DUDE THAT FUCKING SUCKS ASS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Man sorry you’re going through this. Its a good thing your boss let you go.

And damn i could almost see her writing the letter above then……….no

It made me think of whats going to happen if my mom died…………………

Dude sorry to be bothering you with this comment, I just wanted to let you know that i’m sorry for you. NO ONE SHOULD GO THROUGH THIS. not your sister or you or anyone. *sniff* I am trying VERY HARD not to cry in school.

“For what its worth, it was worth all the while”-heres to hopeing that you and your family would somehow go on, and thinking that your sister had a good life before, well……………

that sucks so much… i know how hard it is to have someone u love leave this world… i didn’t know ur sis but i still for u… the only things i can say that i would want someone to say to me is that u’ll get to see her in the future, her death might be “wrong” but if she was meant to leave then its for the better… the other thing that i would want someone to tell me is she is and will always be with u in spirit and in ur memories… believe me… if u dont forget the memories u had with her its like she never left… again im sorry and i hope u can come to terms with what has happened

I lost my dad to cardiac arrest on sep 1st. I know what you are going through in part.

I wont try to give you advice on how to get through this. But, I know of the disbelief, the pain and the feeling of loss that you are experiencing. There is no way around it. You must go through it. I pray that you do not suffer too much during this process.

Be cool my brother. And, with all my heart, good luck.

I am so sorry James. I just hope that with the new life you have set up in Arizona, you have a strong knit family that will be there for you. I did not read her letter because I didn’t know her and didn’t feel it was my place to. I know you’re strong and will get through this like you have everything else in your life. I’m thinking about you. If you ever want to talk about meaningless crap or just want to say hi, you know how to get a hold of me. I’m sorry it took so long for me to say something.

Dear James…I guess it’s time to put my 2 cents in…for whatever it’s worth. You know that I will be happy to just talk with you about this whole nightmare at any time, or to simply shut my mouth and listen if you just need to vent. Sometimes however, it helps to put things down “on paper” and I believe that this is one of those times. It not only helps the person writing it, but it can be helpful for those who read it to make sense out of the mess as well.

Yes, the last few weeks have been HELL! And unfortunately the Hell is nowhere near being over because grief is a process–a very fucking long process. The grieving process can be long and difficult even when the person who died is your 90 or 100 year old grandmother who has been suffering from a terrible illness for years. One part of you is relieved that your grandmother (or whoever) is done suffering, while another part of you grieves for the fact that there is now a hole in your life that she used to fill. When the person who died is your sister–or your daughter–with whom you were very close, it is MUCH more difficult and takes MUCH longer to really get beyond it. When you then throw in the fact that her death is the result of a very violent suicide…there are no words to describe the pain you feel and will continue to feel for a very long time.

When you called me on the day after my birthday, you asked me if I had heard from Beth. When I said that I hadn’t talked to her that day, you told me about the text messages from Chris. I was worried. When I could not get Beth to answer her phone or call me back that night or the next morning, I KNEW she was planning something. I figured it was suicide she was planning, but hoped against hope that I was wrong. I could not bring myself to give voice to the belief that she was really PLANNING to kill herself. Having known her and loved her since before she was born I did know one thing for sure–and that is that whatever she had decided, it was going to happen. Once she actually made a decision, there was nothing and nobody that could stop her.

When Beth finally called you, she put on an act about nothing being wrong. You didn’t buy it because Chris had told you that something was going on in his text messages, and because she always either answered her phone or called me back when I called her and you knew she hadn’t done that either. After talking to you, she called me. She put on the same act for me. I let her continue with it for awhile, hoping that she would volunteer some information. When it became obvious that she was going to give me nothing but bullshit, I told her that another reason I had called was because I was concerned. She asked why. I then told her about Chris’ messages and that you and I had been talking about them. That’s when I was met with silence.

After about a minute of silence I said, “I’m getting silence, and that is NOT a good sign. I got some more silence and then I said, “So what is it Beth? Is there something I either SHOULD know about or would WANT to know about?” I got just a little more silence and then I could hear that she was crying and was trying to choke out some words through her tears. She told me that this was not a conversation that she had wanted to have with me until after the weekend, but that Chris had insisted that she owed it to you and me to at least call us and talk to us. She told me that she had just bullshitted and joked with you about being your crazy sister, because she wanted to remember you laughing on her last call to you and that she didn’t want you to worry. She then told me about her doctor’s prognosis–the fact that she couldn’t live like that–and her plan to get a new identity and just disappear.

