A Tear-Stained Letter - FORWARD (chapter 4) by Vern Beachy
genre
tags
beachy,
grief,
grieving,
letter,
melinda,
memphis,
multiple,
police,
sclerosis,
suicide,
tear-stained
description:
*The manuscript on this site is not the completed project. For a full manuscript (Chapters 1-22) send me an email: vern@beachy.com
A Tear-Stained Letter is a vividly honest and raw account of what Vern Beachy has endured, and is enduring, as a young widower (suicide survivor) with Multiple Sclerosis. Beachy’s wife of less than three years committed suicide when she lost her job and faced the prospect of losing health insurance at a time when her husband’s health seemed to be going steadily downhill.
A Tear-Stained Letter is a story of love. The love one man has, and will always have, for his wife.
chapters
chapter 1:
Mr. Bleachy
chapter 2:
201 Poplar
chapter 3:
Three Days Late and a Million Dollars Short
chapter 4:
FORWARD
chapter 5:
EPILOGUE
FORWARD
chapter 4
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updated Apr 10, 2009
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9844 characters
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FORWARD
A Tear-Stained Letter
Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him.
James 1:12
I was a lost soul. I was rudderless and felt I had no purpose in this life when my wife decided to run away from her demons and end her life in the early-morning hours of June 2nd, 2006. I felt my life ended that day and my prayers to God reflected that sentiment and emotion. In the prayers I started reciting after that awful day in June I asked God repeatedly to “let me be with my wife.” I wanted to die. That is all I wanted and that is all I knew what to do after Melinda left this world. I didn’t want to carry on and I couldn’t see any reason NOT to join her in death.
With the exception of my monthly Social Security Disability Income, Melinda was the main breadwinner of our household. I became disabled after having been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in late summer of 1998. She and I had known each other for 19 years, but had only been married for just shy of three years. She died less than two months before our third wedding anniversary. I was her 3rd husband, but she was my first wife.
The story on these pages is not designed as a how-to book on being a suicide survivor. It is a constant struggle to survive the pain and hopelessness in the wake of my wife’s death and I am not arrogant enough to think I can tell anyone how to go through the grief ‘process.’ That process is completely and utterly personal and it is up to each individual to figure out what’s best for themselves in handling and, yes—surviving—a horrendous and unfathomable loss such as the suicide of a spouse.
If you take comfort in my story and how I am dealing with the dual tragedies of multiple sclerosis and my wife’s suicide, then I have accomplished something for which I alone cannot take credit. God is leading me because I was shell-shocked when Melinda died. I had lost my way and thought death was my only friend.
I moved from our home in Memphis, Tennessee, to Iowa to be near where she is buried and to be near Melinda's family. I know what is in the ground near the small town of Auburn is only her earthly shell but I felt I needed—or more specifically—wanted to be here. It was not a move that was easy for me because I was severely disabled due to multiple sclerosis. I know many people with MS say while they may have the disease, the disease doesn’t have them.
Fair enough, but MS had me lock, stock and barrel.
I could barely take care of myself as I tried, somehow, to carry on and do what I felt I needed to do to maintain my sanity and keep living. Although—more often than not—I wondered why I was living in this world anymore.
Shortly after I moved into an apartment in Carroll, Iowa, I conceded to my vulnerability and weakness and decided I couldn’t do “this” grieving thing alone, whatever “this” thing was supposed to be. I began to put more pressure on my brother, Darren, the pastor at LaHarpe Christian Church in LaHarpe, Illinois. I was looking for something to end my pain and for some semblance of normality or purpose for living. I also made a call to the local hospital to schedule an appointment to talk with a mental health therapist and maybe start individual sessions on a regular basis. I wanted the black pit in my stomach to go away or at least take on shades of gray.
Suicide—my suicide—was still a very viable option in my mind. I don’t know if that feeling will ever go away. It does get different, but it will never go completely away. I think the final paragraph of this book shows that the idea of my suicide is in a different place in my mind.
