A Day in the Life of Olivia Newberry

Olivia Newberry’s life changed more in one day than a life normally changes in years. She would not and could not ever enjoy another day.

One sun shiny day her only son and child, Adam, came home from his new busboy job and placed a plastic bag over his head. Silly as it sounds he took his own life by suffocating himself with a plastic bag tightly wound around his head. Silently he gave up his life while suffering a death most of us cannot imagine.

Adam hated himself we figure. How else can one undergo suffocation by their own hands. Most of us could never imagine such an act, at least not until we hear that someone actually succeeded at it. We hear of “jumpers” who in one crazed instant throws their life away by stepping into gravity without benefit of a nearby floor or Earth. The crazed moment passes; yet the decision, possibly made in haste, has no rewind button, no second chance.

The jump-off-and-hang approach to suicide offers the same suicidal jump with a similar outcome – successful suicide. Here too the choice to opt out ends in that final crazed moment; yet the decision, possibly made in haste, has no rewind button, no second chance.  

We know too about the handguns, rifles, and shotguns used to commit suicide. These marvels of technology bring about instant death in the hands of a suicidal victim. Pulling the trigger the choice to opt out ends in that final crazed moment. An instant, hardly that long, passes before the bullet slows momentarily within the victim's skull as it ends life; yet the decision, possibly made in haste, has no rewind button, no second chance.

Until his last moment of life freedom to escape death remained in Adam’s hands. Up until that last moment of consciousness he had the power to hit the rewind button, to give himself a second chance. All the whiile he knew a way of an impending chasm of death and chose it over another day with us.

Had he taken his last breath and then torn the plastic from his head a second would have offered him a dramatically different perspective on life. His near-death suicidal act may have given him that sense of awe and reverence for his own life that so many have sensed as they struggled to keep their own lives. We will never know and neither will he.

We find it hard to believe that a twenty year-old man causes his own lungs burn with pain for another breath; our imaginations draws a blank when we try to understand how such a fate could ever exist, could ever occur.

It did.

Adam took his life while lying in the middle of his queen sized bed in a one of two bedroom apartment he shared with Olivia.  As Adam expired and his body released its tenuous grasp on survival, his limbs went limp and his olive brown face lost its African tone, replaced by a horrid blue and gray death mask.

Adam never met his black father. In fact his mother had no stories about Adam's father, other than he was "black." A fact Adam remained keenly aware. It never occurred to Olivia that a fictional father could have meant more to her son than no father at all, black or otherwise.

Olivia Newberry’s life became one of shame and discomfort following Adam’s birth, and Adam had no choice but to feel her discomfort when the two shared public space. Olivia’s love for Adam had no equal between mother and son, but the weight of a fatherless past carried into a future colored by his complexion bent Adam’s perspective of the past, his present, and his future. More of the past and present in the future did not add up.

The facts remain as Olivia shared on the day of Adam’s funeral. She could not afford a funeral so friends funded Adam's burial. Olivia said that Adam started a new recently job as a busboy in an expensive restraunt by the shore. He wore a nice suit and his slender physic presented the appearance of a handsome young man in the prime of his life. Suicide did not belong to this picture.

Adam’s new supervisor kept Adam often for overtime work because of Adam’s energy and enthusiasm, his apparent pleasure when helping guests and taking orders. He rang up sells and escorted guests to their seats. He belonged among the rich and powerful if anyone did. He looked that part. Adam had a future.

When Shelia found Adam that day she turned him onto his right side. His left hand and arm pointed to ceiling. Rigormortis caused Adam to move like a tree trunk with limbs pointing toward the sky. Even now she tugged at the plastic wrapping in vain hope of saving his young life.

Once Olivia saw Adams face, her life changed forever.

No more shame, no more guilt, only grief filled Oliva’s mind. It took the full eighteen months before she began to feel “normal,” before she had a real appetite, before her thoughts of Adam merifully turned elsewhere in moments of brief reprieve from grief’s pain.

Those who knew Adam felt a sharp painful grief when the news of Adam's suicide. Disbelief had no keener audiance. All were to remark on his handsome appearance, his quick and ready smile, his wonderful wit, and his drive to help and comfort others. No one who knew Adam would ever recall their moments with Adam in comfort. Each would question their part in his suicide. Each would go on questioning what they might have said. Did they make a mistaken quizzical gesture and Adam misinterpreted it? What gestures might have cast caused a misperceptions by Adam?

No one who knew Adam felt like they were walking on thin ice with this vibrant character. Life with Adam meant shariing and enjoying the moment and expecting the same from the future. How could Adam have felt so differently and not shown it?

Adam left no note, no words, or no suggestion for why he chose to take his life. The manner of his suicide screams at a painful end, but a pain necessary for Adam to end deeper, more enduring pain.

How Adam commited suicide without that instant of craziness so many chosse to act out goes beyond imagination. How he managed the pain, the anxiety, and the face of death as beads of sweat broke out on his dark, olive forehead those last minutes goes beyond imagination.

Oliva's story continued and she drifted from low-income job to low-income job. Unable to keep her attention on the moment. life became an emotional can of worms. "Adam" she would whisper and suffer as deeply as a mother might suffer.