Pursuit: Twins, Tragedy and the Journey Toward Recovery

By Court Greene

Suicide is a serious and, sadly, increasingly common phenomenon in our world. It gets much more serious, though, when it affects those we personally know and love. Pursuit is the story of a pastor whose twin brother’s death came in such a way, casting his life into turmoil. Using hunting and fishing stories to make complex emotions and ideas understandable, the reader will take a journey with the author through his past (with his brother) and toward healing. Along the way readers examine the identity crisis that the author faced, wrestle with biblical truths, and understand the anguish through which those affected by suicide often go. Pursuit is just that, a dogged pursuit to recover identity, something like normalcy, and healing in a world suddenly changed. Attempting to bring help to some, and understanding to others, pursuit is presented in a raw and honest way for which the author does not apologize, but does hope potential readers will find necessary and not gratuitous.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Jul 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781489736994

Court Greene

Court Greene is a husband, father, pastor, and outdoorsman from Western North Carolina’s mountains. His twin brother’s suicide sent him on a quest to recover these and any other forms of identity, as the man he thought he was became something else.

Book preview

Copyright © 2021 Court Greene.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

LifeRich Publishing is a registered trademark of The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.

LifeRich Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.liferichpublishing.com

844-686-9607

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-4897-3665-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-3666-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-3699-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021913674

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 07/19/2021

In memory of Zachary Paul Greene

1981-2019

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

SECTION 1: SETTING THE STAGE

Chapter 1 Let the Hunt Begin!

Chapter 2 The Boys

Chapter 3 The Preacher Hat

Chapter 4 The Great Escape

Chapter 5 Casting Off for Who Knows Where

SECTION 2: THE BROTHER

Chapter 6 What a Difference a Twig Makes

Chapter 7 Changing Course

Chapter 8 Accidents Happen

Chapter 9 Round Two

Chapter 10 Middle School/High School/Athletics

Chapter 11 The Not-So-Great Escape

Chapter 12 They Had to Grow Up Sometime

Chapter 13 Equal and Opposite Reaction

Chapter 14 Hope

Chapter 15 Two Lives Summarized by Two Dogs

Chapter 16 Synthesis and a Theory in Summation

Chapter 17 A Text in a Rainstorm

Chapter 18 Pondering

Chapter 19 Identification

Chapter 20 Sometimes the Bear Gets You

Chapter 21 Aftermaths

Chapter 22 A New Perspective, Part 1

Chapter 23 A New and Frightening Reality

Chapter 24 A New Perspective, Part 2

SECTION 3: THE GOOD BOOK

Chapter 25 An Optimistic Cry of Rage

Chapter 26 My Brother’s Keeper

Chapter 27 And Darkness Covered the Face of the Deep

Chapter 28 A Step Forward

Chapter 29 Getting Unstuck While Remaining at a Standstill

Chapter 30 How?

Chapter 31 Back on Track

SECTION 4: TIME MARCHES ON

Chapter 32 A Year Later

Chapter 33 Tripping

Chapter 34 The Middle of Nowhere

Chapter 35 Blessings and Curses

Chapter 36 A Dark Hole With No End In Sight

Chapter 37 Conclusions?

Chapter 38 The Funeral

Endnotes

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe endless gratitude to Kristi Greene for joining me on this journey. More importantly, she has walked with me on a road toward healing that we never planned to travel, and I certainly could not have come as far on that journey without her.

To those who encouraged me to put my thoughts to paper, thank you for the push in that direction. To Katherine, Leah and my mom and dad, thanks for letting me borrow parts of your stories. Finally, thank you for your time and editing skill, Mrs. Walters.

INTRODUCTION

I n 1994, a news story made an abstract notion concrete in my developing mind. While I was aware that suicide was a thing that happened in this world, Kurt Cobain’s death shocked the world, including an almost fourteen-year-old version of me. Still, it had seemed somehow separated from reality. With time, I met people whose lives changed drastically because individuals close to them made the same choice as Nirvana’s front man. Seeing the carnage that a single act made in the lives of loved ones who survived to carry that pain made it seem more real, but it was still a distant reality. Like many, I had been curious. As most caring people in this world would, I wanted to understand. As a concerned outsider, I wished for a way to see the world through different eyes so that I could have known – at least on some small level – how to be hel pful.

