Joe Hayman

This is the third year I’m attending the Accessing Higher Ground conference in Westminster, Colorado.  In 2015 I was here 6-months after Joe died leaping from the upper floor of a building blocks from where he lived in Ocean City, MD.

I’d be at this same venue looking up at the building in a much different way than probably most other attendees.  Then, when up high in my room, would look down and again think of Joe’s last moments.

Now it is more of a regular hotel building and not so loaded with emotion.

Woke in the middle of the night and checked my iPhone to see it wasn’t fully plugged in for re-charging.  Looked to see a NAMI post on Facebook regarding singer-songwriter Kathryn Rose Wood on losing her brother to suicide and collaborating with another musician who also lost a brother to suicide writing a tune called Free on Kathryn’s CD In The Ashes.  

Read the story and bought the EP on iTunes eventually falling back to sleep for a bit more rest before waking to take in morning sessions.

Really well done video for Free.  Always helpful to see/hear where it is that us loss survivors have shared experience quite different experiences from other kinds of loss.  It helps lessen the sense of isolation.

Three days after Joe died by suicide I attended my first survivors of suicide support group, a term or concept I hadn’t even contemplating existed but was glad to have located and attended.  More than once I had heard a phrase there like, “The first two years were the hardest.”

I swallowed hard, “Two years?”  Wondering to myself, “Will I feel this horrible for two years?  I don’t know if I can take that much pain for that long.”

I had also come to think that, like all prior hurts in my life this would be like a ramp sloping down from left to right on a timeline.  Just endure the steep upper part and it would progressively get less and less difficult to experience.

That was not to be the case.

Now two years on I wonder, have I built up a numb layer of scar tissue around my heart as a protective coating?  Have I done the large part of my “grief work” and now it is just a dull aching bit of maintenance work to do from here till the end of my days?

It would be so much easier if any others who knew and missed Joe would openly talk with me about their process, feeling, experience.

A couple of authors have helped me make it through this long dark path.  Martin Prechtel and his work, The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise published a month before Joe’s death.  The other is John O’Donohue, primarily his book and audio book Anam Cara.

Listening to Anam Cara read by the late author hits home on so many fronts including those around death.

Recently upon listening to O’Donohue while riding the ferry to/from work he was talking about the notion of being able to tell a not-yet born baby that soon he would have to leave this place he’d known in the womb, push through a tight passage way and be out into the light on his/her own….something that would sound like death to the baby.  This was so like the way Prechtel describe this transition.  Both then used this transitional phase to describe what is likely with death.

It is those of us left behind in this mortal world who hold these feelings of loss while our loved ones have made that mysterious transition to that which we can not fully grasp with our limited minds.

Do I think Joe’s suffering ended that fateful day?  Yes.

Those of us who loved him miss him.

I could talk so frankly with him and Joe with me.  It is hard to notice that when engaged with another I don’t know so well I’ll have some thread of, “Yeah, that is interesting but what I’d really like to be doing right now is talking with my brother and not you.”

I ride the ferry and look over the railing watching the wake of the boat make waves and remember all the time Joe and I spent in the ocean, playing in waves to where when you closed your eyes to sleep that night, wave after wave would appear in my mind’s eye.

There is no right way to honor this 2-year anniversary.  I just notice what was and what has come to be.  And I believe that Joe is with me in spirit, not just in memory.

I was walking around Green Lake this evening after work and was passed by two young guys in their late teens or early 20s.  One was carrying a tall can of beer openly.

I flashed on a time with Joe on the beach years ago, I don’t know where.  But we had these wrappers you could put around a beer that said “Coco Colo” with a pretty good imitation of the typical Coke can.  That way we could openly drink beer on the public beach.

When we’d had too much and likely needed to pee, it was easier to just step into the waves for a bit and then body surf a few waves before settling back on the shore.  It was a dizzying experience, more so than the usual washing machine experience of waves.

This little blip of memory and more like it are so bittersweet.  I’d love to call Joe up and say, “Remember that time we….” then a long sigh as I walk on an otherwise lovely late summer day in Seattle.

