November of the Soul

The Enigma of Suicide

George Howe Colt

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9780743282024
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Written with the same graceful narrative voice that made his bestselling National Book Award finalist The Big House such a success, George Howe Colt's November of the Soul is a compassionate, compelling, thought-provoking, and exhaustive investigation into the subject of suicide. Drawing on hundreds of in-depth interviews and a fascinating survey of current knowledge, Colt provides moving case studies to offer insight into all aspects of suicide -- its cultural history, the latest biological and psychological research, the possibilities of prevention, the complexities of the right-to-die movement, and the effects on suicide's survivors. Presented with deep compassion and humanity, November of the Soul is an invaluable contribution not only to our understanding of suicide but also of the human condition.

1

ADOLESCENT SUICIDE

I

JUSTIN

JUSTIN CHRISTOPHER SPOONHOUR

OCTOBER 10, 1969

10:20 A.M.

7 LB 20 IN

THE GOLD LETTERING stands out against the cover of the white photograph album, now beige with age, coffee-spattered, and held together by tape. Inside, 114 snapshots, with captions written by the proud mother, lovingly document Justin Spoonhour’s first few years. Justin was less than three hours old: a picture of “Boy Spoonhour” in his hospital bassinet, a white blanket covering all but a puckered face with a pale shadow of hair. First day home: his mother, Anne, breast-feeding. At a month, he was easy to shop with—but where do you put the packages: Justin asleep in a supermarket shopping cart. About four and a half months—getting very fat and sassy: Justin snug in a comfy chair, a grinning, diapered Buddha.

Slowly, in the album’s pages, the prunish infant becomes an energetic, redcheeked child moving happily through a succession of milestones: Justin’s first Christmas; Justin sitting up; Justin learning to crawl; Justin’s first tooth; Justin standing; Justin beaming (Working on teeth five and six); Justin’s first birthday; Justin’s first step; Justin’s second Christmas; Justin standing on a chair (Pausing for a souvenir photo atop Mt. Everest—I did it all myself).

From the beginning, Justin Spoonhour was treated like a little adult. “We never talked baby talk to him,” says his father, Giles. “We always talked English.” Justin responded in kind: his first word was “McGovern” (his parents had volunteered for the senator’s 1972 presidential campaign), and his first sentence was “MerrillLynchBullishAmerica.” He was raised on a diet of Sesame Street. Even after he learned how to change channels, he spurned cartoons and stayed tuned to the educational television station. The Spoonhours’ house in Putnam Valley, New York, was crammed with books, and Justin was reading before he entered kindergarten.

At elementary school, Justin’s precociousness was not the only thing that set him apart from his classmates—there was also his appearance. Justin seemed to have a permanent rumple. His blond hair often hung down to his shoulders, uncombed; his shirts were untucked, his clothes unironed, his sneakers untied, and his fly frequently unzipped. He suffered from a bed-wetting problem until the age of eleven. Doctors prescribed an antidiuretic, but it helped only temporarily. His parents set an alarm clock in his bedroom so he could go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, but by then it was often too late. The problem embarrassed Justin, and Anne and Giles didn’t want to make him more self-conscious by questioning him. So each morning Anne would check his sheets and remind Justin to take a bath. Occasionally he forgot. At school he became a target for teasing: “Justin, you greaseball, did you ever hear of soap?” To his classmates the issue wasn’t that Justin was messy so much as that he was peculiar. One morning he walked into class wearing a three-piece suit for no apparent reason. At lunch the other children giggled and discussed how “stupid” it was. And even though he had worn a suit, they noticed, his hair was still uncombed.

Justin dismissed the teasing with a cutting remark or a simple “Shut up.” He never got into fights; he just walked away. At recess, while his classmates played, he usually sat alone, and when the class split into groups for an activity, Justin was always left out until the teacher chose a group for him. He was rarely invited to his classmates’ houses, and although his parents encouraged it, he seldom brought anyone home from school. Justin’s few friends tended, like him, to be on the fringes of grade school society: a foster child with a wild temper; a chubby boy with glasses and an attaché case; a shy boy who stuttered. On the rare occasions that Justin did bring home a friend, they inevitably quarreled and ended up playing by themselves. While his grades were good, Justin’s marks for “cooperation” were low. “It wasn’t so much ‘Justin doesn’t get along,’” says Anne, “as ‘Justin doesn’t even relate.’”

