After the shock loss of her husband from suicide, Cheryl Pearl Sucher was left grappling to understand the darkness and despair he had felt compelled to keep hidden.
In the immediate aftermath of my husband’s death last year by suicide, I received a heartbreaking note from the husband of a close friend, who told me that he had lost not only his best friend to suicide, but also his brother-in-law and others. In between writing drafts of this essay, I received the tragic news that a young colleague in Manhattan had also taken his own life. If there’s to be an end to these sudden shocking losses, there must be a way to overcome the stigma of talking about clinical depression so sufferers can get the help they need. There are signs of hope. In my home country, the United States, recently elected Democratic Senator John Fetterman announced he was being hospitalised for depression after suffering a debilitating stroke. This followed a brutal, mudslinging election campaign. Fetterman is a physical giant, but displayed great bravery by making that very public admission.
I was raised in Judaism to believe that “if you save one life, you save the world entire”. And so I am compelled to write about the darkness and despair my husband successfully concealed from me for the 23 years of our life together.
When William John Macready died by suicide in the early morning of March 26 last year, when we were back in New Zealand on a visit, I found in his travel backpack his three passports as a US, British and New Zealand citizen. There was every card to every organisation he ever belonged to, the international driver’s licence he received before travelling from New Zealand to London on the one-way plane ticket his parents gave him as a 21st birthday present, endless assorted receipts and invoices, and a key chain with 150 keys.
I had no idea which locks those keys opened, and where to find them. It was as if those keys would unlock the secret to the trauma and despair he had hidden from me.
How can you love someone for 23 years and, in the end, wonder if you had ever really known them at all? To this day, people often remark that we made the most unlikely pair – this outdoorsy Kiwi adrenalin junkie who had a lifetime membership to the Youth Hostel Association and an inveterate overly educated New Yorker with a yearly subscription to the Metropolitan Opera, who had never seen a live chicken until she came to New Zealand in 1999. And then to be driven around in a 1980 green and yellow Ford Falcon with torn, mustard, felt upholstery and only an AM radio.
But that was why it worked. Our strengths complemented each other. He could fix things; I could edit everything. I could talk and he would drive. I planned and cooked elaborate meals that he ate with relish. John planned everything down to the last scintilla, while I was an intuitive improviser. He always had to bring me back to the reason I was telling a story, because I always digress, with so many asides I often forget why I’m telling the story in the first place.
What we had in common were our values, our politics, our love of adventure and love of laughter.
This is what you need to know about my husband. He could read people the way an X-ray reveals your inner landscape, and he was never wrong. I’m the writer, but John was the one who could figure out the plot of every murder mystery and movie that we watched together within minutes of its start. John loved fiercely and was loyal to a fault. If he cared for you, he would do anything for you, any time of the day or night. But this is the hard part. He was like an onion – his complex emotions were so layered and buried that I would often have to shake him to anger to get him to tell me what he was feeling. His brain was always working. And during the Covid-19 pandemic, he was so concerned about catching the disease that, for the first 18 months, he worked remotely and rarely left home except to walk our miniature schnauzer, Bella. We were living in the US at the time, and before vaccines were readily available there, we would listen to the New York and New Jersey governors’ daily reports on the horrific number of hospitalisations and deaths. John was terrified of catching long Covid because he belonged to a category of the most vulnerable – overweight males.
Still, never once did he confess, even in passing, that he considered taking his own life – not even to his oldest and dearest friend, a bubbly blonde Australian powerhouse whom he met when they were both in their early 20s and on a budget European ski tour. Almost every weekend of our long, successful marriage, John and his best friend talked for hours. He worried about her smoker’s cough and her challenges in raising a teenager in Switzerland; she worried about his 45kg weight gain and phobic obsession with contracting the coronavirus. They talked about the rise of white nationalism and the terrifying January 6 insurrection. They feared for the future, but they always laughed. John had an infectious giggle. After his funeral, his stunned and bereft loved ones reflected upon his calm logic and unmistakable laughter.
How could someone who loved and laughed and lived life with such enthusiasm choose to leave it? In the immeasurable silence, I felt compelled to understand the dark abyss my husband had desperately hidden from me.
That darkness was diametrically opposed to one of the qualities that I loved most about him: he laughed so hard he cried. There were moments of great crisis in our marriage – when my biological clock was tolling and I underwent failed fertility treatments, painful miscarriages and a failed adoption; and he, 10 years my junior, was singularly focused on earning his undergraduate degree in geology and ultimately an honour’s certificate in geographic information technology, which would become his life’s work. When we felt as far apart as our home continents, I would stand back and watch him with his friends and see tears of laughter streaming down his face. In those moments, all my rage and frustration fell away and I was overcome with love for this man who felt everything so deeply and with apparent transparency, believing that this powerful love could sustain us through every hardship and disappointment, which it did until it didn’t.
