Chapter 15: Kitty Litter

Kitty Litter

 A little while after Linda’s birthday, she noticed a strange itching and discharge from her vagina. She stopped in at the urgent care center before work to find that she had chlamydia. I know she was tested for VD in September, so sometime between then and mid-January, Linda had been having sex with someone besides me. It looked like Linda’s drug counselor was right and she was selling herself for drugs.

I frankly did not know what to do, but I knew something had to be done. So one morning as Linda was getting ready to see her therapist, I announced:

“Linda, I’m going with you to see Neil!”

“No way! You can’t go, if you go, I won’t.”

“Then I will go by myself and we will talk about you!”

“He can’t talk to you about me!”

“He can’t tell me anything, but he will listen!”

“You can’t!”

“Listen Linda, you have a choice. Either I go with you to see Neil today or I go and see an attorney?”

“OK.”

To say Linda was angry is to put it mildly. This might seem a strange intrusion in Linda’s therapy, but I had been to her sessions on many occasions. Linda used to tell me my being there helped her be honest.

When we got there, her therapist was surprised to see me, since I had not been coming for several months. Linda refused to speak but I explained about Linda’s VD and her recent drug use. The therapist was shocked. Linda had not told him any of this.

The therapist was so concerned that he even spoke about putting Linda into in-patient treatment, but Linda would not have any of that. When the session was over, he thanked me for coming and told me, in front of Linda, that I was always welcome to come to her sessions. From then on, I accompanied her.

As we went out to the car, Linda also thanked me for coming.

By the way, yes I had myself tested for VD, and I had not contracted it from Linda.

At the end of February, Linda told me that one of her best friends from AA had a sick cat, and she wanted to lend her the money to have the cat treated. I was suspicious, but I knew the friend, and I knew the friend’s love for her cat, so we loaned her the money. I wrote a check to her so that Linda could not steal it.

Linda had told me years before that one of the biggest problems in her life was how messy our house was, and in the last few years Linda’s inability to do housework, and my lack of energy due to my different medical conditions, caused things to get worse.

I thought of the idea of getting someone to come in for a day and get things under control. Linda had a friend in AA who needed some extra money. I offered to pay her $100 if she would clean our house. On March 31st she did.

With spring approaching, and me barely able to walk, I was getting concerned about how I was going to be able to keep up the house and yards for the summer. I came up with a plan. We would offer Linda’s friend a room if she would help around the house. She was currently living in a one room dump.

Linda was not enthused by the idea. Linda felt that she should do the work herself, and I agreed, but Linda was not doing the work, and as far as I could see Linda would not be doing the work, and the work had to be done.

Linda invited her friend to live with us and she accepted and moved in on April 15.

Thursday, April 12, Linda called me:

“Hi, Beautiful!”

“Odell, Carol was just in here. She is the person who took over the kitty fund from me. She told me that the money has disappeared from the safe and that she thinks I stole it. She wants me to give it back or I will get fired.”

“Oh, my. Did you take the money?”

“NO, baby I didn’t. What are we going to do?”

“We can’t lose your job, Linda, we will have to pay the money back. But I want you to go to the head of your department and tell her what is going on.”

“OK, but I need the money this afternoon.”

“I will give you a check made out to the kitty fund.”

“NO, Odell they can’t cash a check like that. I need the money in cash, the way it was when it was taken.”

“I can drop by the bank at lunch, and I can drop by your office after that. Don’t worry, Linda, everything is going to be OK!”

I gave Linda the money to repay the fund. Linda called me later that day and told me that she had repaid the fund and she had spoken to the head of the department about what had happened. The head of the department was upset, but had taken control of the money herself. Linda could no longer be blackmailed.

I found out later that that was a lie. I was told, in fact, that on Thursday Linda had left work saying that I was ill.

The people in her department had consulted with me about my conditions on several occasions, so they were not surprised by this.

Over the weekend, things started coming apart. Linda was terrified that on Monday the police would be waiting for her at work and would take her to jail. I asked her time and time again, had she returned the money or not? She told me she had, but she was still scared that the head of the department would change her mind and have her arrested.

This weekend, Debbie, Linda’s friend, moved into our house. I was talking to her and I asked:

“When do you think you are going to be able to repay the loan Linda gave you for the cat?”

“The loan? Didn’t Linda give you the money for that?”

“No?”

