I’ll never forget the phone call

It was just after 9AM on Sunday November 10th. I got a phone call from my Mom out of the blue (she usually texts me to see if i can talk before she calls). I had only been up for fifteen minutes and my husband was still asleep in our room. I pick up right away “Hey Mom, what’s up?”“Olivia??” i hear her shaky voice and people talking urgently in the background “Yes Mom what’s wrong? What happened?” I’m panicking, something is very wrong. She says “is Alex (my husband) with you?” I can tell she’s crying and her voice is high pitched “Yes Mom what happened, are you ok??” At this point i think that my Dad finally lost it and physically hurt my mom and she must be in the hospital because why is there so much going on in the background “your dad h-hung himself? I need- i need you to come? Please? Please i need you to c-come” “he- ok im coming right now ok? I’m coming im getting Alex up we’re leaving right now” i’m shaking Alex awake “wake up we need to go now” “huh?” He rolls back over “alex get up now” he rubs his eyes “why what happened?” Im trying not to say it out loud because my mom is still on the phone, i can hear her choked sobs as she responds to the people in the background. I whisper yell “alex my dad hung himself we need to go now!” He’s up immediately getting dressed and he asks “what happened?? Is your mom ok?” I tell him “I don’t know we need to go now hurry up”. “Ok mom we’re leaving i just got dressed we’ll be there as soon as we can i love you” “love you” her voice breaks between sobs. I hang up and grab my backpack, meds, contacts, and slip on my shoes as i hurry to the car. My dogs are freaking out because they know something is very wrong and my husband, still half asleep, grabs his keys and runs out to me in the car. I’m trying to keep it together but as soon as we’re leaving i start sobbing.

My mom had called me the thursday before and told me that she was worried she would wake up or come home and find him dead any day now and that she couldn’t get him to admit himself or get help and the police/hospital wouldnt do an involuntary hold. I told her that you can’t help him if he doesn’t want to help himself. He had been threatening suicide for years, threatening to take my mom or my sister and i out with him. He would never accept help, never go to the psychiatrist appointments that we made for him or accept psych meds from a GP. The day before he did it i was talking on the phone with my mom and he asked if i could give him a haircut or if he would need to go in somewhere and i jokingly said that alex has been needing a haircut for weeks and he lives with me so he (my dad) was better off going in to get it cut. He said ok i’ll text the lady then what was her name? Pam, i told him. I live an hour away and work full time so i wouldn’t have been out there for a week at the earliest. We looked in his phone the day after and saw that he had texted Pam asking to make an appointment to get his hair cut that week.

I called my older brother and told him the little that i knew when i was in the car on my way to my mom. I called my mom after and told her we were 45 minutes away and asked if my little sister was there and she said that she hadnt called anybody except me and a close family friend that lives down the road from her so that she wasnt alone. She didn’t want to tell my sister because she didnt want her to end up in the ER (my sister is chronically ill, the worst time of day for her is in the mornings, and stress worsens her symptoms). I told my mom that either Alex or i would get my sister from her boyfriend’s house if i couldnt get ahold of her boyfriend. I told her that i already called my brother and that he would be on his way as soon as he could get someone to watch his kids. My mom had to get off the phone because the police chief got there and needed to talk to her. The drive to her house was the longest drive of my life.