Wake Up, Dead Man.
Kris Puckett
IThe Quiet
I almost died 15 years ago. This is a softer way of saying I almost ended my own life.
I entered the highway going south. I had just finished seeing my family, and on a chilly early November night, I thought this was the time. It’s surreal writing those words, knowing that I was about a 45-minute drive away from my last breath. The weight of being alive, the weight of breathing, the weight of feeling, were like heavy snow pushing down on me. I was breaking.
As I sped towards my death, this feral voice rang through my ears. And it wasn’t mine. My voice was determined to finish the task. The voice was relentless. Louder and louder, it rang through my being: “Pull over. Call the hospital. Get help.” I ignored this voice for a few miles.
Maybe it was self-preservation, but that voice was outside of myself. There are many names for that voice, but I’ll just call it the Grace.
I quickly pulled off onto the side of the highway. Shakily, I hit the buttons on the hazard lights and called the hospital, not 911, for some reason.
The person on the other end will never know what they did for me that night. I don’t even know who they are. But that night, they kept me alive.
The paramedics put me into an ambulance, strapped down like a flight risk. The ride was quiet as it went through Denver late at night. It took me to a facility somewhere near the other end of town.
I never imagined spending the night in a mental health hospital, on a cot, next to a snoring man with bandages on his wrist. It was hard to not stare into the darkness and reflect.
My marriage was ending. I was on five different meds to treat bipolar disorder that I felt deep down wasn’t real. My wife and I separated after another fight where she broke things. This time it was a door frame, and she narrowly missed my head with a candlestick.
There wasn’t a clock in the room. I couldn’t use my phone. I had to wait twelve hours to talk with the head of the psychiatric facility.
“Honey, you aren’t bipolar, you’re in an abusive marriage.”
This was both freeing and disorienting. I couldn’t fully process those words. It took years.
The night that I almost killed myself was the first falling of a dark, bitter snow that led to my living death.
I wanted a physical death, and in the coming years, I learned that the death of spirit, the death of dreams, the death of identity are just as real.
IIThe Thaw
I no longer wanted to physically die, but I also didn’t want to live. I retreated deep into my apartment, deep into the worst possible version of myself. I did everything I could to avoid seeing the sunlight, breathing fresh air, even showering.
The eerily still abyss of sleep was where I wanted to exist. No pain, no past, and especially no future. Trazodone is a wonderful drug for sleeping 14+ hours a day.
I ate everything I could as a form of self-flagellation. I gained 150lbs, to 358lbs, in 8 months. The weight left my body scarred.
I couldn’t pinpoint a single moment where life started turning around. It coincided with reconnecting with a friend from college who lived in Denver. That friend introduced me to a broader group of friends who loved and cared for me despite my absolute brokenness. It was that community, those few friends, that slowly reminded me what it meant to breathe, to be human.
Every invite to coffee, to parties, to beers I didn’t drink was like the sun breaking through the clouds.
Coming back to life is less dramatic than we make it. Resurrection was more like the gradual thawing of ice and coldness in my life.
IIIThe Valley
Ironically, the biggest accelerant for my healing was the first woman I dated after my divorce. She cheated on me after she told me she loved me. That experience so completely gutted me. I had nowhere to go but therapy. I learned about domestic abuse, trauma, and recovery. I learned what it meant to be alive.
During a season of counseling a few years ago, I had this repeating image of a vast field with rusted metal. It was dry, barren, and lifeless.
Resurrection takes work. It’s brutal at times. It feels like a breaking and re-breaking all over again. But it was worth it.
Every breath that I forced in and out, despite wanting to die, led me to this life 15 years later. I’ve imagined going back to that 24-year-old, fresh from the hospital, and showing him my life now. My amazing wife, our two girls, all these incredible friends and a community of creative people. I’d give him that dream and scream, “You can have all of this. You just have to be willing to live.”
Through counseling, and the healing that followed, that image of the barren wasteland shifted. I visualized grass, trees, and life growing. The rattling words in my head were “Grass can grow there.”
Living resurrection is the slow, gradual thaw of winter, the relentless pull of spring.
There’s a stone in the snow with my name engraved: Kris Puckett, 1987–2011. That 24-year-old did die. There is no resurrection without a death.
The snow falls on that stone, but the grave is empty. I walked out of that winter, through the dark wood. I can see the valley. Grass grows there.
Death, in whatever form, does not have the last word. Not over me. Not over us.
The Grace that found me on the side of that highway keeps showing up. It’s still calling:
Wake up, Dead Man.