“Linda told me that she needed some money for something at work and did not want to ask you for it. So she told you that she was going to lend me the money. I cashed the check and gave her the money. She was going to use her allowance to pay you back.”

Later when I saw Linda:

“Honey, I was talking to Debbie and she tells me that she gave you the money for the cat loan?”

“Oh, yes, that’s right.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I’m sorry, Odell, I did drugs.”

“Did you do the same thing with the money your sponsor was holding?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything else you think you should tell me?”

“Yes, Odell. In the last few days, I have been remembering times that I have sold myself so I could get drugs. But it was not like me; I did not even remember until now.”

I would like to tell you more of that conversation but I do not remember anymore.

I had hoped that with these confessions out in the open we might find a way to start moving forward.

Monday, April 16th, Linda went to work. I was very frightened for her, but she called me in the morning and told me:

“Odell, I just met with the head of the department and she told me that since I had returned the money they were not going to do anything. So everything is OK.”

I did find out that the conversation with the head of the department did in fact happen that morning.

It is clear that Linda had not returned any money on Thursday, and somehow held on to it until Monday when she spoke to the head of the department. I am now amazed that Linda had the self-control over the weekend to be in possession of both the money she had stolen from the kitty fund and the money I had given her on Thursday, but did not use any of it. That was a big step forward for her. In the past, once she had money, she would have had to go straight out and score.

Linda called me at 1:19 that afternoon.

“Hi, Beautiful.”

“Sorry I did not call you at lunch but I was busy.”

“That’s okay, how you doing.”

“I’m doing fine. The department head has the money and everything is OK. I just wanted to call and see how you were doing.”

“OH, I’m tired but working.”

“Well you have a good afternoon and thank you for helping me.”

“You’re desired!” (I did not say you’re welcome to Linda, I always told her she was desired.)

“I will see you later, love you.”

“I love you, too!”

I spoke to the people at her office and got a different story.

“Monday morning, Linda came into my office and said you had come home, taken a fall, and that she needed to get you to the ER. Later about noon, Linda left a message for me on my voice mail stating that she was at home, the paramedics had just left, but that you did not want to go to the ER, so she was going to stay home and be with you.”

I got off work a little before 4:00 p.m. and drove straight home. When I opened the garage, I found Linda’s car was there. This made me very angry. I assumed that she had been fired, and that was why she was home early. I got out of the car and tried to storm into the house, but the door from the garage into the house would not open completely. I tried twice and then looked down. I saw Linda lying face down in the kitty litter. At first I thought she was lying there to show me how unworthy she was, “no better than cat shit.” But that only lasted a second.

I ran from the garage to the front door of the house and let myself in. Then I dashed to the laundry room, the room where Linda’s body was. Once there, I tried to turn her over so she could breathe but she was too heavy for me to turn without hurting her. Looking at her face, it was dark purple and there was no breathing or reactions of any kind.

I called 911 and they told me that I had to turn her over even if I should hurt her in the process. It took a lot of work, but I managed to turn her. The dispatcher told me to check her airway but I was not able to because her teeth were clenched tight and I could not open her jaw. I did give her mouth-to-mouth twice, but as I leaned in I could see that her eyes were both covered in kitty litter. Then I started CPR. While I was pumping on her chest trying to bring her back from the dead, I could hear the ambulance arrive and the paramedics took over the CPR.

I do not know why they worked so long, I think they were training, because it was clear that Linda was dead. At no time did Linda show any signs of life. At one point, a woman firefighter asked me if I had given her mouth-to-mouth. I said I had, and she said that I might want to wash the kitty litter from my lips. They worked for about 15 minutes trying to establish a “Bone IV.” I had never heard of one before, but they took a drill and drilled into my wife’s leg.

Finally, they called the hospital and got permission to stop working and let her be. As the paramedics were leaving, I heard them talking. The reason none of us could get her mouth open was that rigor mortis was setting in and she had been dead for almost two hours before I got home, no matter what the death certificate says.

It took eight weeks before the medical examiner finally released the cause of death. Linda Joyce Hathaway died on April 16, 2007, at 04:19 p.m. of mechanical asphyxia with an underlying cause of death of cocaine intoxication. Linda ingested cocaine (crack) and collapsed into a kitty litter box, is what the death certificate says.

Next: Chapter 16 – Conclusion

Previous: Chapter 14 – Stress Can Kill You

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