I WANTED to believe her about just disappearing, because I KNEW that if that was a lie, then she was really planning to kill herself. I think about 5 percent of me actually did believe her, both because I could picture her doing just that, and because I could not allow myself to accept the idea that this was the end. I think running away with a new identity may have been something she actually considered, but was afraid that if she did that she would eventually “chicken out” and ask for help.

In the past, whenever she would become suicidal she would call me and hope that I could talk her out of it. She always told me that she didn’t want to kill herself, but that her brain was telling her that she had to. She always said that it was like a demon or a monster had taken over her brain and she couldn’t fight it alone.

I know that probably sounds crazy to many people, and it will be passed off as wanting attention by others, but I believe that is exactly how it felt to her. Mental illness is just as real as any other kind of illness. If you can have a heart disease or a skin disease or a lung disease, etc., then why can’t you have a brain disease? Both physical and mental illnesses can be caused either by things you do or by things outside your control. Tom’s aortic heart valve failed when he was 25 years old because of a condition he was born with and was unaware of, whereas my father’s fatal heart attack was caused primarily by the fact that he was well over 300 pounds, an alcoholic and a chain smoker.

Beth most definitely had a chemical imbalance in her brain. That was obvious to me by the change in her when she had the original Efamol available to her. When she had it her brain worked the way it should and when she didn’t have it or after they cheapened the processing of it, her brain malfunctioned again.

(For anyone reading this who does not know this part of the story of Beth’s life,) Efamol is a specific brand of evening primrose oil that was processed differently from any other brand on the market. Evening primrose oil is a natural supplement that provides a certain omega-3 fatty acid that we all need. Most people get enough from their normal diet or they can get it from a basic omega-3 supplement. For some reason, Beth was unable to absorb this nutrient from anything else. She had the same problem with vitamin B-12 and she had to give herself B-12 shots to compensate for that. The inability to absorb certain nutrients is very common among people who have fibromyalgia. Our bodies are extremely complicated and it is impossible to know why certain things work for some people and not for others, but EVERYBODY has problems that are not apparent to other people.

Please forgive me if I seem to have wandered off-topic here. There simply is no easy answer as to why Beth killed herself. I do know that when her brain was functioning the way it should, she would never have considered it. I also know that you changed your life when you learned to change the way you thought about things, and I am very happy that you were able to do that. We would all be better off if we learned to focus on the positive things in life and stop focusing on the negative. And you’re right when you say that people don’t change because they are afraid to change, and so they make excuses instead. But although this is true, it is only part of the story.

Life is incredibly complicated…everyone has both strengths and weaknesses…and we are all only human. Because of that, something that is easy for one person to do can be impossible for someone else. If Beth hadn’t been born with a screwed up brain to start with, things would most likely have been very different. She said it was like a monster or a demon had taken control of her brain, and that each time it happened the monster got stronger. Maybe that idea was planted in her head by the teacher who sucked her into the occult, and maybe it was planted there by the people at Mountain Park. I don’t know. But I do know that I was on the phone with her one day when she suddenly flipped from the manic side to the depressive, and it scared the crap out of me. I had started that phone conversation with one person and finished it with someone entirely different. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have that happen inside my head–over and over again. This is definitely NOT something she could control, and I think that ultimately she was just worn out and no longer had the strength or the will to fight.

I know that many people think that suicide is “the coward’s way out.” At one time I may have thought that myself, but I don’t think it could be easy to do what she did. I think it would take a great deal of courage to pull that trigger. Please do not misunderstand me here. I am NOT trying to suggest that what Beth did was a good thing, or that suicide is ever OK. Realize that–just like you–I am desperately trying to make sense out of this whole nightmare.

An excerpt from her sealed letter to me says, “I’ve done my best and fought for so long. I simply can’t fight anymore. I can’t ask for help again either. There’s no one left to ask and it cost me too much to ask last time. To be honest I don’t want to get help anymore. Each time my illness takes over it damages or destroys something in what I think of as my real life. That makes even feeling reasonably normal or stable a very difficult state too, and each time it gets harder.”