When it happened to me, however, I wanted nothing more than to go back to my former state of ignorance. The death of my twin brother forced me to see the world differently. Instead of offering me the lens through which I could see to understand the pain others endured, it thrust me into a reality for which no one can ever truly prepare. Instead of understanding what others faced, or how to help those I cared about when they suffered grief, I had become the one struggling in my very own pit of darkness.

For those who are what I had been, curious or wanting to help, this story offers a raw view into the grieving soul of a loved one whose close relative – as close as biological relatives can be – ended his own life. In hopes that you will not have to personally endure such a tragedy, I offer my eyes through which you can see a world known to a tragically growing number of people.

For those of us who have lost loved ones in this way, I offer you my journey. While I know of no useful playbook for going forward after losing someone in any manner, and certainly not suicide, it helps to know you are not alone. It helps to see what others have been through before you. It helps to see coping mechanisms that worked for others, even if they might not work the same way for you. It may not seem like it, but it can help.

My journey toward recovery has been a long one. It has no end in sight. As a part of that journey, a counselor gave me a three-word prescription. Write about it. That therapeutic writing assignment grew from a simple statement of my grief to a tale of brothers, in every way similar but nothing alike. Through the use of vividly described natural scenes, hunting and fishing stories, and careful reframing of ideas through the eyes of hunting dogs, my story displays the psychological thrill-ride that the shock of tragic loss inflicts. It also offers a way to see how tragedy reshapes our concepts of reality, faith, and identity. Continuing this journey will challenge preconceptions many associate with suicide, grief, and recovery when they have not personally experienced it.

What began as an assignment has now become an invitation. Join me, on my journey toward recovery. I hope it is an enlightening one. Let us walk it together.

SECTION 1

Setting the Stage

42920.png42977.png

CHAPTER 1

Let the Hunt Begin!

T eeth flash beneath curled lips as saliva foams before flying through the air. Growls, grunts, and the sounds of lungs rapidly filling and emptying echo through the trees as man and beast inhale and exhale. This torrid gasping for breath comes during a pause in the midst of, perhaps, a long chase that may or may not end here; it is really the quarry’s choice. The chase could end, and the chase could continue. All we really know is that the action, or at least the act, is right here. The entirety of the world is concentrated into what concerns those present right here. It is in these trees. It is amid these hills. It is everyt hing.

Dogs chase. Fierce, black claws driven by massive paws and even larger and more powerful forearms swat in the air wildly as the very same dogs that chased a bear into this once peaceful setting dart to escape the carnage those claws could inflict. Will the bear climb a tree? Will the bear fight? Will the hunters get close enough to put an end to the fight before the dogs are too tired to protect themselves? Well, you never really know.

I, for certain, could not tell you. After all, the exciting scene described above is what I imagine an Appalachian, dog-driven bear hunt is. Now, lest anyone think I am one of what I assume to be many writers who captivate audiences with accounts of things that I did not, in fact, see firsthand, I ask you to pause before rendering your judgment. I once considered myself a bear hunter. Once. I considered myself one because I did in fact go bear hunting. I considered myself a bear hunter because I, like most bear hunters, had listened to the baying of walkers, redbones and Plott hounds as their passionate cries stirred my soul and propelled my burning legs up the sides of mountains well beyond the point at which any reasonable human would have turned around and gone home. I considered myself a part of the team because I found a group of people who only cared about what I could contribute to the goal and not where I grew up, who I knew, or what I did to earn a living. I considered myself whole because I was able to reconnect with who I was, to get back to nature, and to restore my soul. I was far from seasoned and far from what anyone would consider skilled, but sometimes wanting something badly enough is enough. After all, that is why they call it hunting, is it not? It is the hunt that drives the hunter. It is not the catch but the pursuit. No, a bird in the hand is not better than two in the bush. It is not better; it is not equal; it is nothing. A bird in the hand is just food, but a bird in the bush, or in our example a bear in the thick mountain laurels, is pure motivation. At least, it could have been.

