Now, with the card returned in the mail, we knew for certain that Mara was dead.  But we didn’t know when she died, or how.  Of course I assumed it was suicide, but there were other possibilities aside from the normal ones (accident, murder, etc.); her physical health had been poor enough at times that there was always the chance that she’d died due to complications from her Crohn’s Disease, her gastric bypass surgery, or a multitude of other ailments.  I gave Heather some information on Mara’s sister, in the hopes that she might be able to search the internet and find her.  And, in the meantime, I asked that she keep searching the Florida-area obituaries for a notice.  One way or the other, we’d discover what really happened.  For the time being, I felt detached from the situation; the grief, guilt, or whatever else I was going to feel about this was on hold until my mind could process the facts.  I imagine that if I had been in the outside world, I might have reacted differently.  But in prison, almost everything that happened beyond your immediate area had a semi-fictional, ethereal quality to it.  Until I knew what happened, nothing had really happened at all.

It took about another seven days before Heather was able to locate the obituary notice on-line, from a Florida newspaper’s website.  The cause of death was not specified, and instead was listed as “complications from life.”  That was obviously an attempt to say “suicide” in the softest way possible.  Given all the years of mental illness, and the prior suicide attempt, that news was not much of a surprise.  It was sad though, in the same way I still see it as sad…Mara’s life seemed to have held such promise, if she hadn’t been riddled with physical and mental problems, if she hadn’t been sexually molested for years, if somehow she had found a way to heal those scars inside her brain and her heart.  Instead, it was just a waste.  She was intelligent, funny, beautiful, creative, artistic, and loving.  At times she’d wanted to be (or studied to be, in a few cases) a hair stylist, a chemical engineer, and a veterinarian.  None of those dreams would ever come close to reality.  Even much of her artistic side would be lost, as her medications would make it difficult for her hands to stop shaking a lot of the time.  A promising life, a promising future…and all she got was sicker, more depressed, and more certain that life held nothing for her but pain and sadness.  Now, having decided once again that she’d simply had enough, she had succeeded in ending her life. 

The obituary did hold one revelation, which I had not expected at all: Mara and her husband had committed suicide together.  I suppose his crack addiction, their constant money problems, and his being HIV-positive had a lot to do with his decision to join her in this final act of desperation.  It’s possible Mara talked him into it, or even vice versa on the day in question.  Or maybe the each decided that they’d rather say goodbye to the world than be left behind…it could be they both believed that this was the final love they’d have in their life.  I can’t really say for sure.  Nobody can. 

Soon afterward, Heather made contact with Mara’s sister, locating her through a Florida Real Estate company’s website.  She said she had a few things to send me that she thought I might want: wedding photos, things like that.  She’d gone through Mara’s things and through that discovered that I was in prison, but didn’t quite understand what the crime was.  She promised to contact Heather by phone in a few days, after Heather had spoken to me, to see if there was anything else that needed to be done.  One thing she mentioned was that she really wanted me to send her at least one of the letters that Mara had written me in prison…Mara had never written her anything, and she wanted it as a sort of keepsake.  As I recall, Heather emailed her once or twice afterward and never got a reply.  So while I don’t know if I would have parted with either letter, I didn’t have to make that choice.  I still have them.

Oh, and Heather did learn one other thing: this time there had been no suicide notes.  Either they didn’t feel the need to say goodbye to anybody but each other, or they figured everyone would already know and understand the reasons for their decision. 

Now that I knew for certain Mara had killed herself, I could start to feel the guilt and sadness build inside of me.  The event still seemed like it happened in another world; the outside world, I suppose.  But that only would numb my brain for a while.  Sooner or later, and probably sooner, it would really hit me.  I considered asking a CO to contact one of the facility’s mental health professionals for me immediately, but that seemed a bit drastic.  I wasn’t falling apart…I just felt shitty and guilty and hopeless, in an odd way which was gnawing at my brain instead of punching me in the stomach.  So, I decided to take the more conservative approach: I would fill out a request form immediately and put it under the door of the head of the RDAP program.  He was a psychiatrist, and certainly trained to handle issues like these. 

I got the form, explained the situation, and slipped it under his door.  Besides that, I didn’t mention it to anyone.  I decided that the less I spoke about it, in the short run, the easier it would be to delay the onset of whatever emotions would come pouring out.  I wanted to get in to see the doctor first.  He’d understand what I was feeling, and be able to help me cope and work through this in some way.

…wouldn’t he?