Strange Deaths

When I was a kid, a lot of people we knew were related to, died, or, most often, committed suicide. When I asked what seemed to me to be normal, or at least usual, questions, my mother would quickly become very angry and confront me with counter questions, such as, "WHY DO YOU ASK SO MANY QUESTIONS? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?" This intimidated me into silence but didn't stop me from wondering about it, especially if the deceased person was someone I really cared about and missed in my life.

It seemed strange to me that we had so many suicides in my family and in my world. One of the saddest, at least for me, was my great-aunt Becky. She killed herself by taking a deliberate overdose of sleeping pills. My mother said Becky had been diagnosed with cancer and feared being a dependent invalid. But later I found out she hadn't actually been diagnosed with cancer but her doctor suspected she might have cancer and so sent her to a lab to be tested for it. She took the test but then without waiting for the results, she went home and killed herself. She had been in trouble with the Communist Party over her conversion to Maoist beliefs; the CP expelled her.

There were other relatives who died by suicide. My cousin Joe committed suicide by deliberately stepping in front of a street car. I asked my mother why he did it, and she said he was a Russian immigrant who had never adjusted to living in the USA. I asked her how long he'd been in the USA and she answered, "28 years." Didn't sound likely to me.

There were many others. Suicides. And also many unusual or unlikely deaths in our social world. Our dentist, a family friend, went on a fishing trip in the mountains and died of a heart attack while fishing. It was the first fishing trip he'd gone on in 30 years. My mother refused to answer any of my questions (like which "mountains" he'd gone to or why he suddenly took a fishing trip after a 30 year hiatus). I think it was because of his profession and how that related to the CP. Dentists are significant people in any secret group.

I have a lot of questionable death stories. My mother would become enraged if I asked any questions about any of these people. No one ever mentioned them again after they died.

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Heartlander · 80-89, M

Some people deal with tragedy by pulling a curtain down or closing a door and behaving like the incident or people no longer exist, or even ever existed.

My dad was somewhat like this. His own parents died when he was young and he never would talk about them; so we, his children, had no insights about our paternal grandparents beyond it being a super sensitive topic to avoid. Much later in my life, as an adult, I pressed him on the subject and it was like I broke the stitches of a 60+ year old wound that was still raw, and never healed, and his peace with it was to bury it deep inside. I accepted that as a love so deep that even death would not bring it to an ending, and never brought it up again.

greenmountaingal · 70-79, F

@Heartlander My mother refused to answer ANY questions about anything in her life. Not just all the many strange deaths but anything. She learned her habits of secrecy from her involvement in the Communist Party USA. During the Red Scare of the 1950s, when I was growing up, she was particularly cautious, especially after the Rosenberg executions in 1953. Mrs. Rosenberg's younger brother testified against her; it seemed to my mother that her CP training was correct and she felt she could trust no one outside her level of the CP. And she feared I might be subjected to torture and some of the newer methods of gathering information from an unwilling person by the FBI or CIA.

Heartlander · 80-89, M

@greenmountaingal Per my understanding about how espionage organizations work, agents/spys and staff are by design left in the dark about anything beyond their own assignments. Like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is up to. This provides some protection of the organization from double agents as well as protects others within the spy business. Also it gives the organization information from multiple sources where the sources won't be able to collaborate.

so yea, if the left hand is tortured, bribed or threatened, it can't disclose what the right hand is up to because it doesn't know.

greenmountaingal · 70-79, F

@Heartlander My mother was NOT involved with espionage, thank God, just a member of the CPUSA. Her actual career involved being the director of a nursery school. I believe she had an important job in the CP but espionage wasn't it.