I had seen it and it didn’t mean anything to me at the time. A blue manila folder that said “Life Insurance Policy, prepared for David Krol.”
I pulled the folder from the desk and opened the document. David had never carried life insurance before he met me. He’d told me it never occurred to him to get it. After Sophie was born, we’d agreed that he would take out a policy of some sort, something to make sure that, in the event of his death, she’d be taken care of.
I opened the policy and scanned it. There was a $500,000 death benefit.
If this policy were still in effect, we’d be able to stay in the house. I stifled something close to a gasp. I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Somewhere, I remembered reading that insurance policies generally don’t cover suicide. But I pulled out my cell phone and dialed our insurance agent. “Hello, Mark?” I said. “This is Sheila Hamilton.”
“Hello, Sheila. How are you?” I imagined him working at his tiny northeast office—he’d always struck me as a man who should have been in the entertainment industry. I’d only been in his office a few times, but he always seemed to remember me.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, Mark.” I paused. “David died.”
“Oh, no. I’m so sorry to hear that. How did he die?”
I could hear him making notes, the routine information-taking that occurs after death, the number cruncher figuring out his next move.
I hesitated. “He committed suicide, Mark. They found his body in December.”
Mark was typing into the computer, pulling up his data on David. He mmmed, then sighed. “Oh, that’s awful. This is not good,” he said.
“What is it?”
“David let his insurance policy lapse after just two months, Sheila. He took it out the day the three of you came into the office together, but he never paid the premiums. He hasn’t had a policy in eight years.”
He might as well have hit me in the stomach with a baseball bat. I leaned my forehead on the desk and muttered into the phone. “I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
Mark’s voice dropped low and very quiet. “I’m so sorry. He was quite insistent when I called to remind him to pay or renew the policy that it wasn’t something he thought he needed. Good luck, Sheila.”
The luck I would receive would be in the form of legal advice, from Jeff Brands, real estate attorney Stu Parker, and divorce attorney Jody Stahancyk. All of these experts worked for pennies on the dollar to help me settle David’s debts. David owed thousands of dollars in back taxes. The bank had already called due the $100,000 line of credit David used for his business, a loan that carried my name.
The clients who owed David money refused to pay, and his business was eventually declared insolvent. I was on the hook for all of David’s personal debt. I eventually sold every piece of property in my name to settle David’s debts, including our home, a lot at the beach, and the apartments Margaret (my former business partner) and I had managed together.
The indignities were great, especially knowing that some of David’s subcontractors, his vendors, and other agencies would not be fully reimbursed. As late as 2010, the IRS was still sending payment notices for David’s 2008 taxes—even though he’d been dead two years.
The pain of David’s suicide never really diminished, but life’s momentum is a powerful thing. We moved on.
Actor Robin Williams took his life in August 2014, prompting a flurry of news stories and social media posts. But his death was one in 41,149 suicides in the United States that year, making suicide the nation’s tenth leading cause of death and the second leading killer for people ages fifteen to thirty-four. In the months after Williams’s funeral, stories about mental health faded from the headlines.
Imagine if the flu were claiming 41,149 people every year. The public health campaign would be immediate and extensive. Yet there is no systematic government-sponsored program to attempt to reduce suicide. Mental health services have been cut by federal, state, and county budgets, and the suicide research budget for the National Institute of Mental Health has been shrinking every year since 2011.
Only one organization has increased its research into suicide—the military. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death in the armed forces, with a suicide rate that tripled from 2004 to 2012.
The military and the U.S. government have now spent 230 million dollars to attempt to understand the skyrocketing nature of military suicide. Among those efforts is a study analyzing soldier suicides and tracking tens of thousands of troops to attempt to understand the suicidal mind. If we invest in suicide prevention, we can bring the rate of suicide down.