I was painting the bathroom nautical blue in my new house when I felt Laura leave this Earth. It was the evening of July 17, 2017. Two days later she was found dead, alone in a luxury hotel room. Two days after that, I received my birthday card in the mail from her. Later, her obituary read that she had died after a long battle with cancer, but there’s so much more to her story and to her legacy that needs to be told.
It’s taken me a year to work up the courage to share this story. I’ve been praying for God to give me some miraculous spiritual gift to be able to write a song or a poem that could that would accurately describe all these feelings so people could understand how Laura’s first suicide attempt and ultimate suicide has changed me. Well those haven’t come together yet in my head, so I’ll stick to what I know.
Before you read the rest of this, you must know that Laura and I had many discussions about her mental health and mine. One thing we always talked about is not being afraid to seek help in whatever form we needed it. I asked her years ago if I could write a book about her life because she has inspired me in so many ways — far beyond her mental health journey. The words that follow are an account of the moments leading up to her death. Much of this comes directly from my personal journal entries that have been written throughout the year. They are not graphic, but you can anticipate many details that can be upsetting. You’d better believe I’ll be crying as I write; so let’s have a cry together, shall we?
Another diagnosis
Laura had come up to Michigan for the summer with her sister. She had been living with her sister in Virginia since her and my dad divorced in 2011. The previous summer, Laura broke the news to me at lunch in an Olive Garden that the cancer was back again… this time spread to her entire body. After nearly 30 years of on and off cancer battles (colon 2X, breast and now her entire body), she decided to quit chemo at the previous Thanksgiving also around her 60th birthday. Her kidneys had started failing, her “chemo brain” as she called it was getting worse and she told me she was on Hospice. In a card from early 2017, she spelled my name wrong for the first time since I’d known her and she scribbled an update:
“You can tell by my writing that I am slipping. I am comfortable. I am losing some of my cognitive skills. Falling without warning having 2-3 mini strokes every day. Losing my appetite. Pain is doing well, [my sister] is talking about getting a sitter to, me 3 xs a week. But I am still full of piss in vinegar.”
July 3, 2017
I fully expected her to be sickly looking, but when I picked her up for our girls’ night out last summer she was thinner than I remember but not frail. She was the usual bubbly Laura… with short purple hair! She was living it up in her last days… laughing and joking and brushing off the fact that she was dying. She couldn’t drive because she was heavily medicated with morphine, provided by Hospice nurses that would visit her wherever she was staying. We went out to dinner and she told me stories about her 18th birthday, which was the drinking age back then and how some guy tried to hit on her and she started a bar fight. That was Laura! Full of “piss and vinegar.” We drank margaritas. We talked long after we had finished our meals.
Later that night we crashed at a local hotel room she had reserved for us. She had a case of liquid morphine in that she took with syringes, there was lots of medical paraphernalia that she kept in a suitcase. It wasn’t unusual for me to see all that stuff because almost as long as I’d known Laura she had been sick or recovering. We talked until at least midnight about everything and anything we could squeeze in until our eyes grew weary. She told me that her son and daughter-in-law were trying to have a baby. Through tears she admitted how broken she was over the fact that she wouldn’t be there to meet her grandbaby. Still, she found one of those record-a-story books and recorded her voice reading the book so someday her grandbaby could hear her voice for a bedtime story (tears right now anyone?). Then we laughed when she told me she messed up while recording the story and when her daughter-in-law asked if she wanted to re-do the recording she said: “Hell no, I don’t want my grandchild thinking I was perfect.” We laughed until we cried… it was the essence of Laura. (Three months after her death, they got pregnant and this July had a baby girl).
That night we talked about so many things, love, marriage, children, fashion, travel, TV shows, God, death and how pissed off she was to know that she was dying and not be able to pick the day or time. She told me about how she wanted her kids to be taken care of and how she hated not being able to drive or live alone or be independent. She told me details of how she wanted her funeral, where she would be buried and when it would be. And I vividly remember the moment she looked me straight in the eyes and said “Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and kill myself again.”
And she looked me straight in the eyes and said “Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and kill myself again.”
