Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [93]
“He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.”
The pastor used those words to preach a sermon on comfort. He talked about allowing God to comfort and heal us, and how we have a responsibility to try to comfort others. At the end of his message, he concluded with a story.
“There is a woman in our congregation who came across a suicide yesterday,” he began.
What? I looked to my left and my right and then grew red in the face. How did he know I was here?
“She has stayed in contact with the police and the family of the victim, and she has several ways that we can pray for them and serve them this week. If you have time to make them a meal or serve the family in other ways, meet Susan at the choir pew after church.”
Susan? That was the name of the woman who had approached Sunrise Mountain pavilion from the north while I was on my cell phone. She was here?
After the service, in a congregation of less than forty people, thirty miles away from Sunrise Mountain, I met Susan.
My conversation with her gave me more details about the young man and the investigation. While I had set off hiking into the woods after my brief talk with the officers, Susan had spent much of the day with the police.
“So was it really a suicide?” I asked.
“Yes, he left a note for his family at home before he did it.”
“How old was he?”
“Twenty-four. He grew up just a few miles down the road. He was a graphic designer and a musician. He had moved to the city to work, but he had come back home recently. His parents and sisters are taking it very hard.”
As sorrowful as it was, learning about the young man’s life helped me to focus on what he had contributed to the world, as opposed to what he had taken away. He was more than the “stiff” that the officers referred to; he was a brother and a son, an artist, and a gifted instrumentalist.
Then, more for comparison than compassion, I asked Susan, “How are you? Are you okay?”
Susan teared up. “Yesterday was a hard day. But it made me appreciate my faith, my family, and my life more. It made me realize how much I take for granted. It also makes me want to help people who may be struggling and don’t know where they can turn. I’ll never forget what I saw at the pavilion, but I hope I can use my experience to become more understanding. I promised myself that I would try to be a better friend and family member, and a better listener.”
After my talk with Susan, I felt empty—in a good way. It was like I had been carrying this heavy load, and being able to share it with someone who understood, who really understood, made me feel lighter.
I wish that I could say things got better over the next few days, but they didn’t. I still had times when I enjoyed being on the trail—like when I saw a woodpecker knocking on a tree, or a patch of wildflowers lining the trail—but overall I was not doing well.
I was frustrated that even though it had been more than two days since I left Sunrise Mountain, the scene I witnessed for just a few seconds remained present in acute detail in my mind. I couldn’t remember the name of the officers I had spoken with or what they looked like, but every aspect of the victim was still vivid, especially his pale face and swollen hands; hands that had struggled and bled against the rope that bound them.
As I hiked around turns in the trail, I would experience flashbacks to Sunrise Mountain. My mind would trick me into thinking that every loose limb hanging from a tree was a dangling body. And I became uneasy at any shelter that had rafters in it. The weather didn’t help either. Ever since leaving Vernon, New Jersey, I had been hiking in a cold, steady rain. New York was stuck in a nor’easter, and I was stuck in New York.
I began to feel rundown, not because of the event of two days before, but from