Reaching For An Outstretched Hand in My Darkness

My name is Joy and my husband of almost 30 years gave up on making it out of his darkness on April 9th, 2021.

 

Douglas Allen Lynskey Jr followed his baby brother, Harold Scott Lynskey and the only witness to the horrific trauma they had endured as children, in death in under a year. He could no longer handle the pain of his past and a future without his beloved brother.

 

As many hurt people do, both Doug and Scott struggled desperately through years of addiction and legal issues. 

We watched painfully in the last couple of years of their lives as they both grew tired in their lonely worlds. I watched as him and his brother spiraled both reaching for my strength and calm and patience in their darkness, they began to paint themselves into a corner of no return, racking up legal problems from drug and alcohol abuse and that pain reached an awful peak when Scott hung himself in his childhood abusers driveway in a camper.  Doug's mental illness seemed to be reaching its own crescendo and for the next couple of months I begged him to finally get help. He did start seeing a psychiatrist on February 2nd. I asked him often if he wanted to hurt himself but he always said that he could never do that. 

 

On April 9th, he called into work and walked outside to our shed and also escaped his pain in a way that was an exact mirror of how his brother had escaped his pain just months before. I found him an hour later. Locked in the shed with his favorite dog and I can only imagine that he just didn't want to be alone in that awful moment.

 

Disabled and with a heart condition requiring open heart in 2014, I then lost the health insurance, my partner since age 21 and somewhere in the last 7 months, I lost the most important part of me under the weight of it all. My ability to enjoy my alone time. 

 

His parents have still never called me. 27 years of nieces, nephews, bonus sisters and brothers and family all disappeared in one day and I find myself more alone than I was ever prepared for. My beloved parents and heros have long been gone and so I find myself orphaned once again and I need a hand to reach into my darkness. I have mine reaching up as much as it pains me to not just let the hard bend turn into the final break, but I could never do to others what their deaths have done to me. I want to live. I want to see my granddaughter, my husband's favorite person on this earth, but I have nothing more than the small pension, under 200 dollars a month and a long wait until social security will get caught up in the pandemic and approve the disability I couldn't even apply for when he was still alive. He was a hard working man. I was a hard working woman until the stress of shouldering their burdens caught up to me as well.

 

 

If you could find it in your generosity and good will to help me I promise there will be a hopeful outcome. I hope to be able to write my story, my pain, and the pain that Doug, Scott and others like them live with forever and help someone else who might be able to look up out of their darkness and live. But right now I can't even pay my electric bill. My gas company literally just took my propane tank right before the 30 degree nights kicked in and I don't want my own natural end to catch up on me before I can hope to leave my experiences to others as a survival tool. It wasn't all ugly and I'm determined not to let it end any more painfully than it has.

Right now I desperately need to see my cardiologist and I owe her 2,000 and a lot of explanations about why I haven't contacted her since his death. 

My immediate needs are food, gas and about 900 I owe my cardiologist, along with a lot of explanations as to why I've been avoiding her and my health and heart needs since Doug's death. 

 

With love and hope,

 

Joy Lynskey