Before bed, we took fun selfies on her flip phone, because my smartphone had died earlier that day. She told me that she sleeps very soundly and she gave me a lesson on what to do the next morning if she didn’t wake up. She showed me her Hospice paperwork and the phone number. “Do not call 9-1-1” she emphasized. I was heartbroken, but I actually slept soundly feeling as if this wouldn’t be the last time I saw her.
The next morning was 4th of July. We woke up to a beautiful sunny morning and I was anxious to scoot out because I wanted to get my phone fixed. She saw me off at the door. I wanted so badly to pray with her, but for some reason I hesitated. I wanted to talk to her about the book we had intended to write together, but I felt it was too intrusive for that moment. She wanted to sleep in and have her friend pick her up later so I left her there. The night before we had talked about how she wanted to go visit her dad in Lake Odessa one last time and I offered to drive her. We were planning to get together in a couple of weeks. That was the last time I saw Laura.
On July 16…
I had a missed call from Laura but no message. Later, my uncle called me. Laura had had a falling out with her friends and family who were up here in Michigan and she was on the run. She called my uncle and he offered to let her stay with him until she could find a place of her own. I got Laura on the phone. Determined, stubborn, medicated and cancer-stricken Laura told me with a jolly tone that she was fine and she wanted to look for an apartment and needed a car. I offered her to stay with us in our four bedroom home, but I didn’t push that hard. My mind was already racing about how I would react if I found her dead in our home and how much that would scar me. Even though I offered, she declined and said she wanted her own place.
On July 17…
On Monday, I immediately started working my connections to help her find a house and a car. I was texting her phone numbers and low-income housing opportunities for disabled people. She told me the waiting lists were months long, and she even threw some jokes in the text messages. Later after work I tried to call her. No answer. I called. and called. Then I called my uncle. He calmly told me that Laura had asked him to drop her off at an area budget hotel because she was supposed to meet her Hospice nurse to get her next round of medication and she didn’t want them “bringing all the equipment” into his house. My heart sunk. My uncle was unaware of Laura’s treatment plan. There were no machines needed to see the Hospice nurse it was simply a check up and refills of liquid morphine. Laura had been staying in his guest bedroom. She left that day, closed up the guest room, and when he dropped her off, she gave uncle a quick hug told him to pick her up on Wednesday. She said “I love you” grabbed a small tote bag of stuff and hopped out of the car and walked into the hotel. After I got this information, I hung up with my uncle and tried to call Laura again. Her phone was off. I tried to call the hotel she had been dropped at. They said no one by her description was registered there. No one had seen anyone with purple hair. My mind was reeling. I knew she didn’t want to be found… for a reason. It was late and there was nothing more that I could do except try and call her tomorrow and try to contact another staff member at the hotel.
July 18
On Tuesday, I had a weird headache all day. It was a busy day at work and I had to cover an event, so I stayed occupied trying not to think about the fact that she could be dead already.
My uncle got out of work around 3. I told him to call me. He told me the police were called by her family and they came by his house to question him about Laura. He told the police where he dropped her off. I left work immediately to go to uncle’s house. He let me look in Laura’s room — up until then he had not opened the door since she left. I opened the door and there were garbage bags full of clothes everywhere. Laura’s worldly possessions were in that room. I scanned… her c-pap machine was sitting next to her bed. I vividly remember her telling me when we had our girls’ night that she can’t breathe at night without it. I scanned… her Hospice folder was sitting on a dresser, nurse phone number front and center. I thought I might vomit. I knew she wasn’t coming back. The headache returned and I was in a fog, a different realm.
I drove down to the hotel where she was last seen. I asked if I could see surveillance footage of the previous night. “We can’t let you do that unless the manager is here,” they said. I asked if anyone had seen a 61 year old lady with purple hair “nope.” I asked if she could be registered under another name. “That’s not possible. We require photo ID with every check-in.” Knowing she didn’t have a car, I was terrified that she might be dead in the parking lot or in the nearby woods. I mustered up all my courage to scan the lot and the woods. No Laura. It was a tunnel vision episode of Law and Order West Michigan. I sat in the parking lot and called every hotel within a few miles of the one I was at. None would confirm or deny that she was there without a room number… no matter how much I told them she might be in danger. I called Hospice and they wouldn’t confirm with me whether they had seen or heard from her recently. I shared that she could be in danger but they assured me she was “probably fine.” I almost drove all the 40 miles to the Hospice location where I thought she was registered, but something told me to just go home and rest. That night, I called a friend of a friend who knew the detective in the town where she went missing, but nothing panned out.
