I was 19 years old when I met Judy and she was 9. I was running away from my first marriage. I had my 3 year old son and my 18 month old daughter with me. Judy's father was looking, rather desperately. for someone to look after 3 daughters. His wife had died some months earlier of a kidney disease, that today could have treated and possibly cured.
I believe we quickly decided that we were each others answer; mine for a safe place to raise my 2 children and him for a woman who would look after his 3 daughters. Besides Judy there was Sharon 11 years old and Linda, his baby I believe was 6. Within a year we were married and in the next 2 years there were 2 more babies. When I was 22 years old I had 7 children ranging in age from 14 to newborn. I didn't find those years particularly difficult; when you are 22 years old you believe you can do anything, at least I did. The one thing I do remember is doing laundry, always doing laundry, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year.
When Judy was 14 and I was 24 she started her first year of high school. This was when the trouble started. She did not adjust to high school, She did not want to go. We went through months of pleading, begging and demanding she go. Eventually her mood changed and instead of arguing or saying she was sick, she would just stay in her bed, hardly ever getting out and she cried a lot. I took her our family Dr., who told me it was a teen age phase. This man had never really approved of my marriage to a man 14 years older than myself and having 2 babies in 2 years. I was his first patient on birth control in 1961. He was probably right, 7 children at age 22 was probably enough.
After our trip home from the Dr. I thought "well, maybe he is right, what do I know about teenagers, I had just finished being a teenager myself. Judy continued staying in her bed and crying for a couple of months after that. Then, one beautiful evening in May, when the beautiful bridal wreath (Spirea I think) was blooming, as well as some lovely yellow flowers on some bushes we had in the yard, I sent my eldest child, Michael who was 8 years old at the time, upstairs to bring a blanket down. He found Judy hanging from a beam in our unfinished upstairs loft. He called for me and I raced up the stairs. I lifted her body and it sounded like she breathed, but she didn't. Her body was already cold.
Judy was dead. This beautiful young woman was gone. Nature is sometimes kind. I don't remember the next couple of days or much about her funeral. What I do remember is feeling afraid and guilty, very, very guilty. I waited for weeks for the police to come back and arrest me for letting this girl die. I was supposed to be the Mother and she had died, it had to be somebody's fault, It had to be my fault.
In the years that followed I would learn more about depression than I ever wanted to know, as I exprienced it myself, including a clinical depression that I should have been hospitalized for. I know now what I didn't know then. That I should have just hugged that girl and to hell with forcing her to go to school. That instead instead of nagging and threatening her, I should have held her and told her I loved her and everything would be Okay. Maybe that wouldn't have worked ut then again maybe it would have.
Next month it will be 50 years since this happened and I will drive by a house where the bushes with the white flowers and yellow flowers grow and I will remember Judy, like I have for the past 49 years.
Monday, April7th, 2014.......9:48p.m.