If only John had been able to share the shame and hurt and disappointment that lay interred beneath his convincing mask of stubborn self-reliance.
John was a big man – strong and capable with muscular legs like tree trunks. As a youth, he had been marked by an undiagnosed learning disability which sent him down the apprenticeship path. Though he won awards in science and mathematics, his handwriting looked like bird scratchings, and he was never able to conquer the intricacies of grammar or written expression. His cautious observation was probably taken for slowness. Perhaps that was one of the reasons that he was attracted to me, an outspoken New York Jewish writer whom he couldn’t stop talking to when we met on a Virgin Atlantic flight from London to New York.
What quickly became evident was that he rarely read books, yet was riveted by the internet and answered questions with endless, often excruciating detail, as if to prove that he not only knew the answer but also understood the exquisite architecture behind it. Only later did I realise that volubility was a consequence of convincing others that he was neither slow nor dim. Still, John was keen and cautious, a compensation for being summarily misjudged and pigeonholed by his learning disability. Over time, I realised he absorbed and understood concepts only through serious examination and focused observation, ultimately grasping minute details and difficult theories with alacrity and insight. Whereas I read like a zephyr and came to conclusions with a hummingbird’s flightiness, missing minutiae that John had memorised in exacting detail, often condemning me for my carelessness.
Key No 1: Dysgraphia is a neurological disorder that generally appears when children are first learning to write. Teachers mistakenly assume that if a student is bright and cannot write it is because the student is not trying.
I was forever editing John’s emails and written presentations marked by misspellings and awkward grammatical constructions – consequences of his dysgraphia, which was diagnosed only as an adult when he agreed to an intrusive but revealing neuropsychological examination. This I had arranged with a New York psychiatrist in order to obtain the professional diagnosis the University of Otago required to get him the note-taking assistance he needed to succeed as an adult student. And he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, defeating his crippling anxieties and fears of failure by earning his degree and a graduate diploma – both among his proudest achievements.
When we first met on that Virgin flight from Heathrow to JFK, he was working as a seismic surveyor for an oil exploration company based in London. Trained as a diesel mechanic, he loved the travel opportunities provided by his employer, Western Geophysical, which flew him anywhere he wanted to go in the world for the two weeks between six-week assignments. Soon, I was meeting him in exotic destinations, until he was sent to work in Mogadishu, then the most dangerous place in the world, where his group was guarded by teenagers carrying AK-47 rifles. In that moment, he realised that his life was more important than the risk posed by his job and together we planned his resignation and our future. We would marry, I would keep my apartment in Manhattan and he would enrol at the University of Otago as a returning adult student. I would join him and help him in his studies and we would try to start a family. With my love and support, he believed he would achieve a career that required employing his brain and not just his hands. He wanted to make a life for us that allowed me to write and raise a family, as well as provide us with the means to continue to travel to exotic destinations.
The Hastings police found John’s goodbye note to me in his other beloved car, a Ford Focus. Never once had he said he was tired, scared, bereft of all hope. But that is what I have learnt during the forensic investigation that has taken over my life since the young officers came to our friends’ house in Havelock North, where we were staying. They came to get a recent photograph, as well as a description of our car and its number plate, then returned hours later with the devastating news that they had found him at a beauty spot we had never visited, despite having lived in the Hawke’s Bay town for 13 years before returning to live in the US.
Initially, I thought it was a heart attack that had felled my husband, as he had been drinking with friends the night before and complained of chest pain, which I deduced was heartburn, and which was easily resolved by antacid I bought from the supermarket. Then I thought it must have been a car accident, but John was a terrific driver despite his habit of holding his cellphone in one hand while using his other hand to steer.
Key No 2: Nosophobia – the extreme or irrational fear of developing a disease.
John was terrified of catching long Covid because of his obesity. When Covid vaccines became available in the US, he haunted the internet to find the first, rare, available appointments. We drove two hours to Atlantic City from our home near Princeton, New Jersey, to get me the vaccine first because he wanted me to be safe when travelling to Manhattan for my part-time job.
But the minute the borders opened up to Canada, in September 2021, we drove across and visited Niagara Falls, Ottawa and Montreal, where we caught up with friends from Dunedin we hadn’t seen in years. We were finally free, able to travel again, his first love. We were among the first Americans to cross the US border and were almost alone at the checkpoint. We had a terrific time and ate a lot of poutine, a Canadian dish of french fries, cheese and gravy.
But with the onset of the Delta and Omicron variants of the virus, the freedom was transitory.