I do not hate bears. I do not harbor a grudge against them. So why this drive to pursue them? As expressed above, I have little to no skill in tracking them, and as of this writing, I have never even raised a rifle to take aim at one. All I know of this sacred ritual is what I have been told happens when you are one of the chosen, or one of the skilled. I know about the dogs because I have led them to the point where their having picked up the trail, I turned them loose. I know the sound because I have experienced its piercing the cold, mountain air currents. I know the prey because I have dragged their formerly powerful, and by the time I reached them, lifeless bodies down mountainsides. After all, the newcomer must pay his or her dues, and I am happy to do it without complaint. But why? Why put myself through this? Why drag someone else’s success for miles? Why should I care about chasing giants through trees and over mountains, if they have done no harm to me?

It is all in the motivation. It is why this bear season was the most important of my life. It is why this hunt had everything, past and future, riding on it. It is why, for me, the world changed with one sentence. The man who uttered it had no idea — he simply could not — how powerful his seemingly innocuous words could be. Still, they crushed my soul much more quickly than the bullet fired later that day ended the life of the bear through which it passed. At least I assume it ended quickly. I guess I will never know.

Let us pause for a quick devotional. While the Bible offers a lot to ponder concerning the tongue, its uses, and the importance of mastering its use by a well-trained mind, it does not offer much on the subject of the unintended consequences of our words. It does speak to these events, but not directly. One verse stands out to me here. This one verse developed a new meaning for me in the moment you have yet to see, but which haunts every word I type. Proverb 15:4 (NRSV) says, A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit. I have no desire to use the Bible as a weapon against an opponent that never understood his offense. My goal is to show what those words did, while lacking any intent that I know of to do so. Having said that, the perfection of this verse is that it contrasts the good that words might do when used to build or heal, calling them a tree of life, with what words can do when used, or received, in other ways. The word translated above as perverseness can also be translated as twisted. This twist can be associated with the roots or trunk of that tree. The tree that brings healing and restoration, our words, when twisted, become capable of immense harm.¹ They break the spirit. Intent never enters the picture. The intent may be harmless, or more likely in today’s unthinking age, completely meaningless to those who speak them. That does not matter to the writer of this verse.

The question, then, becomes simple. How does one avoid harming others with words in a twisted reality where intentions are unknown? I think this is where our example – a spokesperson unaware of the reality into which he is speaking – becomes incredibly useful. As you may have noticed in frustration, I have left the reader in the dark as to the actual words used or the reason they cut so deeply. That is intentional. Just as you are in the dark, so was he. Just as you have no idea why his words mattered so much in a fleeting moment, neither did he. We cannot know these things. We do not know the minds of those we encounter on a day-to-day basis, be it in the woods, on the street, or even in our own homes. Every moment we have — all of them — is a moment such as this. The only thing we can do is guard our words. Take every opportunity to plant and cultivate those trees of life, so that they do not become mired in perverseness, leaving crushed spirits in their wake.

What did he say? Why exactly did it cause such harm? Before I repeat those words, let us look back; thirty-eight years back at the time of this writing. Let us go back to 1981.

42977.png

CHAPTER 2

The Boys

O n the tenth of April, in 1981, Debby Greene (her name at the time) drove herself to Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina. How she could reach the steering wheel of a ’62 Volkswagen beetle is beyond me. After all, she was reaching past twin boys in utero , extending the front of her small frame. She made it, though. Soon enough, her husband Paul joined her, and after a cesarean section, Zachary Paul Greene and John Courtney (thanks a lot, mom and dad) Greene began a fight for life. In what would now be called a NICU, a nurse began her career that year. She went on to work a long career there, and I kid you not, thirty years later when a loved one had a surgical procedure at Presbyterian hospital, I walked in and heard a nurse who was nearing her retirement say, You must be one of the Greene boys. I turned looking for a face I would recognize, but I saw none. I checked my shirt looking for a name tag and realized the hospital staff had not yet given me one. Seeing my confusion, the woman simply smiled and said, "you wouldn’t remember me, but I would never forget you two. That is how miraculous it was that we survived. We stopped breathing often, Zach much more often than I, but a caring and skilled community embraced us, literally and figuratively. They nursed us to strength. We lived. More miraculously in 1981, we lived and did not go blind as often happened to babies born as extremely premature as we were (a condition known as Retinopathy of Prematurity, or ROP). For all intents and purposes, we were whole. We made it home with scars on our ankles, and matching cross-shaped scars on our chests, just to the right of our hearts. We made it, but we were marked for life. We were, and would always be just what the nurse called us thirty years later, the Greene boys."

