Jeff and Sandee

We will not be sharing their last name in this story.

At 4:59:59 p.m. on Friday April 22, 2022, 62-year-old Jeff ended his life. He did so in the house he shared with his wife of 36 years, Sandee. I know exactly when the gun went off, she says.

Today, nearly two years later, Sandee is hesitant to speak of Jeff’s decision because she doesn’t want to violate his privacy. But she also believes sharing their intimately emotional struggles and most importantly how she is coping can help someone else who may be going through similar trauma, even in the smallest of ways.

Jeff and Sandee met in 1983 when both worked at Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin) and where both their fathers had careers as well. “I’m a reader and was always walking from the parking lot with my book in hand and bag on my shoulder. Jeff and the other guys used to joke about watching and waiting for me to trip as I’m walking while reading.” 

The young couple had much in common, yet their personalities were charmingly dissimilar – Jeff was quiet and reserved while Sandee completed the bubbly and boisterous half of the duo. They were both bright lights — professionally, and personally. They fit with and balanced each other perfectly.

Despite their similarities, Sandee was always independent, a trait that continues to serve her well. Shortly before she and Jeff began dating, she had broken off wedding plans with someone else. After doing so she went on vacation alone never feeling “weird” about dining or attending movies and events by herself.  

Not long after she returned from her travels, Sandee strolled up to Jeff and said, “Can I ask you a question? Would you like to go out sometime?” He paused a moment and answered affirmatively and with conviction. In the early days of their relationship, Jeff blushed easily fueling Sandee’s glee in poking fun at him.  Meanwhile, he thought she was a party girl when according to Sandee, she was just a night owl. She also confesses to having a fiery temper which the ever-chill Jeff learned to ignore. “He helped me see things in perspective. I learned a lot from him.”

As their romance began to bloom, they enjoyed working near each other in their respective roles in the microelectronics department – Sandee in production and Jeff in engineering. The two were conscientious about not flirting overtly at work or doing anything that would draw attention to them as anything more than friends. And while they didn’t talk much to each other on the job, like teenagers, they passed notes, many of which she saved with the exception of a few racy, adult-rated scribbles she didn’t want her daughter to ever find.

As their relationship grew, so did their shared love of being outdoors. “When we first met, we both wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail but as time passed and our bodies got older, I didn’t really want to do that.” They also shared a daily competition associated with music trivia.  Jeff would throw Sandee an offbeat and super random question about music and she almost always knew the answer. Music from the 60s, 70s and 80s and even punk music were fair game. “I had all this trivia in my head, and he would try to stump me with little things, but I was always savvy.” Ultimately, she took Jeff to his second concert ever (Bryan Adams) and he became her constant companion at all kinds of live performances.

After about six months of dating, the couple decided to become exclusive and eventually Jeff proposed — unexpectedly and unromantically. Driving home together and sweaty from a gym workout, Jeff awkwardly popped his own version of the question. “You know I want to marry you, don’t you?” Sandee responded, “I do now.”  And that was that. Dressed in a gown that she made herself, Sandee married Jeff in January 1986.

“He was always embarrassed by his proposal, and so I would bring it up just to embarrass him,” she joked.  

Jeff gave Sandee balance while she brought him out of his shell. “I think that was what was nice about us,” she says describing their relationship. He wanted someone straightforward, and she wanted someone dependable and sweet, which Jeff was. While Sandee’s fierce temper sometimes got the better of her, it was Jeff’s reserved persona that would bring her back to calm.  She once displayed a spark during a church-run, pre-marital counseling session when the pastor asked her to get him a cup of coffee, which Sandee found infuriating. But she obeyed with a smile. Afterward, Jeff told her he had expected her to “blow up.” Sandee told her soon-to-be husband, “I know when to behave.”

In keeping with her adventurous spirit, Sandee began accompanying Jeff on some of his hunting outings, a relatively new hobby of his. Both were avid photographers and while Jeff tried his hand with a rifle, Sandee hunted with her camera. She was always content to sit with him in a 30-foot-high hunting perch. Jeff became such a hunting enthusiast that he was rarely home on Thanksgiving Day because the holiday conflicted with an annual hunting trip in West Virginia with some of his buddies. Sandee never minded Jeff’s holiday hunting adventures and in fact, enjoyed her own weekend travels with girlfriends or her mom. “That’s one of the nice things we did; gave each other space to do things.”

When Jeff got his first deer during their first year of marriage, the couple worked as a team to process it. Never having eaten venison before, Sandee was terrified she would hate it and be destined to eat game meat for the rest of her life. It turns out that she liked it and became adept at cooking what Jeff brought home from his hunting trips.