Checking my calendar from last year, it was 9/12 that we set his ashes free in a river near Annapolis followed by some flowers.

Recently, Beth and I rented a movie to watch and another the next day and damned if each didn’t have a suicide in it.  I had to jokingly say, “Ok, no more movies with suicide in them this weekend, ok?”  A year ago I would have had to go for a long dark walk.

And still, I miss my brother so damn much.  True, many of the treasured memories were when we were much younger and the darkness of mental illness hadn’t taken him over.  But even with the way he’d become those last few years, I’d treasure another evening on the phone or better yet, sitting up late at night with my newly earned but too late wisdom to say, “Seriously, tell me how it really is for you Joe.”

 

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This Sunday 5/16/16 marks the one year anniversary of Joe’s departure from this world.  I miss him terribly and thought I was doing “better” a few months ago only to find the weeks leading up to this date reminding me of the last few times we spoke and all of that searching one does when you experience losing a loved-one to suicide.

You go over the months, weeks, and hours that preceded the event to look for signs you should have noticed like the work of understanding why the space shuttle exploded back in 1986.

I can recall going to a small concert at the Good Shepherd Center on 5/7/15 and getting a plain untroubled message from Joe, “Yo, it’s me on Thursday night at 11 o’clock my time.  Calling to see what’s up.  Talk to you later.”  Called him back when I got home and he once again asked about the epilogue to the book he wanted me to read.

Told him I liked the honesty and open sharing it had, that I had read about 15 pages so far.  He said it was important to him that I continue reading it…which to me had me thinking we’d be talking about it more in the weeks to come.

8 days later he was gone.

At times laying in bed imagining answering a stranger’s question “Do you have siblings?”  I hear myself say some variant of “I have a sister and used to have a brother….” then it feels so surreal.  Like I know it happened yet still don’t believe it; wish it wasn’t so.

Last night walking to and from a concert near tall buildings, picturing my brother falling from on high to the hard ground below is so visceral and I wish to be free of that horrific feeling and imagery.

Then it is back to the day-to-day life and carrying on, looking intact from the outside, painfully damaged on the inside.  Knowing this of myself it reminds me that I don’t know what that other person I encounter day to day is going through despite all appearances.

 

It is a blustery February day here in Seattle as I finally get around to posting again to this site dedicated to Joe.  On doing scans of other slides my dad sent my way in December came upon this one toward the end of the process.  We went to this beach quite often as the water near the beach was calm and friendly to my mom who didn’t do well with waves.

Joe and I would wander this beach, sometimes heading off to the small lagoon or to a fountain at a nearby hotel where he’d retrieve coins tossed in by tourists wishing for good luck.

The grassy area behind us would host big band music to entertain those on R & R from the Vietnam war.  Our regular lunch would be bean burritos and even though it was already warm out, Joe and I would linger in the showers there with the water pouring on the backs of our necks.  That memory/image pops into mind from time to time now as warm shower water runs on my neck.

Visited this location in 1999 and what remains is an Army museum.

The pain and fog of a few months ago has lessened somewhat to where it isn’t a continual thought in my mind.  Waking up each morning though there is a mental reminder that he is still gone, that it wasn’t just a bad dream.  It has now been 9 months since you left us Joe.

Another holiday is upon us.  There will be no question this year of Joe attending some family gathering back East.  And despite not usually being with my family this time of year, gathering with others will still remind me of who it is that can no longer join in with such festivities.

Mostly I notice his absence when I’m alone for extended times.  The compulsion to ask my parents how Joe is doing was such a regular part of our phone conversations for years.  Now, I have to stop myself from asking them.

Last night, I did my occasional ritual of late, that of plugging in his laptop and opening his gmail account.  Browsing through it I came across a few exchanges between Joe and his editor in New York.  Then I sent her an email to let her know that Joe had taken his life in May.  Got a nice reply from her this morning.

It has been just over 6 months now.

