I lived in my downtown shoebox for a year, roaches the size of Cadillacs scuttling across the floor like they paid rent, a bedroom so small it could only cradle a twin bed and a dresser with trust issues. It wasn’t much, but it was mine. Keith and I kept orbiting each other until the pull became gravity. When both of our leases were about to end, we looked at each other and said to hell with it. We got married.
I don’t remember the vows. I only remember the feeling: I was the luckiest woman breathing, marrying the man who already knew every cracked corner of me. If the universe had decided my children would live in another house, at least I got to walk through the rest of this life with my best friend at my side.
We had barely unpacked when my ex-husband called with his offer. Sign the papers. Give him permanent custody. In return, he’d let me see the kids, first in therapy, then slowly, carefully, like I was on probation for the crime of being their mother. Keith didn’t sugarcoat it. Without money for lawyers and a real fight, the outcome was already written. So I signed. It tasted like swallowing glass.
The first session at their house nearly broke me open. Two years of silence, and there they were, my beautiful, taller, changed babies. I stared at them like a woman seeing color for the first time after living in grayscale. Ten minutes alone at the end felt like both a gift and a theft. We made plans for two weeks later.
They canceled. Moved to Jennings, that quiet little nothing of a town an hour away. Visits became a slow, humiliating climb: supervised hours inside their house, then parks in Jennings or Cleveland, then day trips to Tulsa if I promised to bring them back before dark. Four hours of driving for a few hours of my children. Worth every mile.
Eventually, overnights, then weekends. The four of us started to feel like a family that might actually survive. Keith, usually the kind of man who counted every dollar twice, would open his wallet for movies, popcorn, dinners out. We played board games until the kids’ laughter filled the rooms. For a little while, it felt like heaven had decided to rent us a corner.
But heaven has fine print. My ex and his wife found fault with everything. The Goonies was suddenly too much, while The Walking Dead played at their house without comment. We bought winter coats that were “too big.” Basketball shoes that needed to be exchanged for boots. Nothing we touched was ever quite right in their eyes.
And underneath it all, Keith was quietly drowning.
His first attempt came on an ordinary night while Perry Mason flickered on the television. He got up for his usual late-night bread and peanut butter. When he sat back down, something was wrong. I glanced over and the world tilted. His white t-shirt had turned red. Blood everywhere. I screamed, ran for towels, called 911 with shaking hands while pressing down on the wound that wouldn’t stop. His mother came. We followed the ambulance to the hospital.
He lived. Barely. A long zipper scar from stomach to groin. When I finally saw him, he looked at the floor and whispered, “I’m sorry, dear.” I begged him never to do it again. I meant it with everything I had.
I didn’t handle it well. I showed up drunk one day because the fear was eating me alive. He asked me to leave. I still hate myself for not being the wife he needed in that moment. Fear makes cowards of us all.
Keith made a second suicide attempt months later with a dull knife stabbing himself five times. This time, after stitches and a three week psychiatric hospital stay, we didn’t leave him alone anymore. Knives disappeared. Then my stepdad died. My mother got kidney cancer and couldn’t afford the time off work to recover from surgery. Keith looked at me one night and said he was giving her the money so she could heal. The next morning he told her. She cried in his arms. I have never loved anyone more than I loved him right then.
He was in a COPACT program, therapists, doctors, case managers showing up at our door. For a while he reported that life was good. We wanted so badly to believe him. Eventually, I began to get comfortable again, no longer terrified constantly.
Friday, October 20th, he told his therapist maybe they could drop to every other week. That weekend with the kids was magic, laughter, games, birthday dinner, the park, a real date to see It. Sunday night felt like the kind of ordinary happiness people write songs about.
Monday morning I had class at the church, I overslept, rushed out the door, kissed the top of his head, and told him I’d see him later.
When I came home, the apartment was empty. No note. His phone sat on the counter like it was mocking me. I drove around. Called everyone. His mother came. Mine came. His dad came. We waited. The hours stretched into something cruel. I had gotten too comfortable, and honestly thought Keith was okay to be alone. I believed him Friday when he said to his therapist, “Life is good, man. I don’t even think I need to see you once a week anymore.”
At 1:30 a.m., three police cars pulled up. A young man had jumped head first from the bridge at 91st and Yale that afternoon. He had set his backpack down, climbed the railing, and let go.
It was Keith.
His mother hit the floor. I stood there staring, waiting for the part where someone would say it wasn’t true. It never came.
In his backpack they found Game of Thrones, receipts from two liquor stores, an empty pint, and a half-gallon of vodka with one drink missing. He had walked over five miles. Stopped twice for courage. His wedding ring was in a plastic bag. I put it on a chain around my neck and drank what was left of the vodka until the world went quiet.
At the crematorium I laid his lucky jeans and favorite t-shirt over him before they took him, then walked straight into the funeral. His uncle’s voice broke while talking to the crowd about Keith’s life. My fourteen-year-old son stood up with a piece of notebook paper and told everyone how Keith had taught him guitar, talked to him for hours about music, and how much he had loved his stepdad. I have never been prouder or more destroyed.
When I came home afterward, his coffee cup was still on the table. His boots by the door. His toothbrush in the holder. The silence was louder than anything I had ever heard.
I kept seeing the kids every other weekend until one small decision, letting my daughter meet friends inside a store while I waited next door, cost me the overnights again. My ex pulled them back. I needed them more than air in that moment. Instead I got emptiness.
The year after Keith’s suicide was brutal. Silent. Lonely. Friends stopped calling. I got a movie pass and started seeing a movie everyday. I would take my blanket I had made of Keith’s clothes and a pillow. Sometimes I went in whatever I had slept in the night before. I didn’t care.
And then I met Jason.
This is part of the Accountability series on Rock Bottom Was Only The Lobby. Thank you for walking through the hard parts with me. I’ll be back with the final chapter.
Rock Bottom Was Only The Lobby 