Anne and Giles weren’t as concerned as some parents might be that their son was “different.” They were “different” themselves. Their three-bedroom home in Lookout Manor, a small, isolated neighborhood, had a somewhat anarchic air. Four or five cats had the run of the house, dishes often went unwashed, and tilted pictures were likely to remain that way. “Housekeeping,” admits Anne, “was not a high priority.” Giles and Anne had no rules about clothing or hair. They dressed casually themselves and paid little attention to what was in or out of style. “Giles and Anne were nonconformists from the word go,” says a townsperson. “And they chose to live in a community where conformity is the watchword.”

Putnam Valley, fifty miles north of New York City, had been settled by farmers in the eighteenth century. By the early twentieth century it was principally a summer resort. After World War II, when newly built highways made commuting to Manhattan possible, people moved into the summer houses and lived there year-round. By the time Justin was born, Putnam Valley was a conservative, largely middle-class bedroom community of about ten thousand people (the population doubled in summer), many of whom worked in Manhattan. Although Putnam Valley was growing, its residents were spread over a wide area, and the community still had a rural feel. The commuter train didn’t stop there, and the closest thing to a town center was Oregon Corners, a group of shops clustered around a four-way intersection. “This is a very small town,” the librarian told me. “There’s a great deal of interaction among citizens and a great deal of knowledge about one another.” As the local newsweekly, The Community Current, observed, “There are no secrets in Putnam Valley.”

Anne grew up in Putnam Valley. Her parents were what some townspeople called “senior hippies.” Her father, who managed a millionaire’s estate, wore his hair in a ponytail, and their house was a haven for hitchhikers and runaways. Local schoolteachers still remembered Anne as an exceptionally gifted student. They also remembered how willful and independent she was. At various times she wanted to be a veterinarian, a rodeo rider, a Formula One race car driver, a police officer. After two years as a drama student at Ithaca College, she returned home to live with her parents and work at a nearby department store. Every Monday night she drove to the Friars of the Atonement Seminary in Garrison to play the flute in their folk masses. There she met Giles Spoonhour, a tall priest with a surprisingly soft voice, blue eyes, and a sudden, booming laugh. “He was very different from most men I knew—better read, better spoken,” says Anne. “He was more tolerant and compassionate. And he wanted to make changes in the world.” She and Giles talked earnestly about religion, politics, and Vietnam and found they agreed on most counts. They even shared a passion for science fiction.

Giles was the eldest of three brothers raised in a conservative Catholic family in Chicago. Like Justin, Giles was a precocious, somewhat withdrawn child. He planned on becoming a mechanical engineer, but halfway through the Illinois Institute of Technology he met an elderly woman who ran a Catholic retreat outside the city. Their long philosophical talks convinced Giles there was more to the world than engineering, and despite opposition from his parents, he entered the priesthood. However, after thirteen years as a theology student, parochial-school teacher, and parish priest, Giles became disillusioned with the orthodoxy of the Church. He wanted to marry and have children. By the time he met Anne he had decided to give up the priesthood. Several months later Giles left the seminary, and he and Anne were married.

Settling down in Putnam Valley, the Spoonhours put their political convictions into practice. As a social worker in nearby Peekskill, Giles counseled troubled families. Anne became a reporter for Putnam Valley’s weekly newspaper, writing spirited articles and editorials. They were active in the Democratic Club and belonged to a discussion group that explored new directions in Christianity. Although Giles was no longer a priest, he continued to perform weddings and baptisms as a member of the Federation of Christian Ministries, which stirred up gossip and occasional criticism in the strongly Catholic town. While Anne was admired for her energy and conviction, she had too much substance for those who concentrated on style. “Anne uses long words and doesn’t do small talk,” says a friend. “At eleven in the morning people want to talk about their shopping, their mothers-in-law, and their children. Anne wants to talk about the plight of the American Indian.” After reading an article in Newsweek about ethnic and handicapped adoptees, Giles and Anne decided to adopt at least one “hard to place” child. Three years after Justin was born, they adopted Leah, an eighteen-month-old black, albino girl from Louisiana. She and Justin soon developed a fierce sibling rivalry.