Many people believe that suicide is the most selfish thing a person could do. Perhaps it is…I just don’t know anymore. So many things that I used to accept as fact, I have learned are just opinions based on incomplete knowledge. Remember, at one time everybody KNEW the world was flat.

My mother always told me that I was a selfish little brat (which therefore made me evil), and I believed her. As a result, I have often allowed others to treat me badly, believing that to fight for myself was being selfish. Then, when I became a mother I discovered that I would literally kill someone with my bare hands if I thought they were going to hurt one of my children. I now believe that most people will do much more to protect the ones they love than they will do to protect themselves. Is that selfishness? When you stop to think about it you realize that it doesn’t make any sense. After all, how can I protect my children if I don’t first protect myself. It’s easy to sit in judgment when we don’t know all the facts, but the older I get, the more I discover that the line between fact and belief is often very blurry.

Beth continues in her letter, “I have loved and lost, learned and taught. I have done and seen and experienced more in my time than most people do in much longer lives. It is time for me to move on. My regrets are few and are limited to hurting people I love. I love you so very much. Please understand that although I’m aware that my death has hurt people I love and care about, if I could have spared them the pain I would. It was never my intention to hurt others, but to end a war inside my head that I could no longer endure.” I do believe that she was being sincere when she wrote that.

I’m sorry that this has gotten so long. I never intended to write this much. I really had planned to say just a couple things to you here that are very important, and I haven’t even said those yet. What I began with though, is that I too am desperately trying to make sense out of this, and sometimes putting it down on paper can be helpful. So please forgive my long-winded ramblings and finish reading the rest, because what I haven’t put down yet is more important than everything I have said so far.

I now understand that Tom and I made things more difficult for you by going into Beth’s bedroom, and for that I apologize. At the time I thought you were simply trying to protect me. I know that you WERE trying to protect me, and I appreciate that. There were things that none of us understood at the time though, and as a result we made it more difficult for each other. I accept full responsibility for the communication breakdown that caused you to suffer more than you were already suffering. If I had been thinking more clearly I would have done things much differently. Obviously, I cannot go back and change what has already happened. All I can do is apologize for that and to hopefully help you to understand what went wrong.

The reason the grieving process takes so long–especially in a fucked-up situation like this–is because none of us are strong enough to deal with all the shit that is involved in the loss of a loved one all at once. We can only handle a little bit at a time and our brains and our bodies go into an automatic defense mode to protect us from taking on too much shit too fast.

The grieving process is also different for every person as well as for every death, because regardless of who dies there are no two people who have exactly the same relationship with that individual. Your relationship with Beth as brother and sister is obviously different than my relationship with her as mother and daughter. And even without the difference in relationship, everybody reacts differently to a death like this and we all have different defense mechanisms. As a result, we all need different things at different times in order to process the situation.

After that final phone call from Beth that we each had on Friday, Oct. 5th, I think we both knew–deep down inside–that Beth was planning to kill herself. Our own natural defense mechanisms wouldn’t allow us to fully process that information. And so we hoped–and tried to believe–that the worst thing that would happen is that she would just “disappear” for awhile. We were already in defense mode then…hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.

Because our instinctive defenses had already kicked in, when we learned that “the worst” actually had happened, we were able to think ahead to the next horror–dealing with the “other family”. We both knew that they would respond with an ugliness that would make an already unbearable situation much, much worse. In order to deal with THAT situation, your auto-defense wisely locked up all your emotions so that you could deal with them later. Trying to deal with your own grief while also dealing with the other family would have been impossible. My auto-defense geared me up for a fight. Like I said earlier; when I became a mother I learned that I would kill someone with my bare hands if I had to in order to protect my kids. This time I KNEW I would have to fight for my daughter’s final wishes. On another level I realized that I might also have to fight for your right to get what YOU needed to work through YOUR grief.

As difficult as it was, you were able to endure all the ugliness that you encountered while your own grief was safely locked up. And because you were able to get those letters out of Beth’s computer I was able to fight through the initial battles with your dad at the funeral home to allow us to take over all of Beth’s personal effects without him, and to make whatever “burial arrangements” we believed Beth would have wanted. I even had to fight my own mother on that one.

