Depression, suicide and the strange reactions to what one would consider triggers.

Four years ago this past August 4th I was sitting up and drinking heavily, which was not unusual for me then. I'm not an alcoholic, but as many people on this site know I suffer from fits of clinical depression. My official diagnosis is "Major Depressive Disorder with Suicidal Features". I just love the way they add the "Suicidal Features" part as if you're going to see a movie or dinner theater. The depression is chemical, most likely inherited and it runs through my family to varying degrees. I have one of the worse cases. I also have PTSD caused most likely by a combination of being raped (I hate the word "molested". It sounds too gentle or even excusable) when I was seven years old and by a very nasty second divorce 17 years earlier. My second wife was bi-polar, manic-depressive, though I didn't know it at the time I married her. We had two sons and she had three suicide attempts and I lost custody of my children to her parents while she was in a state hospital in Michigan and then my house burned down during the divorce with myself and my three young sons visiting and I ended up in ICU (I got them out unhurt) and then I was charged with arson and spent my life savings on attorney fees (because I was innocent) and the charges were dropped at the Preliminary Exam. Whew!

Anyway, after drinking most of the bottle of scotch (it's amazing how much easier whiskey goes down as you drink more of the bottle), I used the last few swallows to wash down 30 Ambian sleeping pills and 30 Soma muscle relaxants, locked the door to my bedroom, gathered my two dogs in bed with me to go to sleep forever. The odd thing was that there was no particular trigger that day. I had been seeing a psychiatrist for 3 years at that point and a Psychologist for nearly a year and thought I had a pretty good handle on my depression, that I had been struggling with most of my life, with various counselors, therapists, medications and hospitalizations. It had been a pretty normal and in fact even normal day. I had been taking anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs and (of course) been self-medicating with booze, as I had been doing for more then 25 years at that point. But again there had been nothing really different about that day that made me feel extra suicidal. I mean I have felt suicidal for most of my life from on degree to another, but most of the time it's like a distant static from and old AM radio i the back of my mind, but some days it blasts through the front of my brain, almost demanding that I do it. That usually happens when my medications aren't balanced right (which needs to be done 2 or 3 times a year). To this day I am not sure why I tried it that night, except to say that I was just plain tired of being sick, not being able to work, having people thinking I was malingering, etc. It just seemed like a good time.

Well obviously it didn't work (or there is a ghost typing this right now), I spent 3 days in intensive care (in leather restraints), spent a time in a locked psychiatric unit and managed to pretty much get it together. There have been times since then that I have felt extremely suicidal, though I almost never drink any longer and I have been in a locked unit again about 18 months ago when I told my Psychiatrist that I didn't trust myself and needed to be somewhere safe until my meds could be balanced again. That time too there was no special trigger that made me feel suicidal, I just felt it. Nothing bad had happened in my life. I have been relatively happily married to my 3rd wife for 22 years now and am on Social Security Disability. Since my meds have been re-balanced (Again. It's a never ending balancing act) about 2 months ago things have been OK. The usual minor irritants of life, but nothing bad.

Then this past Sunday my 80 year old mother who had cracked a couple of vertebrate in her lower neck a few weeks ago had a hard time getting out of bed. She had been feeling a lot weaker the past 2 months since she finally retired (she's a widow)). Instead of calling for one of my sisters in Michigan where she lives to come help, she tried to get up herself and fell down and knocked herself silly. Of course then she couldn't get up off the floor and then called one of my sisters, who call 9-11 and the fire department came and took her to the ER at Saint Mary's hospital in Grand Rapids. I knew about that, but I was called by one of my sisters Wednesday afternoon to say mom was still in the hospital. They had done a CAT scan on the bump on her head and found lesions on the bone of her skull. Of course they did a full body bone scan on Tuesday and found out that she had lesions on just about every bone surface of her body. They scheduled her for a biopsy for Wednesday morning, though it was pretty obvious to the Oncologist that it was stage four bone cancer. They tried to do the Biopsy and couldn't because her BP and heart rate shot up out of control when they tried and they moved her into the ICU instead. Earlier today (New Years Eve) they told her that, if she would agree to a breathing tube they could move her to a nursing home or, if not, to a hospice this afternoon. She refused both.

She told my sisters, brother, her brother and various family members that she wasn't going to fight it and that she wanted to go be with her late husband who died about 18 years ago. I couldn't understand much of what she said, but I told her that I loved her on the phone and my sister, Sandy, said she nodded and smiled. She had her Last Rites and passed away about a hour later, New Years Eve 2015. She was 80 years old.

For many people with depression this would be a trigger to cause them to go off the deep end and who knows I might in a few days. However for right now I am sipping a few glasses of good champagne, glad of the fact that she died painlessly, on her own terms, at peace with herself and spirit, surrounded by family and that she was positive that she would be joining her beloved Bob soon. Of course I cried when I heard about the cancer, that there was nothing that could be done and when she finally passed away. Still I am smiling a bit too. I am toasting her and thinking that some of her last words were that she hoped "That damned funeral home" remembered that she wanted to be buried with one of her favorite Koala Bears in her coffin with her (she had the image of a Koala Bear already carved on her part of the tombstone years ago). That was so her. I also feel luckier then most people because in both the case of my father 17 years ago just before this past Thanksgiving and with my mother this evening, I had a chance to say goodbye and that I loved them and they had a chance to say it back. Far too few children get that opportunity with their parents and it makes me smile a bit to know that they knew.

I love you mom and I always will, I will always miss you and here's to you on your last New Years. A toast for the nearly 60 years since I first met you when I was born. Rest in Peace. You earned it.