Zindel Friedman Former Numbers Banker, Kills Self - pt 11

I am 11 years old, hiding out in Lena's room with the door closed. I have the Atlantic City Press spread out on her bed and I am clutching one of my father's shirts in one hand. It is the morning after I found my father dead on the basement floor and the headline has his name in it. I did not know he actually had killed himself, until I read the following headline:

"Zindel Friedman, Former Numbers Banker, Kills Self."

If anyone is reading this, I wonder, are you really interested? Why am I writing this anyay? What is it I want? To shock you with the tragedy of it all? Do I want your sympathy? Empathy? What exactly? Is this my own kind of self therapy? You would think I might be familiar with therapy but I am not as I have always resisted seeing a therapist. Not that I haven't been told I need one, especially by my husband, but I haven't just felt the need to do so. I do not get depressed and I am never tortured about my life or with particular problems of any kind. I know that I haven't been the best of Mothers and definitely not the best wife, and that I am sure, is because of my past, but I just have not wanted to..what's the point really?

I once went for a couple of sessions with one of my husband's therapists. She asked for me to come in so she could see us as a couple and after our session she suggested I come in alone. I did for about 3 sessions. After she asked me about my life she wanted to dwell on my earliest years. I would repeat the details including my Father's death, as if I was reciting a dramatic story and wanted to enthrall her. I always told 'my story' in that fashion. But every time I mentioned the boarding school I was raised in, "The Ventnor Private School", she would stop me and tell me to call it what it was, and that despite its' name, it was really a boarding house/orphanage. The word 'orphanage' would always make me cry when she said it. Although I had family, they obviously did not want me to live with them. At this I would always start to weep. After a few sessions of this I told her that I never cried about all of this before and I did not feel I had to start at this late time in my life. After all, I had had a successful career in television as a producer and executive with many Emmys in my name. I had raised a wonderful daughter and had good friends. I wasn't fantastically happy but I was ok with it all. So I ended the sessions with a "who needs this" thanked her for her time, and walked out.

Ok, back to the newspaper.

"Joseph (Zindel) Friedman, who died yesterday of what police described as a self-inflicted bullet wound, was despondent because of financial difficulties, according to close acquaintances"

...(to be continued)