I was a curious child, quick with words, and hoping to become a journalist. But a parent's mental illness diverted my curiosity toward psychology. In time, I became a psychotherapist trained to keep my private persona in the shadows.
Then intimate friends who lived next door were brutally murdered. My physician husband was called to the gruesome scene while I called 911.
We knew the media would swarm. Lock the doors, screen your calls, they'll chew you up and spit you out in mangled morsels, we were warned. But I decided otherwise. My husband was under police instruction not to describe what he saw; maybe I could deflect media fascination from bloody mayhem and use my childhood aim to help build a legacy for two remarkable people.
The blazing spotlights were overwhelming -- not only to light-sensitive eyes but to the psyche of a woman who, in childhood, had been scolded if she sought attention.
At times, the worst prophecies about the media were realized. We woke several times at 3 a.m, preparing for crews who set up satellite connections for early TV shows. I mentally composed a three-minute account to drive home the central point: this wasn't about the loss of beloved professors in a cloistered Ivy League college in a bucolic landscape. This was a loss to the world of a man and woman who were catalysts, who urged others to watch, listen, learn, analyze, choose, communicate with government. As exemplars, they set in motion widening circles of awareness and constructive action.
But from the responses of the anchormen, connected by remote audio, I realized they simply didn't get it. Attentive to the clock and commercial breaks, these intelligent men didn't hear the message. I pounded my chair in frustration.
I felt searing disappointment with some of the print media too. My words were misrepresented, most blatantly by a distinguished English newspaper. Then an apparently sensitive reporter for a U.S. paper defied my warning not to ask what my husband had observed at the scene. After an hour, she edged around the boundary, finally asking for a ghastly detail. I almost threw up. "For God's sake, these were dear friends."
Embarrassed, she explained the relentless pressure she and colleagues were under to supply every detail to their editors. Her newspaper and others were competing intensely to attract the most readers (and the most advertisers, the most money, I realized).
Some of the writers really did understand my message; and their thoughtful, probing questions were actually therapeutic, giving me a chance to go over and over the experience like a traumatized child after surgery. Unrecognized feelings and memories, or new strands in our relationship with our friends were coaxed into consciousness. The reiterations slowly anchored my sense of reality -- I'd been sliding in and out of disbelief, as though this must be a film like Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" -- and it would end.
Our 46-year marriage was strained. My husband began snapping, I snarled back, and I understood that the interviews were torturing him. They kept reviving the memory of the most dreadful sight he had ever seen, even after years in medicine. They interfered with his style of coping: compartmentalizing his pain, not allowing it to engulf him.
Too, he worried about me. Normally fleet of foot, I began staggering. And one evening I got into a hot bath to soak the aches away. Ninety minutes later he found me slumbering in an empty tub. Fortunately, the drain had slowly leaked. Clearly, if I tried to soak away my pain, a life jacket was in order!
I encouraged my husband to avoid the interviews, and turned to a mutual friend, an EMT who was no stranger to horror. "Bob can't stand my need to go over it again and again. Can you bear to hear the whole story?" He spent an evening listening while I repeated the dreadful tale, sobbing and trembling. He held me like a frantic child.
Most mornings my husband and I went skiing at a small alpine center near Woodstock, Vt. The staff expressed concern with a hug or sympathetic word, but asked no questions. We renewed our sense of life in the bracing air, focusing on our rhythmic body movements, and spotting the tracks of tiny critters in the snow.
Our offspring worried about my media exposure. The murderer might imagine I knew more than I actually did. We asked the police to keep us under a protective eye and felt sure they did.
Throughout, there were poignant moments:
-- Defying my training in privacy, I gazed directly at the first probing lens for regional TV, tears coursing down my cheeks. This tragedy warrants tears, was my unspoken message. When the photographer put his camera down, he rested his hand on my shoulder.
-- I developed a case of acute mediatitis -- a hoarse voice and dry cough. When a reporter phoned, he waited through several struggles to quell the cough with icewater. Then he said, "I just can't do this to you."
--- Wincing, a TV technician heaved his heavy equipment. "Hard on the muscles?" I asked and he nodded. "Like some aspirin?" "My mom would say that," he told Bob, and he accepted the potion.
-- An assistant producer for national TV acted agitated and erratic. "Stressed out?" I asked. "I've never covered a murder before," he said, and I understood his jitters.
"Mom, write a statement to hand out to the media," my daughter advised, but that felt too mechanical. I wanted to honor Half and Susanne with spontaneous, heartfelt words, and my media dialogues helped.
Dearest Half: Tall, handsome, dignified, affectionate and warm. Proud and annoyed by disrespect. Brilliant, analytical, competent at all he did -- but anxious about teaching well enough. Committed, hard-working, but playful too. Lightly sarcastic at times, his words usually tempered with humor. Generous, thoughtful of others, and calming toward his beloved and sometimes frenetic wife.
Dearest Susanne: Petite, slim, with staccato movements and speech. Affectionate, generous, funny. Brilliant, perfectionistic, worried about not doing well enough, and vulnerable to disapproval. Sweetly puckish.
We shared supper on Dec. 30 of last year, and I wore my usual holiday outfit of black slacks, scarlet top, and silver snowflake. "I knew what Audrey would wear," Susanne said with a grin when she arrived. So I wore that flamboyant outfit to the memorial service, defying convention.
"Susanne would have loved that," said Bob. I thought so, too.
