Mental Health | Suicide Prevention Month
A Dear Friend Took Her Life
I only found out recently and am still haunted by it
Warning: This article contains some references to suicide. If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please tell someone who can help right away!
- Call 911 for emergency services.
- Go to the nearest hospital emergency room.
- Call or text 988 to connect with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline . The Lifeline provides 24-hour, confidential support to anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress. Support is also available via live chat . Para ayuda en español, llame al 988.
It’s three or four in the morning. I wake and sit up, rubbing my head as if I could rub my thoughts away, too. My friend, who had seemed so happy and strong — but you know what I’m going to say here because it’s the month for such posts; National Suicide Prevention Month.
Could I have prevented it? I didn’t know about it, and never discovered what happened until years later. My friend and I had drifted apart. It wasn’t intentional, and I doubt either one of us had given it much thought. I had moved to a different state, and we both followed other paths.
We had started on the same path, in a small Indiana town in the middle of winter. I had recently moved there when my (now former) husband Greg accepted a job.
Greg introduced me to Billie, who owned a popular hair salon in the town. She herself was extremely popular: a beautiful, thirty-something, talented stylist. Billie and Greg were both members of the Jewish Sacred Burial Society, a group of people who observe a centuries-old tradition of washing and preparing the dead for burial.
The Burial Society was only part of our conversation on the day we met. Billie promised me she was a “long hair cutter” and I could see she was, with her own hair being long and “stupid thick,” as another friend would say. Because I had long hair too, I knew she would be good at her job. Later, I told her I was just learning to drive,and she told me about her friend Diane, whose rule was, “When in doubt, turn right.”
Before the end of my first hair cut, Billie and I had made a date to go to Chicago. It didn’t take long at all for us to start feeling like old friends.
What could have happened, Billie? You didn’t have to tell me — I was in a different world by then. But Diane or your husband surely did. There is a saying there are no secrets in families, and I believe that’s true with good friends, too. If they did know, they might not have believed it would happen — or may not have wanted to believe.
There have been other losses like this, but this time hit me the hardest. In my mind’s eye, I see the back of Billie’s head walking away, but she won’t turn around to say goodbye. I keep wanting to put my hand on her arm. I keep wanting to call out to her, to get her look at me one more time.
I think of something another friend once said. “I’ve been worried about this one group of friends over here,” she told me, moving her hands to the left. “But maybe I should have been worried about this other group, over there!” she said, gesturing to the right. “The ones who seem like they have it all together.”
When we met, Billie told me she had joined the Burial Society to make sense of what happened to her favorite aunt, who died from cancer. I knew I wanted to learn more — and ended up visiting a burial ritual and writing a play about it.
The play was later produced in Chicago, and I invited Billie and her husband to see it. The main character was modeled on Billie, and I was especially anxious about whether or not she would like it. Afterwards, she assured me she did.
“That was me, right?” she asked, and I responded by laughing. “Of course.”
Yet, most of the time we spent together was about small moments that made life sparklier. She did my hair and face for a photo shoot when making a flyer for her shop. We went out to movies or on snack runs — dragging our friend Diane out with us once her kids were in bed and her husband at home with them.
We also loved shopping for lingerie in crowded malls. When Diane said, “Where are you supposed to use this stuff?” Billie snorted. “What do you mean?” she said. “At work.”
When a director did a reading of a musical I’d written, but then passed on production, Diane and Billie took me to a bar to cheer me up. Billie called me soon after she got home and spent most of the call assuring me I would get other plays produced by bigger theaters. She refused to leave me alone until she was sure I was feeling better, and I swear it was getting light by the time we hung up.
I can still hear her voice in my head — warm as chocolate, hunting for an opening so she could make me laugh. When Greg decided to dress as Boy George for the Jewish holiday Purim at synagogue, it was Billie who styled his wig and painted his nails, chuckling as she worked on him.
When Greg and I moved away and then divorced, Billie came up to see me and insisted she wouldn’t be friends with his new wife, even though I would never ask her to close herself off like that. What I most remember, though, is how determined she was to let me know that no matter what happened, she and I would always be friends.
Billie’s husband Ethan had the same curly hair she did, and the same kind of jazzy energy. I don’t remember what kind of work he did, but I should because Greg and I went out with Ethan and Billie at least once a month for dinner if not more. What I do remember is he was handsome and funny — and though it’s never possible to be sure, from everything I could see and sense, they adored each other.
Some years after moving away, Billie and I lost touch. It wasn’t any one thing; only a lack of presence in each other’s lives, and what became a very busy time for me after getting remarried. So I did not hear until recently that Billie was gone.
When someone commits suicide, we hunt for reasons, sometimes desperately. The answers are always there, but often invisible to everyone but the person at the center of this episode. I have only a few facts, provided by Greg, who had visited the town where we all spent time together.
Ethan told Greg that Billie had been suffering with depression. When I heard this, my stomach tightened, since I know that demon, too. When Ethan suggested canceling a business trip to stay home with Billie, she convinced her husband she was fine on her own. When he returned from his trip, he found she had taken her own life. That was all Greg could tell me.
I don’t know what Billie did at that point, though my mind has gone over it dozens of times. Did she take an overdose of pills? Use rope? Or what?
Was there something that drove her to suicide? Did she lose the shop? Or was it more about losing joy and being afraid she’d never find it again?
Some days I wake up wanting to write to Ethan or Diane to find out what happened to my friend. I stop myself because I haven’t talked to them in years. What hurts the most is knowing that none of the people who loved her, including me, were able to stop what happened. My heart breaks to think of her giving up. Losing hope.
Perhaps that’s why religion emphasizes community so much. Even in death, the burials ritual is performed by at least two or three people. On the High Holy Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), we apologize for sins collectively, so the guy across the room makes atonement for me while I do the same for him. We’re not supposed to say the Mourner’s prayer without being in the company of nine other people.
Community makes us stronger and more resistant to sorrow, but what happens when we isolate ourselves from the people we know? I think too much time alone is really hard on us — and I think research bears this out.
I don’t know what happened to Billie, but I cannot stop thinking of her. When water is poured over the deceased during the burial ritual, the people performing the ceremony say out loud, “He” or “She is pure.” I know Billie would have wanted the ceremony to be performed, after having done it for so many people.
I can imagine women pouring the water on my friend and saying the ancient ceremonial words: “She is pure! She is pure! She is pure!” Yet I also hear what they’re not saying. She is purely alone.
What the hell happened?
You will never be able to tell me, but I will never forget you or what you taught me. When you have a friend you love, do whatever you can to keep her. Most of all, try and let her know, especially during bad times, how much she means to you.
Don’t wait.