Like any couple that has been together a while, life wasn’t perfect. They had their share of ups and downs as they matured individually and as a couple. Sandee changed from being confidently independent to more reliant on Jeff in everyday life. "I missed him more and more when he went on trips. We had gotten closer. We always had each other and even more so after our daughter married and relocated to Georgia.”

In 2020, the happy life they loved suddenly shifted drastically and permanently. Jeff woke Sandee early one morning because he thought he was having a heart attack. Emergency room doctors diagnosed a stroke but declared him to be ‘okay’ a few hours later. But not long after being admitted to the hospital for observation, Sandee witnessed changes in Jeff’s health including witnessing his face begin to sag, as well as diminishing functionality of his left arm and leg. He shuffled and dragged. In the weeks that followed, Jeff began a range of rehabilitative therapies including physical, occupational and speech. For the first time in their lives, the couple was faced with a serious and frightening health challenge.

Jeff was no longer able to keep up with the demands of his job and at age 63, he was forced to retire. “He wasn’t happy about that, but he took over the shopping and cooking,” Sandee said. Jeff and his best friend met weekly to practice photography, experiences that helped get him out of the house.  Meanwhile, Sandee continued to work in the marketing department for a private engineering firm. And so began their forced new normal.

Although Jeff was functioning, not long after his stroke, Sandee began noticing that her husband was becoming increasingly challenged by anxiety issues. About a year later, he began experiencing memory issues, a blunt reality check that forced her to acknowledge just how much their life together had changed. Over time, Jeff’s anxiety increased to the point of panic attacks and near debilitation. He began calling Sandee at work seven to ten times a day, disrupting her work responsibilities. Ultimately, she was able to discourage him from calling as frequently, although his anxiety issues remained unchanged. Near the end of every workday, he would call to find out when she would be home.

When at home together, he began to follow Sandee from room to room, becoming more uneasy than ever when she was out of his sight. Contributing to his growing uneasiness, his best friend retired and moved out of state, leaving Jeff more isolated. With no one to spend time with, he planted himself on the couch or accompanied Sandee just about everywhere. Sandee encouraged him to try volunteer work so he could make new friends and interact with others. Instead, he went in the opposite direction, becoming depressed and gradually disassociating from others. Meanwhile, Sandee continued working full-time and juggling the unanticipated changes in her husband’s personality.

Then in the afternoon of April 22, 2022, while working a little later than usual Sandee realized that Jeff hadn’t called her as he had done daily to find out when she would be coming home. She called home but there was no answer.  She asked a trusted co-worker if he thought she was overreacting by worrying that she would arrive home and experience her biggest fear – finding Jeff dead from another stroke.  

She left work and continued calling him during the 10-minute drive home. Clearly something was wrong. She knew it. As Sandee pulled into her neighborhood, she wiped tears from her face so Jeff wouldn’t see that she had been crying throughout the drive.

She entered the house and called his name several times.  “Nothing. I walked into the living room. Nothing. I walked into his man cave.”

In excruciating detail, Sandee describes what she witnessed as she gingerly entered her husband’s office. Jeff’s chair had been rolled away from his desk and was facing in the wrong direction. Then she saw his leg, his shoe, his arm and then a rifle on the floor. She remembers every detail.

“I backed away and screamed and screamed.”

Police arrived, neighbors helped and over the next 48 hours Sandee endured an unimaginable hell. Remarkably, she had the presence of mind to navigate the immediate emergency demands within her home. She dreaded the call she would make to her daughter who had a close and loving relationship with her dad. Preparing for the delicate process, Sandee called her son-in-law first, asking him to take his wife to a private and quiet location. Ultimately, she spoke with her daughter and shared what had happened.  “It was the most horrible thing.”

Family members, friends and neighbors as well as law enforcement officials surrounded Sandee for hours. The unimaginable realities of such a traumatic event don’t negate the need for some basic and necessary tasks --Sandee needed to get clothing, personal items and her cat from the house so she could stay with her sister. She insisted on going herself and asked sheriff’s deputies to accompany her inside because she would have to walk past Jeff’s office. “The door was closed, but I just couldn’t walk past it on my own.”

As she tried to absorb all of what was happening, police asked if she had any clue about Jeff’s plans.  “Absolutely not!” Never had it occurred to her that Jeff would ever consider something so devastating.

“Jeff was so freaking organized that if he had known he was going to do this, he would have had all his paperwork sitting out waiting for me. He would have written a note, gotten in his car and driven to Ocala and sat by a tree and done it.”

“I do take comfort knowing that the Jeff I knew would never hurt me and there’s no way he would want our daughter to go through all this. I know that something just went wrong. Something in him broke. My Jeff did not kill himself; it was another Jeff who killed himself.”

