She was an awesome wife. She was an on-top-of-it mom. She was thoughtful and kind-hearted.
On June 1, 2016, Elizabeth, then 39, committed suicide after battling postpartum depression (PPD) for months, if not longer. On a crystal-clear California afternoon, Greg, 51, became a widower and a single parent to their two children, Emma, 9, and Ethan, 2. Just weeks before his family confronts the one-year anniversary of Elizabeth's passing, he's retracing the lost battle he never knew his wife was fighting. "I've got to carry around this constant feeling of, Why didn't I figure this out?" he says now.
GOING WEST
It was Elizabeth's bright-like-the-sun personality that Greg noticed first. They met at a library where Elizabeth worked part-time in Northampton, Massachusetts.
"We got to talking, and I was drawn to her smile and how friendly she was," Greg says. "Even the way she walked — fast, with confidence. You could tell she was the kind of person who got things done."
After about a year of dating, the couple went to California to help Greg's family after his step-father passed away, and decided to make their stay permanent. If you look up the phrase "going west," it's described as the moment you're about to meet disaster, but for Greg and Elizabeth, it felt like the exact opposite. Elizabeth fell in love with the area — the craggy coast, the nice weather, the day trips to the Golden Gate Bridge — according to Greg.
"Elizabeth took the lead with getting us out there," he says. "She took care of all the little details — the packing, the prep." The couple got married in the summer of 2001 and settled in Rohnert Park, a quiet neighborhood about an hour north of San Francisco.
"Life felt good," Greg says. He was working as a mechanical engineer and Elizabeth had a job as a project coordinator with a solid track for advancement. After their daughter Emma was born in 2007, Greg felt like he and his wife were going through the normal ebbs and flows of new parenting.
"Elizabeth was completely on it — knowing what you're supposed to do and not do," Greg says. "Of course, we were tired, but it was fun." Elizabeth worked her way into the Rohnert Park mom scene, attending classes for new moms and meeting up with them afterward for coffee and walks. "It was something she really enjoyed," he says.
When Ethan was born seven years later, in 2015, that extra support lost out to work and managing a household of four. But to Greg, the routine felt like more of the same. The couple got up together for middle-of-the-night feedings and tag teamed the daily routine.
"Elizabeth would drop the kids off in the morning and I would pick them up later," Greg says. "I would cook, she would do the laundry. At night, she'd get one kid to bed and I'd take care of the other one. We were a well-oiled machine."
But then something changed. A change Greg did notice.
CRACKING THE FACADE
"Right around the time our son turned one, there was something about Elizabeth that just wasn't right," Greg says. "She was less tolerant of things around the house, and less patient, which was unusual for her because she was such a positive person. She wasn't initiating time with friends or neighbors, and she started saying she was a bad mom. My interpretation was that it had to be stress." Greg tried to help by suggesting she take a night to spend time with her friends, but she never did.
In the spring of 2016, the couple started talking about a move back to the East Coast, where they both had family.
"It was almost like a passing comment, but Elizabeth really latched onto the idea of leaving California, so it became this serious thing that we were going to do within the year," Greg says. "We were both just kind of done with being on the West Coast. Elizabeth had been living thousands of miles away from her family for over a decade — a distance that now felt farther with two kids in the picture." Elizabeth started packing up the house right way — stuffed animals, kitchenware that was seldom used. All boxed up.
In the weeks before her death, Elizabeth, a normally happy employee known to surprise her coworkers with coffee, got angry with work. She confessed to the daycare worker at her son's school that she was feeling overwhelmed. At home, she kept insisting on fast-tracking the move, wanting to be back east by the end of the month.
Late one night in May 2016, a few weeks before Elizabeth died, Greg Googled: Why is my wife acting off? It's a moment that sticks out now.
"Looking back, and knowing that I couldn't figure it out, the guilt on my part is huge," Greg says. "It feels like I failed my wife, because I know now that all of the talk of moving was Elizabeth's final act of desperation — it was a way for her to try and fix what she was feeling."
A SHOCKING TRAGEDY
The morning of June 1, 2016, started off just like any other weekday. Greg left for work before dawn, at 4:30 a.m. A few hours later, Elizabeth got the kids ready and dropped them off at school and day care before heading to her office. Throughout the day, the couple texted. About what? Greg can't really remember. Insignificant things because it wasn't supposed to be a significant day.
"That night, I helped Elizabeth get the kids to bed, and then I had to step out for a bit," Greg says. "It was normal for me to run a few errands in the evening — swing by the grocery store, fill the car up with gas, stuff like that. Elizabeth was upset that the move was taking so long, and we agreed to talk about it later that night."
When Greg returned home an hour or two later, he walked in and found Elizabeth unconscious. What happened afterward, he says, is a blur.
"I started doing CPR while calling 911 at the same time," he says. "The ambulance arrived, the police, a fire truck — we were that house. I felt like a flying saucer landed in my driveway and blew the door off the front of my house. I mean, I don't know. How do you sum up your wife dying?"
At the hospital, he held Elizabeth's hand while she lay in the ICU. He listened to the nurses and doctors, and to the beeps coming from machines. But none of it made it seem more real. Then Greg heard one of the nurses mention postpartum depression.
"After talking with her and some of the other doctors, and learning more about what PPD is, it was the general consensus that Elizabeth had suffered from it," Greg says. "I was so shocked by what happened to Elizabeth, but in that moment, it was like, okay, so that's what's been going on here."
But Greg still thought his wife was alive.
"As I'm sitting there, I thought, Okay, she's going to need some kind of recovery," he says. "Maybe she'll be in a wheelchair. And I started thinking, Well, if she's in a wheelchair, we're going to need ramps. I can build ramps in our house."
But the next afternoon, on June 2, 2016, Elizabeth passed away with Greg at her side. "It's a shock you feel physically, like someone set off a firework too close to you," he says.........
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