Once We Repaired Things - Part 13: The Call I Couldn’t Answer

It was a Tuesday in March 2019. At about five or five-thirty that afternoon, I was driving home after a day that had brought grief painfully close again.

At 2pm that afternoon, we’d been informed that our colleague Dan had died. We learned that he had taken his life over the weekend.

A young man. A son, a brother, a friend, a colleague. Someone whose absence would reach far beyond the campus where we knew him.

For me, the news also brought back my father.

That’s something people don’t always understand about losing someone to suicide. Hearing of another death can return you to your own loss, even years later. You grieve for the person who has died, for the people who love them, and you find yourself remembering what happened to your own family.

That afternoon, I was carrying all of that home.

Then my phone rang.

It was Paul.

——

What had already happened that day

I have written about this day in Part 5 of my initial bullying, discrimination and harassment complaint.

Staff were gathering in the student centre for support. My manager told me to go there, then later criticised me for not finding a colleague who’d left the library in shock. She and Dan had been good friends and had studied together.

I had looked in rooms along the way. The campus minister was calling her mobile, and two other colleagues were searching further across campus.

Yet I was still criticised.

On a day when we were trying to absorb a colleague’s death, I found myself having to defend what I had done. I was distressed by the news and by the memories it brought back. The manager’s treatment added to that distress when I needed some room to breathe.

I remember wondering what she could possibly have expected from me.

——

Listening to grief, and experiencing it

I had spent time talking with the campus minister about what was happening in my private life and about my experience of losing my father.

I had said much less about what was happening at work. I was frightened that anything I disclosed would get back to my manager and bring more passive-aggressive treatment. That fear kept me quiet for a long time, even while the situation was affecting my health.

After Dan’s death, I remember Ann reflecting on how our conversations had given her some understanding of suicide bereavement before it affected someone she knew.

As I recall, his office was across the hallway from hers, or nearby. His death was suddenly part of her own working world.

There’s a difference between listening compassionately to someone’s experience and feeling that loss enter your own life. Listening matters enormously. But knowing the person, expecting to see them again, and then learning that they’ve died brings an understanding that can’t be acquired through listening alone.

And when the person is your parent, your child, your sibling or your partner, there are further layers.

How did I miss this? How did I not know?

Those questions can remain with a family. They don’t establish that anyone could have foreseen or prevented the death. But they can still be agonising.

Then there are the comments people make.

I’ve already written about the stigma and hurtful attitudes my family encountered in parts of the Greek Orthodox community. I will keep speaking about that. Faith should give bereaved families compassion, dignity and support. Judgement and ignorant commentary add suffering to people who are already trying to live with an unbearable loss.

Families remember those words too.

——

Before the phone rang

By March 2019, the stress in my working and personal life had become too much.

I had been diagnosed with hypertension. I was trying to keep functioning in a workplace where I felt frightened, undermined and worn down. At the same time, I had been trying for quite a while to communicate with Paul.

I needed him to listen. I needed a chance to explain what was happening to me and what his behaviour was doing to me.

Instead, I had experienced calls in which I felt blasted by anger and could barely get a word in. I experienced those calls as aggressive. Afterwards, I was left with everything I had been trying to say still trapped inside me, but with a layer of hurt and shame added that compounded the trauma.

That inability to communicate was crushing.

So when his name appeared on my phone while I was driving home that afternoon, I felt fear.

I can’t tell you what he intended to say in that particular call. I didn’t answer it. But I can tell you why I was afraid: I remembered the calls that had come before it.

I feared another encounter in which he would yell over me and I would have no space to explain anything.

On that day, I couldn’t bear it.

——

The call I couldn’t answer

I was driving. I had just learned that we had lost Dan to suicide. My father’s death was painfully present in my thoughts again. I had also endured my manager’s unfair and harmful criticism. Again.

Seeing Paul’s call brought another surge of distress.

I felt as though my blood pressure had shot up. I was frightened about what that level of stress could do to me, and about whether I could keep concentrating safely on the road if I answered on Bluetooth.

I remember thinking that I could have an accident. I feared a serious medical event. Those were the thoughts going through my mind as I tried to get home.

I didn’t answer.

I think he called twice. I also think he left a voicemail, although I can’t now be certain of those details.

I didn’t listen to a message, and I didn’t retain one.

That means I can’t describe its contents. What I remember clearly is the fear that stopped me from answering and the decision to protect myself from further distress while I was driving.

There was already more than enough happening inside that car.

——

What I wish Paul had understood

Paul, if you read this, I want you to understand the circumstances in which your call reached me.

We had just learned that a young colleague had died by suicide.

I was remembering my father.

I was already suffering under the strain of what was happening at work. I had hypertension. I had been trying to communicate with you, and previous calls had left me afraid of being shouted down again. I had a gut feeling about this call being the same too.

You may not have known what had happened on campus that day. But you did know how you’d spoken to me before.

Someone’s earlier behaviour shapes how their next call is received. An incoming call can bring fear before a single word is spoken.

I wish you’d stopped to consider how much hurt I was already carrying, and how much more I could possibly tolerate.

I needed you to listen and understand.

——

The harm kept compounding

The pressures were accumulating. There was no real space between them in which to recover.

The workplace harm continued. The personal distress continued. Bereavement could be brought back sharply by another loss. My health was already showing the strain.

In the years that followed, the consequences spread further into my finances, my home and my retirement savings. I’m documenting the alleged workers’ compensation fraud involving ACU and CCI elsewhere in this blog, together with the failures of the systems from which I sought protection.

My income and statutory benefits were withheld. The damage compounded while I kept reporting what was happening and asking for help.

I want that conduct independently investigated and those responsible held accountable. The full financial consequences also need to be properly calculated, including the investments and retirement plans disrupted along the way.

But this part of my story concerns something deeply personal.

What happened with Paul hurt me profoundly. I had wanted connection with him. I had kept trying to communicate, even while I was struggling to get through my working days.

On that Tuesday afternoon, his call reached someone who was grieving, frightened and exhausted.

——

Why I’m telling this story

I didn’t set out to spend years documenting harm or challenging powerful institutions. I wanted to do my work, live my life and be treated with respect by the people around me.

I tried to resolve things. I tried to explain. I tried to follow the appropriate processes.

Eventually, I needed to speak publicly because the harm had continued and so much of what I had said had gone unheard.

To understand how I got here has to acknowledge what happened before it.

That includes the afternoon I saw Paul’s name on my phone and felt afraid to answer.

We had lost Dan. I was remembering Dad. I was trying to drive home safely.

I had nothing left for another painful call.

That day, leaving the phone unanswered was how I got myself home.

To be continued…