July 19
The next day I had a commercial shoot with a local TV station. My hair, makeup and outfit were flawless and on the inside I was falling apart. I was a zombie. I don’t know how I even read the teleprompter without breaking down. I couldn’t tell anyone what I was going through because I didn’t even really know what I was going through. If I said what I thought I knew, would it actually come true? After the shoot, I decided to work from a local coffee shop… far enough from home to try and focus on work but close enough that I could get to the Lakeshore fairly quickly if I needed to when I heard from Laura.
I posted on Facebook: “Feeling helpless but not hopeless.” I remembered how on Monday evening I was painting the master bath nautical blue and crying because I had “that” feeling. The feeling is impossible to describe. It’s like a deafening silence and a sense that a part of you is gone and will never return.
So much pressure was building after three days of incessant calling of her phone, which always went straight to voicemail. There were several random calls from Laura’s family; her sister, her brother, and her son. They said “I heard you have some leads on Laura.” They asked me “Have you found her yet”? I felt the weight of her entire life on my shoulders. My only clues were the left behind C-Pap machine and the Hospice papers, which were bread crumbs leading me toward a dark outcome. Two of her kids lived out of state and her son drove up overnight to Michigan to get in close proximity. What if we never found her? I prayed she was mid-air on her way to a tropical island and would be calling us any minute to let us know she was living her final days in paradise.
While I was at the coffee shop trying to focus, I got a text from Laura’s son asking if I had heard anything. It had been almost 48 hours since we had heard from Laura. We were racing against the clock. I hadn’t called her phone for several hours at that point so… sitting there in the coffee shop, I tried again. It rang. That ring was the loudest, most clear sound I had heard since I entered the “fog” on Monday. A ring! Like a symphony to my ears. I thought “She turned her phone back on and she’s about to say she’s back at my uncle’s house settled in and comfortable.” Everything was about to be back to normal. This walking mystery nightmare was going to disappear into a distant memory. Someone picked up. “Hello”? The voice was deep and serious. I was jolted from my euphoria. It seemed my brain took forever to register that this voice wasn’t Laura’s and it wasn’t my uncle’s.
Him: “Hello.”
Me: “Hello? Who is this”?
Him: “This is officer Bonebreak. Who is this.”?
Me: “This is Abbey, Laura’s daughter.” (close enough) “Is Laura there”?
Him: “Yes, she’s here…” [long pause]
Me: “Oh, thank God. Is she OK? Can I talk to her”?
Him: “Your mother took her own life.”
The rest is a blur. An out of body experience that transcends words. Thinking back, I’m guessing there was an “Oh my God. No! What?!” But I can’t confirm that for you even if I tried. Maybe the people in the coffee shop turned their heads, maybe they didn’t.
Me: “Where is she”?
Him: [Luxury Hotel name]
Me: “Can I come there”?
Him: [Cold, calculated, voice dripping with judgment] “Yes. I would like to talk to you, and so would the medical examiner. Your mom left notes. You can take pictures, but we need to take the notes with us. How soon can you get here?”
Me: “I’ll be there in 20 minutes.”
Him: [Annoyed that I would take longer than 5 minutes] “OK.”
[CLICK]
In the middle of the coffee shop — while a peppy pop song was playing, I’m sure — I let out a loud sigh laced with a wail of grief. The coffee shop echoed my cries between the pop song lyrics. Everything was swiped off the table as I hit my knees shakily trying to shove my computer and loose papers into my tiny computer bag. My new dress and flawless hair and makeup were about to go through a tornado of grief. No tears yet, just a frantic determination to get to the hotel. I called my husband as I stumbled through the parking lot to my car.
