We continue this week with our stories in observance of World Suicide Prevention Day which was held last week.

Below is the story of Renee Tench and her brother Wayne.

WAYNE was 15 years old when I left home for good. We had separate friends at that time because of our age difference, and I don’t feel like I knew him as well after I left home. Fifteen is a tough age and with me being so preoccupied with my own life, I kind of lost track of Wayne and just assumed that all was well with him. When we saw each other, he seemed to be the same old Wayne to me. He had a couple of jobs but seemed not to hold onto them for very long. Anytime we talked he was always telling me about going and doing things with his friends. His best and steady friend was Kelly.

They seemed to go everywhere together and I know Wayne loved her very much. She was so cute and she seemed to “get” Wayne better than anybody ever had. I thought she was a great girl and I was happy that Wayne had her in his life. Many years later, Kelly and I reconnected as adults and she has become a very important person in my life too.
Wayne never once said anything to me about anything outside of normal. He was always the class clown kind of guy. Always ready with a joke at any time. He could come up with hilarious things to say. After I had moved away I never once worried about him. I was just so clueless.

THE SIGNS
On Tuesday, February 21, 1984 Roger, my husband, and I were visiting Momma when Wayne and Kelly came by to get something from Wayne’s room. I don’t remember what exactly, but they were on their way somewhere else, so the visit was brief. As they were leaving, Wayne walked back up the hill to the carport where I was standing and he hugged me and told me that he loved me. Well, he hadn’t done that in a very long time and I had a twinge of something strange, but I ignored it.

As Roger and I were leaving that day and were heading down the road in front of Momma’s house she came running down the hill yelling for us to stop. She asked me to step out of the car because she had something she wanted to ask me in private. She told me that she had found something in Wayne’s room that made her think that he was thinking about suicide. I said, “every kid goes through those kinds of feelings, so don’t worry about it, it’s just a phase.” Furthermore, I told her that if she let Wayne know that she had been in his room snooping that he would be furious with her. I will live with those words for the rest of my life.

Two days later, on Thursday, February 23rd, 1984, I was at work at the animal shelter with my shirt stuffed with orphaned kittens. I was carrying them in my shirt to keep them warm and was bottle-feeding them every couple of hours. My friend and co-worker, Susan Boyer, came into the room that I was in and told me that Roger was out front and needed to see me. I could tell by the look on her face that this wasn’t a good visit.

Roger was at work that day at the Fire Department and I knew he would never leave the firehouse unless it was extremely important. As soon as I laid eyes on him I KNEW it was Wayne. But, all he kept saying was for me to go get my things because we had to go. I kept asking him what was wrong, but he wouldn’t tell me until we got outside. As soon as the front door closed I told him I wasn’t going any further until he told me what was wrong. He looked at me and said “Wayne has taken his life.”

I started screaming and crying and laid down on the ground so grief-stricken that I could hardly breathe. I feel exactly the same way right now. This is so incredibly hard to remember. It is even harder to admit my selfishness. Why didn’t I take what Momma said seriously? Why didn’t I realise that he was really saying goodbye to me on the carport? Why had I not been more in touch with him as his sister? His friends knew way more about him than I did. He was only 17, how could I have let this happen? I ask myself these questions still even after more than 27 years have passed.

From that moment on, every member of my family became someone else. Our very identity had changed. We were now the mother, father and sister of the boy who killed himself. Trying to wrap my mind around this was impossible.

AFTER THE NEWS
Roger took me home to change clothes and then he drove us through pouring rain to Momma’s house. When I walked in the door and saw her I almost died myself. I was so incredibly hurt, but seeing Momma completely broken… I can’t find the words to describe it. It was like we all went into a time warp that I’m not sure that my Momma ever came out of.

I was so confused and unsure of what to do, but I knew I had to take charge because Momma sure wasn’t able to think straight. I don’t remember a whole lot during this time because everything just ran together and I guess I was just so in shock. I was like Wayne in that once I was mad, I was livid. So, this made for some interesting moments at Momma’s that day and the days to follow.

Later that day my Uncle Ray came to the house and he had Wayne’s clothes, wallet and class ring along with 37 cents that he had in his pocket. He had gone to the hospital to identify Wayne and they gave him Wayne’s belongings. My poor Uncle Ray was just so sad when he walked up the hill to the house. He was the one constant in Wayne’s life as far as a male influence. Wayne really looked up to him and respected him like no other person on this planet, and so did I.

Momma walked around like a zombie and we both just existed the next few days. The trucking company my daddy worked for made sure that Daddy got the message and the company flew him home. He was there the next day as we were at the funeral parlour picking out the casket that would soon hold my brother. My heart was so broken for him and Momma, and I didn’t know what to do for them. I had never felt so helpless. Roger looked over at my daddy and saw that Daddy was wiping away tears. This was the first time I ever saw Roger cry.

Daddy had already started drinking, but he didn’t do anything out of the way. After the funeral parlour, we went to the city graveyard to pick out a plot for Wayne and one for Momma right beside of him. Daddy never came over, but he stood outside of his truck and watched us from on top of the hill. To this day that is the saddest sight I had ever seen and it physically hurts to remember it. My poor daddy would have never won a father of the year award, but I know he loved Wayne so very much, but he just never found a way to really tell him that. They were both alike in that, but neither would have ever admitted it.

