1987 - The Worst Thanksgiving

In '87, I'd been married a little over four years. It was pretty rocky. I used to blame myself entirely until time gave me a little perspective on it and I realized just how tweaked Ann was, and how I'd lived with things that no sane person would even believe, let alone put up with. It kind of drove me into myself in a lot of wrong ways -- I still heartily know and acknowledge how badly I screwed things up, but I had plenty of help. One difference between me and her, and I can state this with some confidence, is that she will never admit her own failings to anyone, including herself. But that's not part of the story. All that's important is that we were having a somewhat difficult time.

Ann was real close to her mom, and hated her father. I don't blame her; the dude was a 24-carat asshole. He was an engineer, and made decent money, but there wasn't an appliance or stick of furniture in the place newer than 25 years old; same goes for the carpets, drapes, and everything else. A dishwasher was out of the question. Cars were bought from junkyards and induced to run with a bit of work; the guy was good mechanically, but he'd spend four days trying to get a starter core from one car he'd found wrecked by the side of the road (so the starter was free) to fit inside a housing from another model instead of paying fifteen bucks for a refurbished part (true story). That sort of thing. The basement went unheated in the winter.

Ann and I had a nice little house in Redondo Beach, and we were going to spend Thanksgiving in California rather than make our way back to Utah. I had a bit of a commute home from Santa Monica -- the house's location being chosen because it was close to her job, naturally -- so she got home from work before I did. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving I arrived at home in the evening, and Ann was sitting on the couch, holding the phone and crying a little. She said she wanted to go back to Utah for the holiday if that was OK with me. I told her, sure.

From Rendondo Beach to her folks' place in Bountiful is around 750 miles. In those days of the 55-mph limit (not that anyone paid all that much attention to it through Nevada, but speeds were not what they are now) it was around a 12-hour drive, even in our lovely '85 RX-7. I left work around noon the next day, and we were on the road by two; rolled into her parent's place about 2 AM. Shirley, her mom, was still up for some unaccountable reason. We said hello, unloaded our stuff into Ann's old bedroom in the (unheated) basement, and crashed. Before I dropped off, I could hear her mom pacing the floor above.

We had two Thanksgivings; one in the afternoon at my parent's new house (it was the first time I saw it -- it's pretty cool, I'll post about it sometime) in Brigham City, about forty miles north, then again in the evening with her family. Ann's little brother, a college student, was there with his girlfriend, and one of her older sisters, a surgical nurse at a hospital in Salt Lake, came too with her boyfriend. It was a pretty good day. Ann had one more sister, the oldest, who was married and taught college (she was a nutritionist) in Grand Forks, ND, but she of course wasn't there.

There was a brief power outage a couple of hours after dinner, probably around ten o' clock. I opened the curtains in the kitchen to get a little light in the place so we could find a candle; Ann's dad barked at me because he didn't want the heat escaping through the open curtain. He calmed down when I explained why I'd done it. We got the candle lit and a few minutes later the power came back on. It was pretty typical of him. He never allowed an open curtain in that house because the heat would leak in, in summertime, or leak out, in the winter.

Ann's mom paced the floors again late into the night. (She and her husband had slept in separate bedrooms for years, so he never knew and probably wouldn't have cared if he had.)

We bounced around town Friday. I think we went to a movie. I remember talking to Ann in our car at her sister's condo when we were leaving to go back to her folks' place that night. We were both worried about her mom. Her brother's girlfriend had brought it up with us, too. Her mom was obviously depressed and something had to be done, but nobody had any idea what.

Our plans were to stay in Utah Saturday, maybe drive down to my parents' place for a while, then make the long drive back to Los Angeles on Sunday. I heard her mom pacing the floors again that night before I fell asleep.

We were awakened just after six AM by her dad screaming at us to come upstairs. I pulled on some shorts and a shirt and was right behind Ann on the way up. Her mom had taken a knife and stabbed herself several times, and was unconscious and didn't seem to be breathing. There was a huge pool of blood all over the bed and the floor. I went back to the kitchen, grabbed the phone, and called 911 for the first time in my life. They had me stay on the line until the ambulance got there, which was about thirty seconds later. Ann's dad was trying to do CPR but backed off and let the ambulance crew have at her; the house started to fill up with cops. A neighbor lady who was out walking saw all the excitement and started freaking out when she saw Shirley on the stretcher being taken out to the ambulance.

One of the cops asked me, "did she drink at all?" I told him no, not so far as I knew. About ten seconds later, another cop came out of the bedroom holding an empty vodka bottle. Shows how much I know, I guess.