Up to this point, both of our auto-defense systems were working in concert with each other’s, and together we were able to accomplish what we needed to do. But neither one of us had really had a chance to work on our own grief yet, and we each needed different things. You did not yet have the life experience to really understand what you needed, because you were still working on auto-pilot. I should have understood that, but I didn’t think it through. If I had, I would have been able to communicate MY needs without stepping on YOURS.

When you ran into Beth’s apartment ahead of me to shut the bedroom door, I thought you were just trying to protect me. I know that was part of it, but I didn’t stop to think that you still needed that door shut for YOUR OWN protection as well. Your emotions were still locked up and you were not yet ready or able to deal with them. You had been going through Hell for more than a week already.

On the other hand, Tom and I–each for our own reasons–both had a need to go into that room. For me it was a case where the blinds were closed and the light was off. I had no desire to look at the bed or anything else. I just felt a need to step inside the room. Beth had told me that once she actually made her decision, that she had felt a peace within that she had otherwise never known. After we were done working for the night I had planned to read the contents of the envelope she had left for me so that I could begin to work on my own grief. Before reading though, I needed to step inside that room to see if I could feel that peace that she had talked about.

Tom also needed to see if he could feel any emotion in that room, but for a different reason. In spite of everything we had told him over the years, Tom never felt like the 4 of us were a family because you and Beth were both grown up already when he and I got married. As a result, he had pretty much taken us for granted. That all changed when I told him about Beth’s death. At that moment he felt like someone had slashed his guts out, and he realized what he had missed. He didn’t understand that he HAD a family until a part of that family was gone.

The next night he needed to go in and clean out the bedroom to a degree. A person’s bedroom is the most personal room in their home. He felt that if Beth had any personal items in that room that she might not want others to see, that it would be better if a family member threw them out than for them to be left for strangers to find. I think he felt like it was the only thing he could do for Beth to tell her that he was sorry for taking her for granted, and for not realizing what he had until a part of it was missing.

Whether or not our reasons for needing to go in the bedroom make any sense to you doesn’t really matter. Grief work is very personal and everybody needs different things. I just didn’t realize that you needed that door closed for your own reasons, and I didn’t think to communicate our needs to you. If I had thought it all through and done that, you could have left early and we could have stayed out of there until after you were gone.

At any rate, although we still have a LONG way to go, at least the most intense part of the nightmare is behind us. We are all going to be hurting for a long time. It will hurt more at some times than at others, and there will be times when you may for a short time forget all about it. Don’t allow anyone else’s expectations of how you SHOULD feel or how you SHOULD act bother you in any way. Feelings are just feelings and there is no right or wrong way to feel. I can pretty much guarantee that you will feel every emotion there is to feel at some time or another regarding this time in your life. Love, hate, fear, guilt, pity, anger, happiness, emptiness, etc. Just let them all come and go as they will. In time they will lessen in both frequency and intensity.

Then a day will come when you will think you have gotten past it all, and some stupid little everyday thing will happen or be said that will remind you of something. Suddenly you will feel as though a ton of bricks was just dropped on your head. I am not telling you this to make you think that that this nightmare is never going to end. Time will heal even these wounds.

I’m glad that you have a lot of good friends too, because you will also need their support–whether you think you will or not. I am NOT talking about sitting around talking about this with your friends like some sort of group therapy session. I just mean that while Beth no longer has to deal with this, that for the rest of us life goes on, and that I want the rest of YOUR life to be GREAT. So live life to the fullest. Go out and do things with your friends. Make your plans, follow through with them and LIVE YOUR DREAMS! Do not allow your sister’s actions to spoil anything for you. Withdrawing into yourself or using alcohol or anything else to try to forget or to dull the pain will ultimately just make things worse. I’m just warning you that every once in awhile something will hit you when you least expect it. When that happens, if it makes you feel better to cuss your sister out then do it. I’m sure I will from time to time. As the years go by those moments will be fewer and farther between. I just don’t want you to be blindsided by them when they do hit you. I have an additional 24 years of life experience to call on to know that they WILL happen. When they do, just shake them off and move on, and remember that Tom and I are BOTH here for you whenever you need us.