With Darren’s help and encouragement I started doing something that I admit I hadn’t done a lot in the past or on a regular basis: read the Bible. I was taught growing up that suicide was a sin like murder; a person would be damned to Hell, but it was a bit worse because a person who commits suicide cannot repent of the sin due to the obvious reason. Darren helped ease my mind shortly after Melinda died when he told me Jesus said He would judge a person on their entire life, not just one act. Talking with Darren, or more accurately, Darren listening as I made one tear-filled phone call to him after another, helped get me through some very dark times.
I kept reading the Bible desperately searching for answers and I kept going to the sessions with my therapist.
Then I met Jim Ewing.
Jim is a major figure in the Christian Church I began attending after I made the move to Carroll. Perhaps just as importantly to me; Jim had known Melinda since they were both young. They grew up together in the same small town called Lake City and he lives there to this day. He told me stories of Melinda in Elementary School and Junior High and I cannot say how incredibly important it was for me to hear him talk about her and smile and laugh as he did. I smiled and laughed right along with him.
Jim is a Bible study teacher and while I had been going to Bible studies for years growing up and in adulthood it wasn’t until I started going to Jim’s weekly classes that I realized I hadn’t really “studied” the Bible. It was in those studies that I discovered and fully realized I would—most assuredly—meet Melinda in Heaven when I died. Jesus atoned for everyone’s sins when He died on the cross more than 2,000 years ago and that atonement covered all sins, including suicide. That was a huge revelation for me and that highlighted how ignorant I had been in the past. The message of God’s grace and the words on the pages of the Bible have always been there, I just didn’t see them or I felt they didn’t really apply to me. That attitude can be nothing more than a byproduct of my extreme arrogance and ignorance.
The more I studied the somewhat cryptic messages on the onion paper pages in the Bible I began to feel again. I began to feel better. I began to feel lighter. Grief is a long journey and I doubt it ever ends.
Darren asked me to write a letter to Melinda as a way to help get me through the grief process and maybe help ease my mind. I had been a journalist for 17 years before MS sidelined me and forced me to abandon that career, so writing came fairly easy and it was something I had always enjoyed doing as I wrote thousands of news stories in my career. But a letter to Melinda was very difficult and I didn’t write anything for more than a year after her death. I tried a few times but all I got on paper were the words “I love you” before I found it hard to press on because of the pain of having lost my best friend.
Eventually I did fill a page and I kept writing, I also kept reading and studying the Bible and I kept going to see my therapist.
Friends will ask me if this book was difficult to write. You betcha! It was the most difficult thing I have ever written in my life and it will probably be the toughest thing I will ever do in my lifetime. But all I did was take a knife, slice open my heart and write about what fell out.
What you are holding and what you are reading is what fell out. The words on these pages are sometimes very raw and many times highly emotional. I hope this book adequately conveys how I viewed Melinda and our marriage. I also hope this book comes across as a great legacy to Melinda. She deserves it. Completely.
She was me and I was her. We were one.
I first thought it would take me more than a year to string enough words together to eventually make a book. But when I sat down in front of my computer the words just seemed to flow and after seven months of writing every day for four or five hours I finished the first draft of this manuscript. I typed the words “The End” on October 8th of 2008; Melinda’s birthday.
Happy birthday sweetheart. This book is for you. This book is for me and this book is for us.
I love you.
Writing this book helped me and it has changed me. There is no way that it couldn’t have had a profound impact on my life. I am not sure what that lasting impact will be, but I know it will be with me throughout the rest of my life. Another change that has happened to me in this journey that I am on is this: I am not afraid to die.
Dying, to me, has morphed from a scary proposition full of unknowns to a reunion. The unknowns are still there, but I am now focusing on a reunion with Melinda and I am sure my mind cannot comprehend what will happen when I eventually drift off to sleep and leave this world. But I am no longer scared of death. I feel my heart is right with God.
There is one emotion that is woven throughout the entire Bible: Love. I did experience love before I met Melinda, but did I? I do love my parents and I always will, but that love is different from what I feel toward Melinda. I am a rich man because I knew Melinda and spent a brief part of my life with her.
Rich man poor man.
I am richer for having known her, but poorer because she is no longer with me physically.