Old Days by the 70s band Chicago regularly pops into my head when I think of Joe.

I miss you brother Joe.

 

The last time I spoke with Joe was on 5/7/15, 5 months before my birthday this past week.  He died on 5-15-15 and last week I turned 55.  Not that 5 is a magic number or anything.  It just stood out as the day he died had.

Joe had always at least called to wish me a happy birthday.

He had bought me some interesting presents over the years and had done the same for my parents as well.  Fun ones included a fake half-section of a ceramic alligator to have in their backyard as though coming out of the shadows.  Behind their current couch is a painting of a sailboat he bought for their new place.  Next to my couch where I live is a small ceramic drum he’d brought back from Morocco when he’d gone with Danielle a few years back.

She’s traveling there soon to say another farewell to him, like the one we did last month when we set his ashes free to travel out to the sea and surf.

I’ve still got the voice mails from the previous 3-years from Joe, wishing me well on my birthday.  Some days it is just so heavy to reckon with his absence and the way he departed.

All I could ever wish for for my birthday was that he wasn’t gone, I’d trade all of my worldly possessions for that.

From the time we moved to Hawaii in 1970 till Joe’s final days, surfing was a central focus in his life.  Early on I was a chicken-shit in the waves, largely from not having enough knowledge on how to swim under them to avoid their full wrath.

Joe, on the other hand, was pretty fearless in the ocean.  Upon moving back to the mainland the family would have a week at the beach each summer somewhere on the East coast.  Often we’d stay South of Indian River Inlet in Bethany Beach, Delaware.  Joe would wake me first thing in the morning, raring to walk the long stretch North to the public beach just South of the inlet where we could surf until 10am before getting kicked out of the water so the public could swim.

We’d walk back down that stretch of beach free of houses and set aside as a bird sanctuary to get some lunch, take a nap and then repeat the walk North again to surf from 5pm until time to head back and join the family for dinner.  This photo was likely taken by dad during one of those treks back.

One evening the surf was scary, to me at least.  The waves were thicker than usual and a darker green.  As was the norm we’d be sitting on our boards just past the break point facing out to sea to pick the next best wave.  A rogue wave broke much closer to shore than usual taking me backwards and up over the falls, spinning me around like a rag in a washing machine.  Sputtering for air I made it safely to shore, surrendering to the ocean for the day.

Sitting on shore facing out to the surf that evening I’d see Joe take the wild approach of riding these waves the wrong way, not out of the tube but into the breaking tube where it would explode over him.  Then he’d go for it again.  He’d milk it till the last minute needed to make it back to dinner in time.

Yesterday I picked up Barbarian Days a surf memoir by William Finnegan who lived in Hawaii and surfed there 4-years before us.  He writes for the New Yorker and continues to surf to this day.  Had Joe not inherited his mental genetics I believe that he would have lived a life like Mr. Finnegan, writing for a living and surfing all over the world.  Reading his book I’m transported to this imagined better life I’d have wished for Joe.

Here is a link with a shot of a similar wave breaking at Indian River.  Sounds like the surf hours have stayed the same but that they’ve changed the conditions of the break with sand pumping activities.

In the photo shown on this link the wave is breaking where you’d usually ride from the right side of this photo to the left as you’re facing out to sea…that day mentioned above Joe would have been riding from the left-side of this photo toward the right into the impact zone.

Indian River Inlet surf link with photo of break

Happy Birthday Joe!  You would have been 52 last Wednesday.  I shed some tears for you that morning and then the sky opened up and rained for 24-hours along the Nooksack River.  You would have loved the place where Beth and I camped near the river, like you enjoyed the river you and Danielle checked out in this photo from 2008.  I wish you two could have met.

Joe, I wish I’d been there, shouting up to you to stop so we could have talked and found another way for you to be in this world.  Or I wish you’d called me too that afternoon, not to say goodbye but to really let it out with your feelings and dark thoughts, rather than facing them by yourself till they got the best of you. [photo taken from the place you landed 11 days after you left us.]