As hard as it is to believe at this point in the story, that tale is what makes our opening act matter. Much like the bear hunt described above, I cannot recount that day based on my own memories. I doubt anyone can truly remember their own births, but it certainly affects them. I still wear a scar on my right pectoral muscle that reminds me of the traumatic fight for life that began that day. It matters, but it does not matter because it is when my life on earth began. No, it matters because of the twin with which it began. It matters because, as the nurse said, I was just one half of a greater whole that would be the Greene boys. Like a bear hunt thirty-eight years later, it matters because of the circumstances that surrounded it, none of which were in my control. What you may or may not know is that being a twin makes everything different. I do not think it makes one any more special or valuable than any other human being, but the fact that someone shares life with you from a pre-born state just makes you different.

Twins see the world differently. We do not see it in terms of what affects me without at least entertaining a thought about us. While I am not a psychologist, I do have a hunch about this. I think that while simply being together all of the time is the most logical reason for this phenomenon, the real explanation may just be birthdays. A twin does not know what it is like to have his or her own birthday. Instead, we only know what it is like to have our birthday. That one day each year there is a strange emotional occurrence wherein some twins might be angry, or at least annoyed that we do not know what it is like to have our own special day, which other children seem to value so highly. Each of us does not get to be the center of everyone’s attention. No, we must share. Unless the clock was just really friendly and the twins were born at 11:59pm and 12:01am, or some such thing, they have to share that day. I say some twins might be angry, because I do not think many are. Indeed, the temptation to be angry is there, but the fact is, most twins are grateful. There is one simple but life-defining reason for that gratefulness. That day you do not get to be the center of all your loved ones’ attention is also a day that reminds you that you have not been lonely when others were. That day you are forced, by nature, to share, is also a reminder of how lucky you are to have the person with whom you share it. In an odd way, it is like a sibling version of a happily married couple’s wedding anniversary. The day is not special because it is mine, but the day is even more special because it is uniquely ours. We, twins, experience the world differently from others, because we experience it for the first and many successive times together. Encountering and learning about the world differently means we cannot help but see it differently. That difference, though, affects everything. Even the way we relate to other people in our lives.

The most glaring example of this is something I learned about myself in graduate school from an off the cuff example given by a professor who did not even know at the time that I was a twin. He was teaching a class about how different life experiences affect people and make them into who they are in ways that others who encounter them cannot understand. In the process, he gave the example of his twin brother. His brother, like him, had to learn how to communicate with others who were not twins because they left large parts of stories out while talking to people. As he explained, being a part of a set of people who experienced everything together (a phenomenon not unique to twins, but also most multiples and siblings close in age), means you expect others to know what you mean without having actually told them. A twin learns to communicate while doing so with someone to whom he or she does not have to explain any experience, having had the same experiences, usually simultaneously. There are rare occasions, like a story of something one saw while walking down a hallway if the other stayed in the living room, wherein one learns to explain things adequately. Barring those exceptions, most of a twin’s major experiences in formative years are shared. Thus, years later, without intentionally thinking about it, it is common to simply assume others know things that they could not possibly have experienced and leave out valuable information. When I heard this, again in graduate school, it cast a new light on a large portion of my life to that point. First, I had the realization that I may not be the best communicator, and my livelihood is heavily reliant upon public speaking. Second, and more importantly, it showed what a wide-reaching impact this simple and to me insignificant condition of being born at the same time as another has made. It shaped more than my relationship with my brother. It shaped my relationships with everyone (as long as I was expected to communicate in any form with them). In this way, it even affected who I am, which brings me to a bigger concern.

Identity. Each of us has one. For multiples, though, do we each get to have our own? The nature and nurture idea has been an important one for a long time, and in research of that idea, twins and other multiples have been an important source for case studies. Take my life, for example; as mentioned above, I am a Greene boy. As far back as I can remember, I always was. Is that