12:05 p.m.
The day my partner and I first arrived on Bainbridge in our rental home, Katy B. sent her husband Dan B. across the street to our house with a plate of freshly prepared fried oysters she had made. It was July 3, and Dan explained the music in the neighborhood was the brass band practicing for the July 4th parade in Winslow. With the oysters and the music, we felt like it was our own welcoming party.
Being neighbors and kindred spirits, Katy and Dan quickly felt like extended family. We were younger and probably somewhere in between good friends and surrogate kids for them, as their older son was homesteading in Alaska and their younger son was just off to college. We talked at the mailboxes everyday and took care of each other’s animals when we went out of town. Having lived on Bainbridge “forever,” they schooled us in the ways of Island life, but never with the condescension and territoriality that some other people we knew exhibited. Thank goodness, for example, they told us how to pronounce geoduck.
A few years later, Katy was diagnosed with breast cancer at 50. She went through a mastechtomy, chemotherapy, group cancer counseling, and finally radiation. Katy was private and prone to depression. The counseling made her feel more depressed, and worries about money were mounting. Before her diagnosis, she and Dan had recently launched a kitchen remodeling business out of their house, and it was hard for Dan to run things alone.
They never had much, but they had plenty. I loved that their house was still decorated in 1970s thick shag carpeting and dark wood panels. They were “old Islanders,” with no pretension of or interest in keeping up with the Joneses. Katy loved her garden and hummingbirds, and both of them adored their cat, named Cat. He was nearly 20 pounds and close to that in age, yet he chased home our terrified golden retriever whenever she ventured across the street to happily greet Dan or Katy.
I loved feeding Cat when they went away, even though he was one of the rare felines I am hideously allergic to. I broke out in hives when I touched him, and my eyes would seal shut. Yet he was such a fiend for affection and so charming I always let him sit on my lap and gave him the rub down he knew he deserved.
The radiation had left a literal hole in Katy’s chest that seemed not to be healing. Katy was falling into a figurative hole of despair. In the meantime, a heavy winter snow revealed that the sinking roof of our rental house was riddled with rotting beams and, as the contractor put it, “held together in some places by paint.”
We had to move immediately. And while we were in the throes of reconfiguring our life and continuing to run our writing business, something horrendous happened. Katy picked up a loaded gun they kept in the house and shot herself in the hole in her chest. Her son and Dan were home, and when they ran to her she was already saying she regretted it and wanted to live. An ambulance rushed her to the emergency helicopter, but on the way to Seattle Katy died. The EMTs told Dan afterward that she was asking them to save her life.
We tried to support Dan. In time we encouraged him to move forward, but he was alone, lost, and succumbing to despair. To numb the guilt, anger, loneliness, and grief, he was drinking constantly. About a year after Katy died, one day he passed out drunk, hit his head, and died of a brain hemorrhage.
It’s been a long time, and I rarely speak of these events to anyone. When I think of them, I like to turn my mind to a story Katy told me. She was gardening, and Cat was sitting nearby. He yawned, and a hummingbird, apparently attracted by his red tongue, flew into his mouth. Katy was too far away to do anything but watch. Cat blinked in disbelief, and before he registered that his lifelong dream had come true, the bird flew off.
I like to think of Katy relishing that story—Cat’s frozen shock, the bird’s escape. I like to think of her—and Dan—as hummingbirds who got away.
Related Stories
- Letter to the Editor: Response to the Newtown Tragedy
- In Wake of CT Shootings, Bainbridge Schools Intensify Security Measures
- Vigil Tonight and Other Healing Events on Bainbridge for Connecticut Victims
Photo courtesy of Coconino National Forest.
a WordPress rating system
a WordPress rating system
a WordPress rating system
A gun in the house killed my cousin, Alexander. This was a beautiful piece of writing, Julie. Sorry for the loss of your lovely friends.
a WordPress rating system
a WordPress rating system
Guns are a tool and can be used for good or evil, a gun kills no one without the human pulling the trigger.
a WordPress rating system
a WordPress rating system
What a heart wrenching story. Thank you for sharing it with us.
a WordPress rating system
a WordPress rating system
Who cares? It's not the gun's fault she did that.
a WordPress rating system
a WordPress rating system
Yup
a WordPress rating system
a WordPress rating system
Your point that it isn't the gun's fault is obvious. Guns generally aren't deadly unless a human is using them. Because humans are highly fallible, human access to guns should be strictly controlled.
a WordPress rating system
a WordPress rating system
The presence of a gun allows people to act on impulse suicidal impulses that would otherwise rapidly pass long before they "went to the trouble" killing themselves by a method that required more action than just picking up a gun and pulling the trigger.
Having a gun in the house increases the chances 2-7 fold that there will be a gun injury or death in that household.
-Steve
a WordPress rating system
a WordPress rating system
Thank you for sharing this story. It's just so hard to understand why we can't give up guns. They are worth so little compared to the lives lost.
a WordPress rating system
a WordPress rating system
People have fears of guns based on ignorance and a lack of education on gun safety. Saying guns kill people is like saying knives or rocks kill people. Well clearly inanimate objects do not do anything and do not kill people. People kill people.
So long as there ARE millions of guns in society, this is reality and people must educate themselves on gun safety.
Articles like this serve to promote ignorance of guns, not increase gun safety awareness. Such as, guns should be safely locked up and not given access to dying people such as her. Her family is to blame much more than the gun.
a WordPress rating system
a WordPress rating system
its her body if she wants to kill herself its her right..the gun was only responding to her wishes
a WordPress rating system
a WordPress rating system
I hate to sound inconsiderate here as I feel for you and your loss, I've lost a few people in my life due to suicide, but I feel that you're putting all the blame on something that had nothing to do with what happened. What caused the death of your friend though was a botched surgery and her unwillingness to seek out the mental help that she needed until it was to late. The simple fact is that if there hadn't been a gun in tha house she probably would have found another method to try and end her suffering, a kitchen knife, medication, a razor, anything really. The simple fact is that we can't look at events like this to help us make a responsible decision about the need for gun control and or reform. As for her husbands death, it seems that his inability to seek help in order to recover from the loss of his wife is what killed him, not the fact that there was a gun in the house.
a WordPress rating system
a WordPress rating system
Who is at fault for her death?
a WordPress rating system
a WordPress rating system
Late at night while I was sleeping 3 drunks busted down my front door to my house. With a family to protect including 4 very young children I grabbed my gun without a second thought went out to shoot them down. My sister-in-law (Vita) intercepted me and said no and took it away from me. Less than a minute later I had all three drunks down and out. The police showed up and arrested them. I went for the easiest solution, which was not the correct one. They were not armed, they were drunk, one of them turned out was my brother-in-law and 2 others his friends all in their late teens. I was in my late twenties, Army vet, strong and athletic. To this day I thank my dear sister-in-law because without her this would have been a tragic event that would have impacted my family and life forever.
a WordPress rating system
a WordPress rating system
People can say the same thing about sleeping pills and narcotics.
a WordPress rating system
a WordPress rating system