Roger and I stayed with Momma until after the funeral on Sunday. That first night Momma just walked around the house like she was lost. Late that night under the lighted bookstand that the funeral home gives you to hold the sign in book, me and Momma just held each other and cried. It was like we were in the middle of the sea in a storm and we had no idea which way to go. I cannot to this day imagine the grief that my parents must have felt. I do know that until the day that they died, that grief never lessened for either of them.

I learned later on that my daddy had gone down to the funeral parlor that night, drunk and grief-stricken, and had tried to pull Wayne out of the casket to take him home with him. He kept saying that he knew Wayne was cold and he couldn’t stand for him to be cold. The funeral home people were able to finally get him out of there, but I bet they were sure worried about the services ahead and how Daddy was going to deal with it. Just hearing and thinking about that happening still tears me apart. Thank God I was not there or I may have never been able to have gotten past it.

We held the “Receiving of Friends” at the funeral parlour and I think there were over 300 people that came. I am appreciative now of the outpouring, but at the time I was so preoccupied with thoughts of people being there just so they could see the spectacle. It went against every fiber of my being to have people walking by and looking at him there in that casket. It was all so surreal. It was like walking around in a nightmare. At one point I was in the room beside of the casket when I saw the distinct flash of a camera bulb.

I shoved my way through the crowd to find my Papa’s wife Wilma standing there with a friend of hers with a Polaroid of my brother lying in the casket. Have you ever felt yourself almost rip through your own skin? That’s what I felt like right at that moment. I started screeching at her for being such an idiot, and how dare she take a picture of my brother, and on and on. At the same time, I am ripping up the picture and told her she had one chance to get out of there with that camera in one piece. I realise now how out of control I was, but again I could have cared less. In some small way, it was the last time I ever got to take up for Wayne and I like to think he would have appreciated that.

The funeral was held on Sunday and I have almost no recollection of that at all. I do have an audio cassette of it but still can’t listen to it. I know that Wayne’s friends were there, and I was vaguely aware of them from time to time but hadn’t yet put together what all they were going through. Kelly had been one of his friends that came to Momma’s house and had found Wayne dead in his car from carbon-monoxide poisoning. I can’t imagine what all she went through because of the choice Wayne made. How does a 17-year-old handle something like that? That vision burned into her brain forever. We have talked about it just a little, but I could never fully understand or know what all that did to her. Wayne actually left several suicide notes to his friends in addition to one that he had in the car with him.

Suicide is so incredibly selfish. I know the person isn’t trying to be selfish, but it just takes the pain from that person and places it on many others. I have gone through phases of being furious with him, especially when I was dealing with the deaths of our parents. I have also gone through such profound sorrow and guilt for not doing something to stop it when I had the chance. I try to cut myself a little break in that I was only 20 years-old. I was not old enough to have a clue myself, but I should have.

We never really found out what made him do this, but by reading his cryptic journal and the suicide note itself, I can only see an intense anger and disappointment with his life. In reality, it doesn’t really matter why, it wouldn’t change a thing. Wayne would still be dead. Momma was consumed with wanting to know why, and she never really gave up trying to figure it out so that it would make sense to her. Suicide never makes sense, so the torture she went through was fruitless.
YEARS LATER

After Wayne’s suicide, we all spent the first couple of years walking around in a daze of confusion. Trying desperately to make sense of it and hoping that we would all wake up and find it to be just a really bad nightmare. Momma struggled to simply not burst into tears all day, every day. I have always heard the term “broken-hearted”, but until this happened to my Momma, I never really understood what that meant. She was truly broken in all sense of the word. She and Wayne were so close throughout his life and it was literally like someone cut one of her legs off. She was crippled.

Momma probably blamed herself more than anybody too. Wayne was so much like her and neither one of them could every really let themselves be truly happy. It was almost like they didn’t think that they deserved to be happy. Momma recognized this in herself and felt more of a responsibility in allowing Wayne to follow suit.

Since Momma and Daddy had divorced shortly before Wayne passed, Momma lived alone. This was not a good thing for her because it allowed her to wallow in her sorrow. Momma held on to her sorrow with an iron fist. She never stopped punishing herself. Rog and I both tried to spend time with her and help her at least think of something other than Wayne’s death, but she just about made it impossible to be around her. We were so very different from each other so it was hard to find a way to communicate with her that didn’t drag me down into her despair, but I wanted desperately to help her. All I managed to do was bring me down because I was such a failure at helping her.

Daddy just made sure he drank as much Vodka as he could to drown his ache. Daddy tried to drink away a lot of guilt. Poor Momma, she had to go to an empty house with nothing but memories to haunt her. Momma and Daddy both blamed themselves until their dying day. All of us will forever wonder if we could have done something, but the truth is, it wasn’t about us. It was about Wayne and his irrational decision to take his own life. That one decision made from desperation affected so many people and will forever define who we are.

I know Wayne would have never done that to us if he had been thinking rationally. I have often said that when I reach Heaven, the Good Lord best turn His head because the first thing I am going to do when I get there is punch Wayne right in the mouth! Then I will grab a hold of him and never, ever let him go again.”