Suffice to say, a number of factors contributed to his descending darkness: a scary diagnosis for a close relative months after my 30-year-old cousin was fighting for his life against a rare and aggressive sarcoma; the retirement of his beloved work mentor who was like a second father to him; being ordered to go back to work at his office in Trenton, New Jersey, which was a glass building without windows and, in his mind, a virtual Petri dish for contracting the dreaded coronavirus.
We decided to return to New Zealand on a visit. During our week in managed isolation in Christchurch in the first week of March last year, John watched international news endlessly. It was relentlessly awful. Russia had invaded Ukraine and the MAGA movement still persisted in the US. For him, the land of hope and opportunity had become a land of horror and affliction.
Some days after emerging from isolation, we flew to our old home in Hawke’s Bay. We were met at Napier Airport by my octogenarian parents-in-law, and my husband was shocked by how they had aged during the lockdown.
On returning to Havelock North, we stayed with friends while John undertook renovation projects on our house. He worked with our long-time Sri Lankan gardener on our property. Then, suddenly, our reliable gardener didn’t appear. Only after searching for days did we discover he had died of a heart attack, alone in bed.
John wept uncontrollably, telling me everyone he loved was dying and that he would be left all alone. He didn’t want to return to the US because he couldn’t tolerate the political climate any more. He wanted to rekindle his relationship with his parents while he still had time, and help them visit the relative who had recently received a difficult cancer diagnosis.
I was more than amenable to that. We had our home in Havelock North and a host of friends, family and prospects. I just asked him to return with me to New Jersey to help sell our home and belongings and prepare for our relocation, as he was such a brilliant planner and I was hopeless at organisation. John appeared to agree, then vacillated over his decision, concerned that if he left New Zealand, he might never be able to return if the borders closed again. We were negotiating, reassuring one another of our love and commitment, but I knew how fragile he was. I also knew he would not agree to long-term therapy, so I asked him to talk to a friend who was a crisis counsellor. I begged him. He said no. “I don’t have to talk to anyone else because I talk to you.”
The week before we were supposed to return to New Jersey, the rains were as relentless as monsoons, drowning our friends’ porch in inches of water. John was chaotic, tearful, ridden by anxiety. The day before we were supposed to leave for Auckland to take the Covid test for our trip, he returned to our Havelock North property to tend to our endless gardens with our friend Jacob*. We all had coffee at our neighbours’ house, then I left to see friends. When they’d finished working, John dropped Jacob home, telling him he was going to a garden centre to get supplies and would be home soon.
Hours passed. He had not returned. By 10pm, we started searching the parking lots of all the garden centres. Neither my husband nor our car was anywhere to be found. Then I went to the local hospital. He wasn’t there.
He was already dead. He had taken his life, the young police officers were certain when they returned to tell me the devastating news.
Our love was not enough to overcome the perfect storm of horrors that had descended upon him. He could not stop his catastrophic thinking, nor face the loss, he believed, of everything he held dear.
And he probably believed that I would survive it, for my entire existence had been predicated upon survival. I was the child of Holocaust survivors who had never succumbed to the darkness and horrors that had befallen them. Their lives had been defined by a powerful yearning to live, even as they endured terrifying episodes of post-traumatic stress disorder and numerous painful, symptomatic illnesses. They never slept through the night, and often woke up screaming. But they never gave up.
John understood that legacy and believed I could accomplish things that I myself didn’t believe I could. Our long marriage had strengthened my floundering self-confidence and pushed me forward. He was my advocate, my foundation, my love, my cheerleader. Only after his death did I learn that his anxious depression had a genetic component as well. His grandfather had suffered to the point that he underwent electroconvulsive therapy at the end of his life. But that sadness was concealed, covered over by memories of his grandfather’s good nature and love of rose gardening.
If only I had known. If only I had known so much.
My grief is as large and cavernous as my love for him. Now I’m navigating the space without him, trying to inhabit the incomprehensible despair that had consumed him.
If only he had been able to unravel his pain, which was stealing away his breath and his will to live. And so he left me. Bereft and heartbroken. To find the locks opened by the remaining 148 keys.
*Not his real name
Where to get help:
If it’s an emergency and you feel that you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
· Need to talk? Free call or text 1737 any time for support from a trained counsellor
· Suicide Crisis Helpline – 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO)
· Lifeline – 0800 543 354 (0800 LIFELINE) or free text 4357 (HELP)
· Youthline – 0800 376 633, free text 234 or email talk@youthline.co.nz or online chat
· 0800 What’s Up - 0800 942 8787
· Samaritans – 0800 726 666
· Depression Helpline: 0800 111 757 or free text 4202 to talk to a trained counsellor, or visit depression.org.nz
· Anxiety New Zealand - 0800 269 4389 (0800 ANXIETY)
· Healthline – 0800 611 116
· Additional specialist helpline links: https://www.mentalhealth.org.nz/get-help/in-crisis/helplines/