The Night Before We Found Her

I awoke from an uncomfortable, light sleep to the sound of my cell phone vibrating on my night stand. I slapped at the phone and fumbled to answer the call. “Hello?”

“Vera!”

“Kaylie. . . ?”

“Vera. Oh my god. He dumped me. He dumped me!” Loud sobbing for a long time. . . “I can’t take this!”

“Oh Kaylie. . . I’m so sorry. . . What happened . . . ?”

Sobbing, mumbling, panting. “It’s over. He doesn’t want to be my boyfriend anymore. . .”

“You’ll get through this. I know it. You just need some time to clear your head. Maybe it’s ok. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be anyway. You’re strong, smart, beautiful. It’s his loss! I promise!”

“I just can’t. . . I can’t do this anymore. It’s not possible. . . I’m so alone. . .” sobbing.

“You just need to sleep. It’s late! Do you have something that can help you sleep?”

“Yes I do, but. . . ” . . . Long, long pause . . . “What I want right now is to go to sleep and never wake up again. . . .”

Long pause, Quiet. Both of us are breathing.

“I . . . I love you Kaylie. . . I wish I could say it would be ok to do that. . . But it wouldn’t be ok. . . You know that right?”

Long pause. “Yeah. . . I know. . .”

“Don’t call him. Don’t go to Fort Collins to see him. Just leave it be. Do you promise?”

“Yeah. I promise.”

“I’m going out for breakfast with Brittany tomorrow. Call me ok? You can join us if you want. I’ll treat you.”

“Yeah. Ok. . .”

“Bye Kaylie.”

“Bye.”

I was 8 months pregnant that night, and it was late, maybe 12:30 am. The call was surprising, but not shocking. I had been very close with Kaylie through her relationship challenges. I had been close with her through all her mental health struggles, since we were just 8 years old. By now we had been friends for 18 years.

In high school Kaylie was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which to me, made a lot of sense. She had already had many bouts of very deep depression by then, but always rebounded with passion, vigor, and renewed creativity. Kaylie had been on various medications since high school, with adjustments and changes many times over the years. 

That night she was once again living on her own in Denver, and she was changing her meds, with the close supervision of a psychiatrist. She had been with this boyfriend for a few months, and had high hopes for a “true love” connection. But the signs had been trickling through that this relationship might not last. I guess the signs had been trickling through that her mental health was precarious too, but we all missed those signs. . . How did I miss the signs? I didn’t realize the words we exchanged that night would be the forever-goodbye.

Guilt, remorse, shame, regret

 - It comes from not recognizing, this time, that she was on a precipice, a thin edge of ice leading to oblivion.

 - It comes from being too physically and mentally exhausted to listen more carefully to the silence between the words we exchanged the night before she died.

 - It comes from the tiny (but growing) thought, at that time, that maybe her soul deserved rest. She seemed exhausted, like a battered mast weathering storm after storm.

 - It comes from brushing something off and losing my laser vision, from just rolling over and going back to sleep without a second thought. From not thinking about it again until it was far too late.

Did I know, somewhere in my clunky, pregnant brain, that those were the words of a forever-goodbye we spoke that night? How did I miss my chance to save my friend?

Traumatic Memories (Triggering- Beware)

On the night we found that Kaylie had died, I remembered her apartment being completely trashed- clothes everywhere, broken mirrors and picture frames, and sticky notes on the walls with messages of self hatred. “You’re unlovable. . .” “You’re fat and ugly. . .” “You’re an embarrassment. . .” My eyes welled at the sight of those sticky notes. The night was a blur of extreme emotions. Our close friends and family had so many questions over the next few days. I recounted the scene to people who asked. Without giving details, I explained that the place was in a terrible state. . .

But when we went back to clean up Kaylie’s things, to set everything in peaceful order, none of the chaotic scenes I remembered were real. The apartment was tidy. Nothing was broken or trashed at all. Her records were stacked neatly on her shelf beside her turntable. The bed was made, and the laundry was all folded. The dishes were washed and put away. Photos of her friends and family smiled from unbroken frames around the apartment. Every mirror was perfectly intact. And the sticky notes with self-hate messages? There weren’t any of those- not one on any wall or door- as I had seen just days before. Her apartment was actually organized and clean. . . a seemingly calm space despite the harrowing events of that first evening.

So what happened? Did somebody come in before me and clean it all up? Did they remove every chaotic and broken element I had witnessed the night we found Kaylie? No. What happened is this: The terror of that moment. . . finding my friend deceased in her apartment. . . impacted my senses on such a deep level that my brain invented an even more terrible scene. I think I was subconsciously trying to reconcile the horror of that night with the actual calm and quiet of the surroundings in her space. My heart and brain felt the mental agony she had been suffering leading up to her death, and an image of physical chaos was born in my psyche.

Now I sometimes question my other memories of that night, even though there is evidence to corroborate the truth of my experience. One vivid memory is the feeling of Kaylie’s leg- rigid, cold, and gray- blocking our entrance into the bathroom. My sister remembers that part too. . . I also remember the image the coroner showed me, on his digital camera, of Kaylie’s face- swollen and bruised, with dark stringy hair like a giant black wreath atop the bathroom tiles. I thank God I didn’t see her face in person- just on a tiny camera screen. We were never able to enter the bathroom because the door was blocked by her body. Only the emergency responders really saw her where she had died.

My most vivid memory of that entire horrible night was the guttural wail of Kaylie’s mother on the phone. When I called and told her what happened, the sound she made is burned into my heart. . . “Lynnette, Kaylie’s not ok . . .” I said. “It’s really, really bad, Netty. It’s the worst possible. . . Kaylie died. She’s gone. . .” Netty’s voice on the phone in that moment was unbearable. It broke my soul. It was like a wild animal whose limb was broken in a spiked leghold trap, a howl of unspeakable agony. The sound was haunting- leaving me with chills and incredible pain in my gut- even worse than I already felt that night, which doesn’t seem possible given my terror and grief already.

Our memories and our senses deceive us, but in some ways they provide a deeper truth. For months after Kaylie died, I dreamt of black walls covered in eyes looking down at me. Even when awake, I would see a gray leg through a crack in a door or a mat of stringy hair creeping out from dark shadows- just like a horror movie. In the months after Kaylie died, the beautiful colors of Colorado were muted, and the birds never sang. The breeze didn’t blow. Everything moved in slow motion and a dull static sound rang in my ears. The sky was dark. The time after Kaylie’s death was a horror movie made real.

Time has passed now, and many memories of that night have faded like pebbles worn down to sand along a coastline. The pain isn’t gone, but it has dulled enough that I can finally sit down and write about what happened. Almost 16 years after Kaylie died it feels, at last, like a starting point for looking back and beginning to process it.