Sandee cites other moments that she now realizes are details that no one thinks about at the sudden passing of a loved one. For instance, after examining the scene, the coroner came to see Sandee where she was waiting with a neighbor. He brought Jeff’s wedding ring to her and then advised her not to step outside or look out from a window because they were removing Jeff’s body to place him in an ambulance. “I just said okay and they took him away.”

Meanwhile, Sandee was left traumatized, heartbroken and simultaneously responsible for helping her daughter through her own heartbreak while faced with arranging Jeff’s funeral and restoring their home.

The day after Jeff’s passing, one of the police officers who had assisted her earlier returned and gave her contact information for a bio-hazard cleaning company for the house. That’s when she learned specially trained companies are necessary for such things. The officer also counseled her to have others return to her home and collect Jeff’s valuables and such because the house would be vacant. She remains grateful to all who helped her traverse the difficult decision-making and all that she wouldn’t know do to do in the wake of a spouse’s suicide.  

While talking with police shortly after Jeff’s death, Sandee remembered the security cameras they had installed in their house years before Jeff’s stroke — one in the living room and another in the kitchen. “Sometimes I’d tune in and he’d be pacing; just pace and pace and pace, which was part of his anxiety issues.” The recordings expired after 30 days so she knew she still had access and could see what happened inside parts of the house that day.  

Although there were no cameras near or in Jeff’s office and despite her profound fears of what she would see, Sandee pulled up the video of Jeff’s activities that day.  She watched as he performed his normal daily routines such as washing dishes and straightening up the house. But she also saw him walk from the kitchen, down the hall and into his office, knowing what would come next. “You can actually hear the gunshot on the video. It’s why I know exactly when the gun went off. I never looked at it again.”

Sandee still lives in the house she shared with Jeff for so many years.  With furnishings removed, Jeff’s office now functions as storage space and looks nothing like it did before. She plans to retire in the next few years and move to Georgia to be closer to her daughter and son-in-law. 

Like many survivors of trauma, Sandee finds herself having become more empathetic. She works constantly to find a steadier footing and a way forward but with a focus on having meaning. And she is purposeful in guiding others to be more aware of the impact of kindness. She is also intentional about being more emotionally positive. “It’s hard.”

For instance, she was deliberate in her attire for this interview. Her t-shirt reads, “Be Kind.” She has built a new wardrobe of t-shirts with uplifting and compassionate slogans to gently remind others that we never know what battles or struggles people are experiencing. She encourages conscientious compassion.

Her intentions have been validated. Once while wearing one of her favorite shirts with the words You Matter and a semi-colon, she was approached by a woman who asked what the shirt’s statement meant. When Sandee candidly shared Jeff’s passing by suicide she also displayed her tattoo with the same symbol on her arm. She told the stranger that, “It means your story is not over yet.” The woman responded by displaying her own tattoo of a semi-colon and stated, “I’m a survivor.”

Frustrated by the stigma associated with suicide, Sandee reveals that Jeff would be mortified that she has shared their story publicly. But she fortifies herself. “Jeff, you left me. This is how I deal with it.”

It’s a struggle for her not to cry when she talks about Jeff and the unexpected turn their lives took. But she adds that it always feels good to talk about Jeff. “I’m not angry at him; I’m angry at what happened and where I am now without him.

As she concentrates on rebuilding her life, much of her focus is to protect her memories of life with Jeff. She has created a book of “Jeffisms,” a collection of funny things he routinely said or words he made up – all “little silly” things that continue to make her smile and laugh. “That morning, we kissed in the kitchen, and I said, ‘I love you’ and he answered, ‘I love you too; now it’s time to go make the donuts.”

Sandee also began driving Jeff’s car, something she had been avoiding. Since his passing, she has on her own dealt with two hurricanes, replaced a bathroom faucet, and fixed a kitchen sink leak. “I’m proud that I was doing it; it’s not that I couldn’t, but those were the things that Jeff would always take care of. I miss him”

The trauma of Jeff’s death has left Sandee with a keen understanding of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She is cognizant of the events or actions that carry potential to spark anxiety or tears. She pays attention to it all as part of her effort to stay healthy and to find moments of happiness in everyday life.

The kindness she has been shown by friends, family and acquaintances stays with her. “I know in some people’s minds, I’m the girl whose husband committed suicide and I know how I’m viewed. But at the same time, it’s therapeutic for me to talk about the fact that I experienced this.”

“We were so looking forward to doing stuff in our retirement. We had so many adventures together, which I’m so glad that I have as memories, but there was still stuff left to do.”

Figuring out how to stay forward moving is constant. Sandee has returned slowly to concert-going and rebuilding a small social life, which hasn’t been easy. She has contemplated grief counseling to help steady herself, but she hasn’t quite been able to take that step. 

 “I’ll get there.”