I don’t know what I want from this book. Maybe nothing. I do know that I only anticipated one person reading it because it all started as a letter to Melinda. I know she was looking over my shoulder as I wrote every word so my main goal—my ONLY goal—was achieved long before the manuscript went to print.
Maybe another purpose of this book is showing other people how to delight in their spouses and how someone can get through tragedy, or several tragedies, and continue living. I delighted in my wife and will always feel that way, even though she no longer walks with me on this Earth. That doesn’t mean she is gone. Quite the opposite.
As you read this, she is sitting right next to me.
Vern Beachy
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A Tear-Stained Letter
Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him.
James 1:12
I was a lost soul. I was rudderless and felt I had no purpose in this life when my wife decided to run away from her demons and end her life in the early-morning hours of June 2nd, 2006. I felt my life ended that day and my prayers to God reflected that sentiment and emotion. In the prayers I started reciting after that awful day in June I asked God repeatedly to “let me be with my wife.” I wanted to die. That is all I wanted and that is all I knew what to do after Melinda left this world. I didn’t want to carry on and I couldn’t see any reason NOT to join her in death.
With the exception of my monthly Social Security Disability Income, Melinda was the main breadwinner of our household. I became disabled after having been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in late summer of 1998. She and I had known each other for 19 years, but had only been married for just shy of three years. She died less than two months before our third wedding anniversary. I was her 3rd husband, but she was my first wife.
The story on these pages is not designed as a how-to book on being a suicide survivor. It is a constant struggle to survive the pain and hopelessness in the wake of my wife’s death and I am not arrogant enough to think I can tell anyone how to go through the grief ‘process.’ That process is completely and utterly personal and it is up to each individual to figure out what’s best for themselves in handling and, yes—surviving—a horrendous and unfathomable loss such as the suicide of a spouse.
If you take comfort in my story and how I am dealing with the dual tragedies of multiple sclerosis and my wife’s suicide, then I have accomplished something for which I alone cannot take credit. God is leading me because I was shell-shocked when Melinda died. I had lost my way and thought death was my only friend.
I moved from our home in Memphis, Tennessee, to Iowa to be near where she is buried and to be near Melinda's family. I know what is in the ground near the small town of Auburn is only her earthly shell but I felt I needed—or more specifically—wanted to be here. It was not a move that was easy for me because I was severely disabled due to multiple sclerosis. I know many people with MS say while they may have the disease, the disease doesn’t have them.
Fair enough, but MS had me lock, stock and barrel.
I could barely take care of myself as I tried, somehow, to carry on and do what I felt I needed to do to maintain my sanity and keep living. Although—more often than not—I wondered why I was living in this world anymore.
Shortly after I moved into an apartment in Carroll, Iowa, I conceded to my vulnerability and weakness and decided I couldn’t do “this” grieving thing alone, whatever “this” thing was supposed to be. I began to put more pressure on my brother, Darren, the pastor at LaHarpe Christian Church in LaHarpe, Illinois. I was looking for something to end my pain and for some semblance of normality or purpose for living. I also made a call to the local hospital to schedule an appointment to talk with a mental health therapist and maybe start individual sessions on a regular basis. I wanted the black pit in my stomach to go away or at least take on shades of gray.
Suicide—my suicide—was still a very viable option in my mind. I don’t know if that feeling will ever go away. It does get different, but it will never go completely away. I think the final paragraph of this book shows that the idea of my suicide is in a different place in my mind.
With Darren’s help and encouragement I started doing something that I admit I hadn’t done a lot in the past or on a regular basis: read the Bible. I was taught growing up that suicide was a sin like murder; a person would be damned to Hell, but it was a bit worse because a person who commits suicide cannot repent of the sin due to the obvious reason. Darren helped ease my mind shortly after Melinda died when he told me Jesus said He would judge a person on their entire life, not just one act. Talking with Darren, or more accurately, Darren listening as I made one tear-filled phone call to him after another, helped get me through some very dark times.
I kept reading the Bible desperately searching for answers and I kept going to the sessions with my therapist.
Then I met Jim Ewing.
