Tammy Montgomery
The Slow Death of a Broken Hearted Man
On a cold, rainy, dreary January evening the phone rang. “Bob is dead,” said the voice on the phone. I heard the words, but could not speak as disbelief, shock, and grief washed over me. When? How? Why? The voice had no other information to give me. The words, “Bob is dead,” were still ringing in my ears as I hung up the phone. Memories raced through my mind as tears flowed from my eyes. This could not be happening. This could not be true. I had just spoken to him on New Year’s Eve just before he left to go skiing with some friends. Words from our last conversation played over and over again in my head. “Don’t worry Sam. Other than a broken heart, I am fine” were his last words to me. What could have happened so quickly? There must be some mistake. Instinctively I dialed his number but no one answered. I called again, leaving a message: “Please call me as soon as you get this message.” No call ever came. My boss, my mentor, my best friend, was gone forever.
I met my friend Bob in August of 1997. I had applied for a job as the hostess at the nightclub he owned and operated in Charlotte, North Carolina. I got the job after a brief interview. He laughed aloud while telling me that including his wife, I would be the fifth Tammy working for him. To cut down on confusion I suggested he call me by my nickname, “Sam”. He chuckled and agreed that would be a good idea. From day one, he teased me about my accent and being a hillbilly from Kentucky. I gave it right back to him about being a Yankee. Without trying, I think he learned some good old redneck ways and a lot about the Appalachian culture. I in turn learned Yankees could be kind, caring, and funny. Some Yankees even liked fishing in the peacefulness of the countryside. I also learned he worked his way through college at many different jobs. He was a pool shark and hustled pool when he needed extra cash. He started working at the club as a “bar back” in 1986. He worked hard and saved his money. Gradually he worked his way up to management. Over the years, he had done every job there at least a thousand times. Eventually he impressed the owners so much they invited him to be a partner. Now he was not only the manager but the owner as well.
As the months passed, he trusted me with more responsibility and began to teach me all I needed to know in order to manage his beloved club. I asked him why he chose me. He simply smiled and said:
You are tough and soft at the same time. You have a hard edge when you need one. You demand respect and give respect in return. You aren’t afraid of anything including hard work plus you are so organized it scares me.
During the months of training, we became great friends. As we became closer, our friendship became stronger and evolved into confidants, both personal and professional.
Several months later, he confided in me his wife of ten years was leaving him. He stated the pain he was feeling was overwhelming. He was sure he might die from a broken heart. I was not too concerned because people could not really die from a broken heart, could they? According to Dr. Holly S. Anderson,
The answer is yes: A traumatic breakup, an extreme argument or experiencing the death of a loved one can elicit the release of stress hormones that can trigger a heart attack in people prone to them, induced a life-threatening arrhythmia or cause a syndrome that mimics a heart attack in otherwise healthy hearts.
In a similar article by Dulce Zamora, Dr. Dan Leviton added:
Besides experiencing the strain of stress, of emotional overload, and of not taking care of oneself properly, it is also possible for grievers to be at higher risk for health problems. Various studies have shown that surviving spouses may have increased odds of suffering heart disease, cancer, depression, alcoholism, and suicide.
It was after Tammy left that his life began to slowly fall apart. He began drinking more and more to dull the pain. Little by little, he withdrew from his family, friends, and co-workers. He stopped coming to work, choosing instead to stay home and drink alone. Bob started refusing all invitations, one after the other, to socialize or even leave his house. I received calls every few days reassuring me everything was fine and he was doing great. I should have seen through the lies and recognized the abundance of red flags waving in front of my face. According to author, Barbara Taylor in her book, Everything You Need to Know About Alcohol, Bob had already reached the third stage of alcoholism, the losing control stage (42).
Call after call, he insisted he had accepted the fact that his wife was gone and would not be coming back. Sadly, he felt sure he would go to his grave broken hearted and still loving her. He had convinced himself he could never love anyone else with the same passion and intensity he felt for her. Despite all his efforts to win her back, he was sure she would file for divorce after the holidays; adding fuel to his blazing fire of alcohol and depression. His depression became as deep as if he were mourning her death. I became increasingly concerned that he may actually die from his broken heart.
After missing the January meeting with his wife and their respective attorney’s, Tammy, the love of his life, began to call his house repeatedly. Getting no answer, she decided to leave a message on his machine stating if she had not heard from him by the end of the day she would be coming over. Day turned to night and no word from Bob. Being true to her word, Tammy went to his house.
The whole place was dark except for the faint light from the television set. She knocked on the door, no answer. She called from her cell phone, no answer. She looked in the window and saw him sitting on the couch. She knocked louder and rang the doorbell repeatedly. Angry at being ignored, she decided to climb through a window to gain entry to the house. Once the window was open, she noticed a terrible smell. It was putrid. It smelled like a garbage dump on a hot day in the middle of July.
