Woman forming suicide support group

Things were beginning to look up for Linda Wheeler in February 2002.

After losing her husband two years before in 2000 to lung cancer, Wheeler met Laverne "Vern" Redden at the Boogie Barn in Mitchell at one of its weekly dances.

Despite the long drive from Seymour to English where Vern lived, the couple spent a lot of their time together traveling and with their kids and grandkids.

"He was a member of the VFW, a very proud member," Wheeler said of her companion who served in the U.S. Army in Germany. "He called bingo for 30 years at the VFW."

A third generation lumberman, Vern owned and operated a sawmill in English, that is until he had to close it down in the fall of 2005, when he learned he had rectal cancer.

Taking on that battle, Vern had surgery to remove the cancer in January 2005 and received a clean bill of health in 2007.

But that wouldn't be the end to what problems lied ahead.

The Nightmare

Everything was normal that week, Vern had left that Monday to take a car to his daughter in English so she could use it while her car was in the shop.

"We talked all day Tuesday," Wheeler said. "I talked to him that night, and he said he was going to watch the news and Jay Leno. He said "If I don't go to sleep I'll call you back. He didn't call me back so I assumed he went to sleep."

Wednesday morning Wheeler called Vern as she normally would, but couldn't reach him.

"He always called me after breakfast, so I thought that was very odd, but I didn't think too much of it."

Calling several times later that day, Wheeler still couldn't get a hold of Vern.

"I was beginning to get pretty antsy," she said.

About 4 p.m. Wheeler was driving to English, and when she reached Salem, she finally got a hold of Vern's brother, Basil.

"I said, ‘Basil go see what's wrong with Vern, I can't reach him,'" she said. "He was only five minutes away from Vern so he drove down there."

At 4:10 p.m. Basil called Wheeler back and told her that he was gone. He had found him on the floor.

"You first think heart attack, I'm screaming literally from Salem to English," she said.

When she finally arrived Wheeler saw yellow tape around the porch and became confused.

"I was on an ambulance five years and we didn't yellow tape porches," she said.

Wheeler and Vern's daughters were sent to sit in an ambulance.

"If you think that isn't awful, after 45 minutes the girls, the sister and the brother already knew what happened to him," she said. "I didn't know."

Tim Wilkerson, one of the deputies at the scene, came out and said, "I have a letter for you and for the girls."

"I just screamed at Tim, ‘What happened to him?' she said. "He said he shot himself."

Vern was pronounced dead Jan. 30, 2008.

 Planning

"I couldn't even fathom it, he had this so planned out," Wheeler said.

There had been a cabinet sitting in Vern's house that Wheeler liked and Vern was adamant that Wheeler put the cabinet in her house. So one day in November they loaded it up and took it to Wheeler's home.

"I couldn't figure out what the hurry was on the cabinet because he kept saying I want to bring it up here," she said. "Well where the cabinet was sitting is where he sat and took his life."

Vern did much more in planning his own death from laying out clothes for the funeral - his uniform, writing letters to loved ones, laying out titles and deeds to the house and car and instructions on how he was to be buried.

"I know in my own mind he was preparing for this," Wheeler said. "He was the type of person that was so organized he wouldn't have left any of it unfinished. He even layed his bills out on the table and told his daughters when the bills were due."

Wheeler later learned that when Vern took his daughter his car, he told her he was giving it to her.

She had said back to him, "Dad I'm not going to keep your car, I'm just using it because my car is in the shop."

"Now she realizes what he was saying," Wheeler said of Vern's daughter.

 The letter

Wheeler hasn't looked at the letter that Vern wrote her since that day in the ambulance because of the pain she's afraid it will bring back.

"The letter basically said he did not want to die without a memory," she said.

Vern had been diagnosed with very early stages of Parkinson's disease.

"The Parkinson's scared him worse than the cancer," she said. "You would have thought the cancer would scare him more."

Wheeler said she thinks the fact that he had to close his mill because of his health may have caused him to go into depression.

"We were going to a neurologist, cancer doctor and a family doctor and nobody every saw what was going on," she said. "I asked his family doctor, ‘What did we miss?'

"He said ‘Honey sometimes you aren't missing anything, sometimes they can act totally normal and be completely depressed.'"

Dealing

"My husband and I were married 23 years, and when he was diagnosed with cancer, I didn't think anything could be any worse that that. I found out something could be a whole lot worse and that's suicide," Wheeler said. "Everywhere you go you think that person should be there."

It took Wheeler two weeks before she could walk back into her house.

"I wouldn't come here, I didn't want anything to do with my house," she said.

While she had friends and family to help her get through that first month, Wheeler said the pain doesn't leave you when you've dealt with a suicide.

"Unless you have been through a suicide people could say to you, ‘I know how you feel.' No you don't know how I feel because it wreaks havoc on you," she said.

"I don't know how to describe it. It's like having your whole life disappear right before you. For the person who commits suicide basically their pain and agony is over. But what a horrible mess it's leaving everybody else."

Wheeler said Vern would have never hurt anybody, and he didn't kill himself to hurt his family or cause them any misery.

"I think in his own mind he thought once he was buried that everyone would just go on forward, but he didn't realize with a suicide you just don't. It's not natural," she said.

Support

"If I could scream at one person that is thinking about suicide and say ‘look at your family, look at your kids, look at your wife, look at your brothers your sisters, look at them and then find yourself a doctor because it is going to be the worst thing you have ever done to your loved ones in your life,' Wheeler said.

After Vern's death Wheeler sought support from others who have been through a suicide. She began going to an SOS (Survivors of Suicides) group in Bloomington.

"Here in this town there is nothing to help you," Wheeler said of the lack of suicide support groups. "You are just lost."

That has pushed Wheeler to step up and create a support group for people affected by suicide.

Larry Tickle of First Baptist Church has offered a meeting room at the church. Mark Adams at Voss Funeral Home has also stepped forward to say he would like to be involved in the program.

"I feel like this is a good start," Wheeler said. "Especially with him. When he gets a funeral where someone has done that he has no idea where to send these people."

Dates and times for the meetings have not been set yet.

For those interested in being a part of the program, contact Linda Wheeler at 569-0045 or contact her by e-mail l0wheel@verizon.net. (E-mail is lower case L and zero.)