Timothy Stephen Pickul

11/8/86 – 11/26/18

My dear friend Mary Ellen lost her 32-year-old son just after Thanksgiving. He’d struggled with addiction to pain meds after an injury to his groin which occurred during his Marine training in the late spring of 2011. Five years later his X-rays showed damage that would eventually lead to a hip replacement, and the doctors were handing out opioids like they were candy. But he had fought back, gone through rehab, and had been clean and sober. That’s why his death was such a shock.

I can actually say I knew Tim longer than anyone. I was visiting Mary Ellen and Steve one weekend when she was close to her due date. We went to the movies! She and I saw “The Name of the Rose” and Steve saw some action/adventure flick in the next theater. Unbeknownst to me she was having contractions the whole time, and we ended up at the hospital that night. When we couldn’t reach Mary’s sister it was decided that I’d be her coach. So I was standing next to the doctor when Tim entered the world, and it was one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen. 

Not living on the Cape I didn’t see Tim very often, but through phone calls and letters Mary kept me up to date. He called me just a few weeks ago, and we had the best talk. He sounded great: hopeful, determined, happy. 

He’d lost his dad to pancreatic cancer last spring. We talked about Steve, about the wild ride of grief. But he sounded grounded and able to take on whatever grief threw at him. I was hopeful for him. Mary Ellen just shared with me Tim’s words of encouragement to a dear friend written during August 2018, given to her by his friend Kelsey: 

“So like I’ve been writing a lot over the last year and this is part of something I wrote like 8 months ago and it’s actually happening.

It’s real simple. Start caring about and for yourself on a fundamentally deep level.  When you do that, you’ll start eating well, sleeping well, engaging in hobbies and social activities with friends, you’ll try new things, and let go of your past mistakes and heartaches.  And in doing so, you’ll naturally be attractive, without attractiveness being the goal – it’s just a side effect.

“When you truly love yourself (and not spoil yourself), when you start balancing short and long term happiness, and when you accept pain and boredom as integral parts of the human experience, you’ll begin to glow radiantly and attract people who also love themselves.

“Moreover, as you learn to truly do what’s best for you, not just want you want, you’ll learn to truly care about other people as well.  You’ll begin to feel complex layers of emotions on a regular basis. You’ll cry from happiness and feel the warmth of the sky in summer and the fresh morning air of winter. You’ll laugh in public, and smile at strangers and see children for the beautiful little miracles that they are, even when they’re being little pieces of shit.

“I’m not saying it’s easy to do.  I’m saying it’s simple.  Big difference. It’ll take years and years of work, but hey man.  You start spending 10 minutes a day on it, and ask for the help of others regularly along the way, and who knows?  5 years from now you’ll probably be an emotionally stable, complex, interesting, and well-rounded individual that people who love themselves want to be around.”

This letter, too, would have been reason to think his life had turned around.

So what happened? Was it the first holiday without his father? Another stressor we’ll never know? The key words are we’ll never know. Mary Ellen shared this with me yesterday: 

“One’s life does not ‘turn around’. They respond to the experiences of each day, the memories of days gone by and the possibilities of tomorrow’s design. ‘Turning around’ does not exemplify how one evolves as they move forward. It brings to mind a wise quote from Amy Rees Anderson – ‘Don’t look back, you’re not going that way.’ You gotta go through it, over it, under it, or around it. 

“How many people toss their Dads ashes into a river within 6 months of recovery? And how many times could he have used a call of encouragement or a cup of coffee, or a kick-the-soccer-ball-around-the-local-field outing. The shame of addiction and the fear by those who don’t have a clue, nor want to, is the disadvantage suffered by addicts. It’s as if their disease is any more their fault than diabetes, cancer, blindness, or hemophilia. 

“We are created to be together, to care for one another, to love one another and to mourn one another. How that manifests is our choice.”

My friend, Tim’s grieving mother, has every right to be angry, heartbroken and bereft about not just her son’s passing but by how he passed.

Which is why these words, a paraphrase from the author Louise Penny struck me as so appropriate: 

“His life cannot be defined by his death.  He belongs not in perpetual pain but in the beauty of his short life. Our inability to move on would keep him forever in those final moments.”

So I’ll remember the sweetness. I’ll remember the adorable kid, the handsome Marine, the funny guy, the loving son, the beautiful baby I saw come into the world. Godspeed Tim.

Deborah