She climbed through the window calling Bob’s name so not to startle him as she entered the house. Carefully she stepped over a decaying rodent. With expert precision, she worked her way through the maze of empty liquor bottles, empty beer cans, rotting plates of food and bags of garbage. She finally made her way to the light switch on the wall. After flipping the switch, she was stunned to see the full extent of the grotesque, alcoholic wasteland Bob’s home had become. Slowly, she continued to walk over to where Bob was sitting on the couch. Tapping him on the shoulder from behind she asked, “What the hell is going on here?” She moved to face him. His empty eyes stared blankly back at her. His lips were blue and his clothes soiled with urine and feces. Frantically she called 911. It was too late. Bob was dead.
A few days after his death, a memorial service was held. Hundreds of people paraded through the funeral home to pay their respects. He had touched so many lives in so many ways over the years. Choking back tears, friends, family, and co-workers took turns standing behind the podium to share stories and memories. Everyone spoke of what a wonderful man he was and how he had touched his or her lives. I stood to speak, but no words would come from my mouth; I was paralyzed with sadness and grief. I could do nothing but sob hysterically. Thankfully, another employee quickly rescued me and someone else began to speak in my place. The last line of one of my favorite Emily Dickinson poems, “After Great Pain,” kept screaming in my head, “First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go” (372). For Bob, dismally, the only way of letting go was in death. It was a very touching memorial for a man whose life ended tragically, long before it should have.
Later that evening, his devoted employees, arranged a brief memorial at the bar he loved so dearly and had devoted most of his life to. We filled the lobby with roses. We placed a picture board of our favorite “Bob moments” by the entryway door. A single candle burning in honor of his memory greeted hundreds of friends and loyal customers as they entered the bar. Even though sadness filled the room, I could feel the love everyone had for Bob. Everywhere I turned I could hear stories being told and memories being shared and relived. As the hour approached midnight, the DJ’s voice came over the microphone asking for a moment of silence for our friend. The silence was deafening. I could have heard a feather as it touched to the floor. The moment passed and the DJ began to speak. His voice quivered as he tried to maintain his composure. He weakly said, “Please lift your glasses in honor of Bob.” Tears filled his eyes as he went on to say, “We pray you find the peace you so richly deserve.” Fighting back his tears, he managed to continue, “Our lives are forever changed having had you pass through them.” With glasses lifted high for one last toast, a single spot light shining brightly on an otherwise dark and empty dance floor and David Crosby’s Harvest Moon playing in the background, we said goodbye to the man who had touched all of our lives in one way or another.
Finally, peace had come to a wonderful, kind, caring, generous man that I am proud and honored to have known and called my friend. Bob was a young, strong, man broken and defeated by love and the excruciating pain of a broken heart. Maybe Hank Williams Sr. was on to something when he wrote the lyrics:
For souls that live within the past where sorry plays all parts,
for a living death is all that’s left for men with broken hearts…
Life sometimes can be so cruel that a heart will pray for death.
God why must these living dead know pain with every breath?
Did God have the answers? Honestly, I do not know. However, I do know that Bob lying to those who loved him so they would not worry was not the solution. His pretending everything was okay did not make the pain go away. His drinking to dull the pain was a fatal mistake as he slowly drank himself into a coma.
So it leaves me to wonder what actually killed my friend. Was it alcohol? Was it depression or was Ilan S. Wittstein’s research indeed accurate? He suggested in the Washington Post, that it was a very real possibility it could have been from something else entirely:
Our hypothesis is that massive amount of these stress hormones can go right to the heart and produce a stunning of the heart muscle that causes this temporary dysfunction resembling a heart attack. It doesn’t kill the heart muscle like a typical heart attack, but it renders it helpless. (Stein)
Bob’s heart was truly rendered helpless and hopeless as he went to his grave grieving for the love of his life, a woman who could never be replaced by any other. His battered and broken heart unable to take any more began beating slower, and slower still until the last beat was silenced.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Dickinson, Emily. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. R.W. Franklin. Boston: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998.
Stein, Rob. Study Suggests You Can Die of a Broken Heart. 10 February 2005. 30 March 2010 <http://.washingtonpost.com>.
Taylor, Barbara. Everything You Need to Know About Alcohol. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 1989.
Williams Sr., Hank, Williams Jr., Hank, Williams III, Hank. "Men with Broken Hearts." Three Hanks:Men With Broken Hearts. By Hank Williams Sr. Nashville, 1996.
Zomora, Dulce. "Death from a Broken Heart." 24 November 2003. Medicinenet website. 7 March 2010 <http://medicinenet.com>.
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