Him: [hopeful] “Hello”?
Me: “Laura’s dead.”
Him: “Oh no, what happened”? (or something like that)
Me: “She killed herself.”
I told him to meet me at the hotel where I was headed. I had previously been to that hotel but my brain was in fight or flight mode and I could not remember how to get there for the life of me, so my husband talked me through step by step directions to get there. I don’t think I was even able to function enough to work a GPS on my phone at that point.
It was a hot and beautiful summer day and I was going 110 on the interstate. I told myself “I dare a cop to pull me over right now.” Then I started to get so pissed at officer jerk-off. I started to speculate. Where was his compassion? No “I’m sorry about your loss”? Is he blaming me for letting her kill herself? I. was. pissssssssed. I pulled myself together and remembered that Laura’s family needed to know. I called her son. He had gotten a call from the officer right after me. They were on their way. I called my uncle and broke the news to him. He was in disbelief. He fully expected that Laura would be coming back.
At the hotel…
Neil and I came together in the parking lot and walked in the front door. I wasn’t crying. I needed to complete my mission. The front desk staff greeted us with kind eyes and soothing voices and took us to the 4th floor. On the way, they informed us that Laura had checked in the afternoon of July 17 and a hotel housekeeper found her on July 19 after she was scheduled to check out. We walked down the long hallway… dark… quiet…toward the room that was overlooking the water. I couldn’t go in. The officer met me outside the room and gave me a few details. “You can’t see her. The M.E. is bagging her up now. She took a combination of morphine and blood pressure pills. She had checked in around 4 p.m. Monday the 17th and was gone not long after that.
Here’s where I make a few Law and Order assumptions. She had made her mind up… maybe the last time I saw her… maybe just that day she left, but Laura decided and her plan was calculated. My uncle dropped her off at the budget hotel around 3:30 p.m. and she walked in the lobby and called a cab to take her to the other hotel that was exactly 3.2 miles away. This was done quickly because she checked in at 4 p.m. at the other hotel and estimated time of death was 5 p.m.
She left several notes.” Neil and I stood there not really knowing what to do in that moment. Officer you-know-what had no empathy. I turned toward some voices that were coming down the hallway. Laura’s biological family was storming down the hall toward us. Her sister came up to me and said “Abigayle” like she was confused I was there. All I could think to say was “All of Laura’s stuff is at my uncle’s house. I’ll arrange to get it to you.” Her response: “Give it all to Goodwill, she doesn’t need it anymore.” Her sister was pissed at me, and I was pissed at the officer. Funny how shock and grief can manifest in anger toward undeserving people.
Just then, the M.E. rolled Laura’s body through the hall in a black zippered bag, just like in the movies. I saw it in slow motion, but I know they were moving fast. I wanted to reach out and touch her hand one last time, or throw myself onto the wheels and make them drag me down the hall where I would prop my feet against the sliding metal doors and block them from taking her into the elevator, but I just turned around and fell into my husband’s arms and wailed. I lost it. The case closed. Laura was gone and I didn’t get to her in time. I heard a door slam and when I looked up, everyone was gone. No officer, no Laura, no family. The hallway was empty and quiet again and the door to Laura’s room was closed. The family had gone in to look at her things and review the notes (the contents of the notes I am choosing not to reveal for the privacy of the family). I was left outside. Not quite a full family member… not feeling welcome.
Where do you go from there? There’s no playbook for days like that. I returned to my uncle’s to share the information with him and to go through Laura’s things. Her son called me a few minutes later and said he wanted to stop by and pick up her stuff.
I took the next few days off work but I didn’t know what to do with myself. I replayed every single minute of “the search for Laura” in the hours and days that followed. My husband tried his best to comfort me. This was the biggest loss of my life. I didn’t know how to grieve. Spurts of sobbing would sneak up on me in a startling way. Everything reminded me of her. I would see cars like the one she used to drive, the gifts she gave me, I would hear a laugh that reminded me of her, flowers she liked, anything the color purple; they were all triggers. A year later, it still happens.