I called Ann's sister and brother. They both got there while the police were still taking pictures and talking to everybody. Shirley (Ann's mother) had taken nearly all the kitchen knives into her bedroom and hidden them around. All the knives were cheap and old, of course. There was everything from little flimsy serrated paring knives to steak knives to table knives. They were under the bed, under the mattress, in the drawers, under the pillows. There must have been twenty or more. It was a big chef's knife she finally used. She'd slashed her wrists of course, which didn't amount to anything, and made a bunch of other fairly superficial wounds all over before finally opening up a leg artery.

Everyone got together and left for the hospital. There were still a few cops around so I hung out to deal with them. After a while, all of them but one had left, so he and I were the only people in the house. He very tactfully said we should sit down and talk for a second.

He was a really nice guy and knew what everybody was going through. As gently as could be done, he suggested to me that everyone would be coming back from the hospital in an hour or two, things were tough enough as they were -- and nobody should really have to see the mess in the next room. I saw his point, though I hadn't thought about it before then. He left, and I went to the nearby grocery store.

It was a beautiful day in northern Utah. Unseasonably warm, with a gorgeous blue sky. The remaining leaves had turned, and the mountains were a beautiful orange and red. People were buying beer, ice, soda pop, charcoal, barbequeables, all sort of good Saturday things. I picked up a load of paper towels, garbage bags, sponges, cleanser, disinfectant, bleach, and stuff like that. I got to the checkout and the cashier said something like "cleaning up a little today, I see?" Why, yes. Yes, I am.

The amount of blood was insane. She'd lost about three quarts (over half her blood supply -- is quarts right, or am I thinking pints?) but it seemed more like three gallons. It had thoroughly soaked the bedding, the mattress, the carpet, the pad beneath, and into the flooring. It was on the walls. It was everywhere. I just turned off my mind and scrubbed. Stuffed all the sheets, blankets, and pillows into garbage bags and hauled them outside. Hauled the mattress into the backyard and sprayed it off with the hose. Went back in and scrubbed some more.

I found a couple more knives buried under everything. I called the cop (he'd given me his card) and asked if he thought there was any point in me holding them for him. He thought about it and said, yeah, I'll be right over, don't clean up any more until I get there. He showed up right away, took a picture of where they were, and left with them. Back to sponging.

About halfway through, Ann's little brother's girlfriend Penny showed up. She said she knew something was up from the way he'd left her place; she was a nurse, too, and wasn't shocked by the bloody scene. She jumped right in and started sponging up blood with me, bless her heart.

Eventually, some semblance of order was restored. As much as could be.

I called Ann's oldest sister, the one in North Dakota, told her what had happened, and told her to get thyself to Bountiful. She was understandably freaked out. She and her husband were unable to get pregnant, were saving up money to adopt and couldn't afford to fly out. So they drove.

Penny and I went to the hospital and rejoined the family. I took one look at Shirley and had to leave the ICU and sit down on the floor of the hall. A machine was breathing for her, and she was a mass of tubes and bandages. She had a heartbeat -- barely -- and blood pressure -- barely -- but they couldn't get a brainwave. The doctor was optimistic, saying it was probably due to the narcotics they had her on.

When we got back, her dad naturally couldn't stand the thought of all that perfectly good bedding going to waste (not to mention the mattress!) so he brought it all in, washed it carefully, made the bed with the same sheets, and put everything away. I was so angry I had to leave before I said something I'd regret, or just cold-cocked the son of a bitch. Your wife tried to commit suicide on those very sheets, asshole, go wild and buy some new ones.

Obviously, we weren't going to make it back to L.A. the next day.

Shirley hung on for a while; on Sunday, her doctor told us he thought she was probably braindead but they wanted to keep her alive a while longer to be sure.

Ann's sister and her husband made it in from North Dakota on Sunday night about one minute after the hospital called to tell us Shirley had died.

The rest is pretty much standard; what happens after someone dies, happened. I told my parents what happened in person when I went back to their house with Ann's brother-in-law the next night, or maybe the night after. I told my boss over the phone that her mom had had a heart attack -- I still don't know why I did that, I told him the truth when I got back to work the next week.

Ann's dad continued to be an asshole, funeral arrangements were made, Shirley was cremated in accordance with her wishes, and she was buried near where she came from, in the small town of Ephraim, Utah the following Wednesday.

Ann got stranger than she already was in some ways over the next year, although I'm sure she doesn't realize or admit it; we split up 13 months after it happened.

Two years later was what I still look back on as the Best Thanksgiving Ever, so things were still things and life went on. I have no reason to ever be in that part of the world again, but if I ever find myself in Sanpete County, Utah, I fully intend to visit Shirley's grave.

This of course hardly begins to tell the story of what went on in those times. Maybe I'll add to it, but I probably won't.