If their classmates were encouraged by their parents to achieve in grades and sports, Justin and Leah were encouraged to become independent, morally responsible individuals. “We assumed they would go to college, but they were going to be whatever they bloody well wanted to be,” says Anne. “We encouraged them not to just go with the herd. We wanted to bring them up as reasonably pacifist and humane people.” She pauses. “Do you encourage a kid to be a conformist for the sake of his own happiness, or do you cross your fingers and hope he has enough strength of character to tolerate the kind of singling out he’s going to get if he’s different—and maybe survive it to be happy later on?”

When Justin was eight, he told his parents that he wanted to join the Cub Scouts. They bought him a blue uniform and drove him back and forth to den meetings. But Justin didn’t like it. “He really wasn’t into making like a little Indian and doing crafty stuff and being a Cub and a Bear and a Wolf and a Webelos and all that junior fraternity stuff,” says Anne. “I don’t know how much of that attitude he may have absorbed from me, because I was not an organization person. Boy Scouts are great for kids who are going to be backslappers and chummy and rah-rah all their lives. But for somebody who is being raised as an individual, somebody who really wants to do things of significance or do nothing, that’s not where it’s at.” After half a dozen meetings, Justin stopped going.

Justin seemed more interested in creating his own world than in fitting into any preexisting social structure. Far more fascinating to him than the nature hikes and knot-tying of the Cub Scouts were the cosmic realms of Middle Earth or outer space. In his reading, Justin was drawn to fantasy and science fiction. He devoured Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, and when his fourth-grade class was assigned the first volume of C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, he quickly went on to finish the rest of the series. Then he read and reread Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. He spent his allowance on comic books—Superman, Superboy, and Legion of Super-Heroes. He saw the film Star Wars several times and decorated his room with posters of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, and with models of intergalactic spacecraft.

Although Justin had few friends his own age, he got along well with the younger children in his neighborhood, and they often played war in the woods across the street from the Spoonhour home. Unlike school, this was a society in which Justin was the leader. He made himself the general, and his “soldiers” admired the elaborate worlds he created, complete with secret salutes, codes of conduct, and courts-martial. When Justin chose to do something, he threw himself into it, planning it down to the last detail, and when others didn’t fit in the way he’d imagined—if a neighborhood soldier didn’t carry out orders according to military protocol—he could get exasperated and angry. He had a clear sense of how he felt the world ought to operate. Anne remembers taking him for a riding lesson and seeing him get thrown from the horse. “He grabbed the reins and started to get back on, but first he looked the horse in the eye and very reasonably explained, ‘Now listen, horse, you’re not supposed to do that because I’m supposed to be the boss and I’m on top!’”

Justin spent most of his time alone in his room at the rear of the house, reading or listening to the radio. From his mother he inherited a taste for folk and classical music, which developed into a passion for Bach, Mozart, and, above all, Beethoven. His favorite piece of music was the Ninth Symphony. Justin’s room, cluttered with flea-market bric-a-brac, was usually a mess, his bed rarely made, his clothes on the floor, his baseball gloves and archery bows in a corner. Justin had built his own bookshelves where he kept his Narnia set, Tolkien books, Peanuts comic books, Mad magazine anthologies, Plato’s Meno, 2500 Insults, Asterix comics, The Encyclopedia of American History, and the World Book Encyclopedia his parents had bought when he was five. His library overran the shelves into boxes on the floor; whenever his parents couldn’t find one of their own books, they knew where to look. On one wall was a huge Confederate flag an uncle had given him. On another wall was an old map of Putnam County. Justin covered a third wall with aluminum foil, partly to brighten up and partly to warm the poorly insulated room. On his door Justin posted a sign:

DO NOT DISTURB

DO NOT ENTER

TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT

5 CENTS TO ENTER

Justin’s affinity for spending time alone was encouraged by the demands of the Spoonhour household. When Justin was three, Giles took a new job as a drug counselor in New York City, a two-hour commute each way. By the time the children were stirring at 7 a.m., he was usually gone. Anne worked odd hours at the newspaper, was trying her hand at writing novels, and served as a volunteer for the town’s ambulance corps. Giles’s and Anne’s community activities kept their schedules erratic, and one or both of them were often busy in the evenings. “There was a certain amount of running in and out and coming and going,” says Anne, “but we tried to make it a point to schedule a couple of meals a week together.” If she and Giles weren’t going to be home for dinner, Anne left a casserole for the children to heat up. If that wasn’t possible, Justin and Leah were capable of fixing themselves something to eat. Justin had been cooking since he was seven and enjoyed it. Sometimes, however, it was as if four self-reliant grown-ups were sharing the house at Lookout Manor.

Justin and Leah were treated as adults partly from the necessity of their parents’ schedules and partly because that was the way their parents had been raised. “I was not spanked, I was reasoned with,” remembers Anne, “and I tried to do the same with Justin.” Anne proudly recalls being complimented by a woman who’d seen her in school with Justin and Leah. “She was very impressed because I was explaining things to the kids as though they were adults.” Giles also tried to reason with his children, but occasionally his temper would explode. “When I was in a disciplining state of mind, I had a tendency to get very loud,” he says, “and I know that this was scary for Justin and Leah.” A sports fan who got so excited he would shout himself hoarse at games, Giles coached some of the town’s recreational teams. In Justin’s sixth-grade year, Giles coached him in midget basketball. Justin, who was not naturally athletic, played second string. “I tried not to single him out for special consideration or special criticism,” says Giles. “I tried to treat him like all the other boys.” Yet several parents remarked at how much more exacting he was of Justin. One woman got quite upset at baseball games because Giles yelled at Justin if he struck out.

Yet there were many moments of family happiness. At unexpected times Justin would sneak up behind Anne and give her a hug. “You’re a good little mommy,” he’d say. Giles and Justin occasionally threw a football, played chess, or went swimming in nearby Lake Oscawana. His mother often invited him along when she drove into Oregon Corners on errands, and they talked earnestly about politics and the environment. On weekends the Spoonhours picked apples and strawberries together, browsed flea markets, went to church, and ate out, sometimes at a restaurant, sometimes at McDonald’s or Burger King. And though Justin usually went to his room after dinner, from time to time the family watched M*A*S*H, with Giles’s laughter booming over the rest, or went to a movie. Or they would be out driving in Anne’s beat-up old Chevy Nova, with the sound track to Peter Pan on the tape deck, and she and Leah and Justin would belt out “I Won’t Grow Up.”

At school Justin was a step ahead of most of his classmates—at least in the subjects that interested him. The consensus on his report cards was “Brilliant but doesn’t try.” Some things came easily to him, and he invested little effort in those that didn’t. When his grades slipped, he could usually buckle down in time to get his accustomed B average by semester’s end. Unlike his classmates he didn’t agonize over his report card. In sixth grade, because of his high IQ, he was placed in an accelerated track for gifted children. While others in the project lorded their status over their classmates, Justin didn’t seem to care; he skipped assignments, floundered through the program, and was not asked to return the following year. When it appeared that he might be held back a class because his grades were so poor, Giles and Anne took him to a psychologist. Justin was placed in a group with other youngsters who lacked what the school tactfully called “socialization skills.” They met once a week to play games, talk, and eat pizza.

Though Justin had few friends his own age, he got along well with adults. At school he sought out the company of teachers, with whom he had vigorous philosophical discussions about ecology, nuclear disarmament,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Preface to the First Edition
• Part 1: Adolescent Suicide
• Part 2: History
• Part 3: The Range of Self-Destructive Behavior
• Part 4: Prevention
• Part 5: The Right to Die
• Part 6: Survivors
• Acknowledgments
• Resources
• Notes
• Endnote
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright