Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Sometimes You Don't Get an Answer

This last weekend we learned that the bodies of two people we know were found in their home on the coast (they had a home in Portland, as well). The story progressed from the first discovery and information release that there were two unidentified bodies found in a house belonging to .... insert the names of the people. These are not people that have been active in our lives for many years - but one of them was very significant for a few years, and our professional lives have overlapped or crossed periodically.

So it was a shock and everyone was certain it was the two of them even though they remained unidentified for a couple of days. Then the ID of the bodies were confirmed as them.

Then yesterday afternoon it was announced that it was apparently a murder-suicide. No note. No known reason. Hints that the wife had cancer and had been ill; but it couldn't be confirmed due to the decomposition of the bodies. The reports say that the husband murdered his wife and then killed himself.

There have been several of this same type of incident around the area for the past few weeks (husband shoots wife, sometimes others, then kills himself). But, having known the husband and the wife in this case, this seems odd. It's a shock. He was not the type of person to have done something like this - especially not with a gun.

But we will never know, most likely.

So, for now, we grieve. We process our shock. And we feel our anger. We let the feelings pass through. These are strong feelings and they bring up other experiences.

For me, it brings back some of the surprise and confusion and, yes, anger, from when my massage therapist - who was also a friend - killed herself several years ago. She had been going through a tough time, took some time off from her practice, got better and went back to work for a number of months. Then, something snapped, and she committed suicide. I had known her for many years and I took it very hard. With her, I knew she was having some mental health issues - but she seemed to be doing well and presented as stabilized.

With this recent situation, neither my partner nor I were any longer close with either of them - but my partner has a good friend who was friends with the wife. Both of the couple worked at the same university where my partner works (which is where my work sometimes took me in peripheral contact with him in the last couple years). But it is still a surprise - there are several factors that just don't add up with the people as we knew them, and according to the people we know who have been friends with them more recently.

What happened? We don't know and may never know. What we do know is that it is a loss to the communities in which they lived and worked and the people who know them. It is a ripple in our energy "field" of existence and our community of the people who have been significant throughout our lives - a loss.

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