Two days after Laura was found, I mustered up the strength to go outside. I walk to the mail box. I pulled out an envelope that had Laura’s handwriting on it. It was postmarked July 15, two days before she died.
Laura hadn’t left a note for me at the site of her death. Here was all the note I needed. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a hidden message in the card. I asked myself if she knew when she put the stamp on the envelope what her plan was. Usually she would write longer notes, maybe she didn’t have the words.
Whatever she was going through at the moment she took the lethal concoction, I still cry knowing that she was alone, and I cry because I can empathize with what she was going through, but I will never understand it. Maybe she said goodbye to everyone she needed and didn’t want to keep saying goodbye. Maybe the morphine messed with her already deteriorating mind. Maybe she was thinking clearly and this was a long-term, thought out plan and she deliberately lied to me that night in the hotel room so I wouldn’t be anxious. It’s human nature to wonder and to create narratives for every moment leading up to when she took that lethal concoction that put her to sleep forever and removed all of her pain.
Laura had faced so much heartache and tragedy in her life… more than most of us experience in 4 lifetimes, yet she was always determined and positive. I know that at the end of her life she didn’t blame God for everything she had gone through (she told me) and so I don’t blame God for the pain that I’m going through with this loss. After all… God can relate. He watched is Son Jesus suffer for hours on a torture device because He wanted me to know how much He loves me.
When I was younger, I used to think suicide was selfish. I can’t think that anymore having known Laura. She treated me like her own daughter. She bought me a brand new $400 bed when I was poor even though she had been let go from her job because her short term disability ran out and she was still sick. She shared with me her life story and her faith. She sent me checks when I was living in low-income housing and starting in my career. She gave me her favorite crock pot recipes because she knew I couldn’t cook. She encouraged me to accept help for my untreated anxiety. She sacrificed a lot so her kids could have a stable home life. She worked her ass off to get a degree so she could land her dream job fighting insurance companies and advocating for patients who needed care. She shrugged and laughed while her body deteriorated because she didn’t want to see her loved ones sad. She is one of the most unselfish people I know.
Grief
There’s really not a metaphor that can appropriately describe grief. It’s just this thing that takes you under and holds you hostage, and you really don’t want to fight it because it also brings you comfort. You can block out the world and just “be” with your pain. The scariest feeling is when you teeter on the edge of going down into your pain forever, and you wonder if you’ll ever be able to slowly climbing out of the pit and see light again.. smile again… laugh again. The graveside funeral was about 2 weeks later and was almost exactly the way Laura described to me that she wanted. I was one of the only non-biological family members there.
“It’s just this thing that takes you under and holds you hostage, and you really don’t want to fight it because it also brings you comfort.”
Her obituary said that she passed away after a long battle with cancer. In full transparency, I was annoyed at that. I wished more people would share how people actually die in obituaries. The truth doesn’t change how much I love her and it doesn’t change her legacy, but it does change the conversation. Laura spent time in Pine Rest in 2010 for her first attempted suicide. After the experience of seeing her on life support the first time, I started donating and volunteering at Pine Rest. Laura encouraged me to make a difference and she was open with her own painful journey. I continue to carry that torch in her memory, and I will do it with joy and laughter just as she would.
There’s so much more to Laura’s story than the last days of her life. I hope to one day be able to share more of her life from some of the letters we have exchanged over the years. My prayer is that by sharing her story, others have the courage to share their story and most importantly, be encouraged that they can turn tragedy into good.
If you would like to get involved in supporting mental/behavioral health services in our community and/or would like to volunteer in some capacity at Pine Rest, please reach out to me and I would be happy to make an introduction.
If you are thinking about taking your life, please don’t be afraid to ask for help. There is hope and you are loved and needed in this world. Please call this phone number for 24 hour assistance: 1-800-678-5500.
Called to Love 
Abbey, thank you for your bravery in sharing this story. I know all too well the immense grief of losing someone so close, and the difficulty of talking about it. I admire you for your vulnerability. The grief doesn’t necessarily go away, but it changes. I pray that the Lord will continue to watch over you, and I pray you always feel His unending love. Big hugs to you. XO, Danielle
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