Jim is a major figure in the Christian Church I began attending after I made the move to Carroll. Perhaps just as importantly to me; Jim had known Melinda since they were both young. They grew up together in the same small town called Lake City and he lives there to this day. He told me stories of Melinda in Elementary School and Junior High and I cannot say how incredibly important it was for me to hear him talk about her and smile and laugh as he did. I smiled and laughed right along with him.
Jim is a Bible study teacher and while I had been going to Bible studies for years growing up and in adulthood it wasn’t until I started going to Jim’s weekly classes that I realized I hadn’t really “studied” the Bible. It was in those studies that I discovered and fully realized I would—most assuredly—meet Melinda in Heaven when I died. Jesus atoned for everyone’s sins when He died on the cross more than 2,000 years ago and that atonement covered all sins, including suicide. That was a huge revelation for me and that highlighted how ignorant I had been in the past. The message of God’s grace and the words on the pages of the Bible have always been there, I just didn’t see them or I felt they didn’t really apply to me. That attitude can be nothing more than a byproduct of my extreme arrogance and ignorance.
The more I studied the somewhat cryptic messages on the onion paper pages in the Bible I began to feel again. I began to feel better. I began to feel lighter. Grief is a long journey and I doubt it ever ends.
Darren asked me to write a letter to Melinda as a way to help get me through the grief process and maybe help ease my mind. I had been a journalist for 17 years before MS sidelined me and forced me to abandon that career, so writing came fairly easy and it was something I had always enjoyed doing as I wrote thousands of news stories in my career. But a letter to Melinda was very difficult and I didn’t write anything for more than a year after her death. I tried a few times but all I got on paper were the words “I love you” before I found it hard to press on because of the pain of having lost my best friend.
Eventually I did fill a page and I kept writing, I also kept reading and studying the Bible and I kept going to see my therapist.
Friends will ask me if this book was difficult to write. You betcha! It was the most difficult thing I have ever written in my life and it will probably be the toughest thing I will ever do in my lifetime. But all I did was take a knife, slice open my heart and write about what fell out.
What you are holding and what you are reading is what fell out. The words on these pages are sometimes very raw and many times highly emotional. I hope this book adequately conveys how I viewed Melinda and our marriage. I also hope this book comes across as a great legacy to Melinda. She deserves it. Completely.
She was me and I was her. We were one.
I first thought it would take me more than a year to string enough words together to eventually make a book. But when I sat down in front of my computer the words just seemed to flow and after seven months of writing every day for four or five hours I finished the first draft of this manuscript. I typed the words “The End” on October 8th of 2008; Melinda’s birthday.
Happy birthday sweetheart. This book is for you. This book is for me and this book is for us.
I love you.
Writing this book helped me and it has changed me. There is no way that it couldn’t have had a profound impact on my life. I am not sure what that lasting impact will be, but I know it will be with me throughout the rest of my life. Another change that has happened to me in this journey that I am on is this: I am not afraid to die.
Dying, to me, has morphed from a scary proposition full of unknowns to a reunion. The unknowns are still there, but I am now focusing on a reunion with Melinda and I am sure my mind cannot comprehend what will happen when I eventually drift off to sleep and leave this world. But I am no longer scared of death. I feel my heart is right with God.
There is one emotion that is woven throughout the entire Bible: Love. I did experience love before I met Melinda, but did I? I do love my parents and I always will, but that love is different from what I feel toward Melinda. I am a rich man because I knew Melinda and spent a brief part of my life with her.
Rich man poor man.
I am richer for having known her, but poorer because she is no longer with me physically.
I don’t know what I want from this book. Maybe nothing. I do know that I only anticipated one person reading it because it all started as a letter to Melinda. I know she was looking over my shoulder as I wrote every word so my main goal—my ONLY goal—was achieved long before the manuscript went to print.
Maybe another purpose of this book is showing other people how to delight in their spouses and how someone can get through tragedy, or several tragedies, and continue living. I delighted in my wife and will always feel that way, even though she no longer walks with me on this Earth. That doesn’t mean she is gone. Quite the opposite.
As you read this, she is sitting right next to me.
Vern Beachy
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