WAITING FOR THE CREEPER: Part Three
If You Are Waiting To Die, How Long Do You Wait?
Part Three: The Heber Creeper
The beautiful weather and scenery of the Wasatch Back mountain are awe-inspiring in ordinary times. Yet today, as Gareth was sitting on the large rocks on the reservoir’s shoreline, the quiet beauty only triggered the never-ending Rolodex within his chaotic mind. Life had always seemed so black and white. There had never been any grey in his life. To avoid people hurting you, you harm them first. Nobody loves you. Everybody is out to get you. These thoughts made sense, didn’t they? His therapist had worked hard to this point, and Gareth had been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. He found out each session that regular everyday life for most people was not like his. Discovering that everything you believed to be true in life was incorrect had been an enormous and frightening shock. How could that be? He felt like a baby trying to learn to think, talk, and walk for the first time.
Thoughts were now getting more intense and arrived at an ever-increasing rate. Gareth’s jumbled mind again turned to his wife. Reliving vividly, the actions of not one bad day but years of bad days caused a thick black shadow to fill his mind. His vision became tunnel-like. His hearing sounded like distant voices echoing through cotton wool. And his breathing was becoming ever more shallow. Gareth felt pain in his head. It was like tiny demons were eating away at his brain. But, of course, he deserved to feel this way. No amount of pain could ever be enough for such an evil man, he thought. He knew his life would never get better. A prison was too good for him; death was the only option. Unfortunately, Gareth was all out of options.
It was evident to Gareth that the time had come. There was certainly nothing to live for anymore. He knew his daughters would be affected terribly by this decision, but he felt sure he could not live another moment. They would be much better off without him anyway. Gareth was no example for his girls. He loved them all so much; however, he was terrible. The anguish of mental health always hides internally. But right now, as with a Salvador Dali painting, all the doors were open. All the drawers were empty and in view. It seemed like he was hanging naked ready to be drawn and quartered. If not, he thought, he should be.
He had sought help from many friends he had known over the years. After serving in many leadership positions in his church, he knew many good people. His two best friends were always reliable. However, to his horror, his loyal friends and neighbors, in the hundreds, vanished when his wife left. No phones were answered. They had all beamed from planet Earth to the U.S.S. Enterprise and were gone. He suddenly knew how it would feel lost at sea without a life jacket — waiting to drown as your strength seeped away. As he continued to sit looking out over the massive body of water, he again felt the same loss. Finally, he moved down to the water’s edge. All I have to do is jump, he thought. Seeing his eyes had swelled horribly with his endless weeping was tough for him to see. But he could make out a puff of smoke on the other side of the reservoir in the distance. It was the Heber Creeper. A beautiful steam locomotive from the distant past with a name that illustrated its speed.
Gareth had worked on the railways for many years in England long ago. He had driven diesel and electric locomotives, short distances in and around Crewe station to the high-speed trains to London. His father had also been a career train driver. His grandfather and uncle worked in Crewe’s enormous locomotive and carriage depots. So if you had lived or worked in Crewe, railways were in your blood. A puff of smoke is all it takes to get your attention.
Gareth needed help. Maybe this was it? A train would now help him end his life! Not in the usual way. Not a horrific death killed by a train. After all, as a train driver in England, he suffered after people committed suicide in front of his train. He would not do that to another train driver. That carnage has a terrible everlasting effect on anyone controlling a train. While driving an express passenger train thirty years previously, a man had jumped from a high bridge and hit the right-hand side window of his locomotive. The noise was deafening and gross. Luckily he was driving on the cab’s left side; the blood and body parts still covered the locomotive’s front end. It was still horrifying. Getting out of the locomotive, down the handrails and steps, was even more horrendous. The body turns to liquid and is yellow-green. Not easily forgotten.
No, his idea was more cerebral. Well, at least, he thought in his nonsensical state of mind. Confused and now irrational, he decided that his signal to jump into the deep water and end his own life would be the return of the Heber Creeper. The train would return to Heber in just over an hour; he would wait for it, and as it passed, he would jump into his deadly watery grave. An easy but ironic choice. No one would see, and it would all be over by the time anyone found his white van. He sat down, wiped his eyes with his right sleeve, and waited. He could wait. English people are used to waiting. They will line up and wait for just about anything. It is called a queue. After all, an Englishman will form an orderly queue of one, even if he’s alone, is the oft-told joke. He felt peace at last. He was still waiting. After a while, he realized it was not peace he felt; it was surrender.
It was way past lunchtime by now, and Gareth was hungry. Not for food, but love. He was not sure anymore what love was. Gareth was not sure he ever did. All he felt was a constant fear. He had not eaten for forty-two days. He had been drinking water every day since she left but no food. It was not intentional or fasting to excess. He did not feel like eating. He had now lost over fifty pounds in weight. When he last saw his wife with the girls, he told her about losing so much weight. She laughed and noted, “Well, you’ve been trying to lose it for years; it only took you over a month; you should thank me.” He cooked and fed his babies when they visited but had no desire to eat. By now, his body was starting to hurt deep inside. He had stopped using the bathroom for a while now. There was no need. He had only thought that his decision-making was becoming somewhat unstable the previous day, and not eating was not helping. He took more pills; they did not help. They never did.
Gareth had always struggled secretly and silently throughout his life with his mental health. Now it seemed this challenge had careered entirely out of control. No sleep, no food, all alone, no physical touch, no baby girls, no home, no possessions, no money; everything had gone. And nothing was coming back, ever.
So it seemed to make perfect sense to cross the concrete barrier once more and sit. Only a week before, he had been contemplating his funeral. His concerned therapist was worried, and his dutiful daughter was anxious. Gareth, however, was not alarmed at all. After all, there could be no coming back after what he had done and the appalling consequences. His mind kept repeating his father’s words told him when he was a child; “You are no good, You are worthless, You are a terrible child, You will never be anything but a cripple.” It was true. It was all true. I should never have been born, he continuously thought.
This thought was not a new idea. Gareth had repeatedly fought this idea ever since he was eight years old. Being sexually abused as a small child only seemed to increase and accelerate those thoughts. After all, he and other children always accept the responsibility for their abuse. Why is that? Because adult abusers tell them so, along with terrifying threats to stay silent. Gareth often looked back and noted that the family dog, a tan and white corgi, was never mistreated. The dog had a comfortable bed with a doggie blanket. Gareth and his siblings were often thrown into the metal bathtub inside the bathroom to sleep. No blankets. Only cold metal. That is what you do to ‘bad’ children, right? They should behave themselves, shouldn’t they?
PART FOUR of this story will be published midweek. Follow me on Medium email, and you will receive notice of when you can read the next dramatic part of this true story! Thanks
© Stephen G. Arrowsmith 2022
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