Shirley Gonzales' Coping with Her Husband's Suicide Part 3/4

Shirley Gonzales: And here in the garage, it’s where it happened—right here. He hung himself from a dog leash; from a dog leash from the attic. It was a beam, a wooden beam from the attic. And it held him. It held that stretch apart. Caption: Shirley’s daughter makes a frantic 911 call. Shirley Gonzales: And he went to cut him down. He asked—of course, he was by himself, so it was just me and the officer. He went to go cut him down, and I was holding him. So that way, he wouldn’t fall. Well, he did. We ended up falling together. He fell all on the back of my arm, and we fell down together. And I was actually lying with him on the garage floor for about five minutes. And then the officer told me that I would have to get up, because it was a crime scene. And I didn’t want to get up. I just wanted to lay there with him. Caption: But it’s too late. Shirley Gonzales: And I miss him a lot. He was the love of my life. He was the best man that I have ever known besides my father. And he was a great dad to my father, and a great dad to my daughter. He has showed me so many things. He opened so many doors for me, and just taught me so much about life, in general. He taught me about respect, how to respect myself as a woman. I used to cuss a lot. And he would always tell me how it didn’t look right, didn’t sound right. There were just so many different things that he would teach me. He taught me about animals. He taught me about mechanics. This was the house of our dreams. And it’s sad that it ended up being a nightmare. Caption: The nightmare only gets worse. Shirley Gonzales: The next morning was very, very hard. My dad was there. It helped that my dad was there. It helped that my daughter was there. It helped that my crew were there, my artists. But it didn’t fill the void with him not being there. It just really hard to know—I’m going to have to live the rest of my life without him. I lost my home. We had 4-bedroom, 2-bath, 2-car garage home—a beautiful, beautiful home. I had to put my stuff in storage. I lost, of course, the support. He was there financially. He’s the one who paid the bills. I had no money. I had nothing. I had to come up with the funeral arrangements and the money. We had to work together as a family because we couldn’t afford it. I just—I lost a lot. I lost a lot. Caption: In the following months, Shirley is haunted by questions. Shirley Gonzales: Why me, God? Why? Why do I have to go through something like this? Why do I have to—why did I have to lose my husband? Why did my daughter have to lose the father that was really good to her? Why did he do this to his family? You know, he had—his family loved him so much. Suicide, to me, is it’s from the devil. It’s not from my God. And I think it’s a really bad thing to do, and a lot of people think that if you do it, you’re going to heaven. You’re going to hell because you’re taking what God gave you, and that’s life, and it’s only up to Him whether you’re going to live or you’re going to die. And to me, it was really hard in the beginning, because I was really scared. I was really worried for his soul. That’s what I was worried about after. I mean, I already know I had lost him. But I was worried about his soul. Male: She lost a lot of things. She lost—well, first she lost her confidence. And I could be lying back up a little bit, but she’s, to me, she was alright. She just had to find a way to let it go. I know it’s hard to let something like that go, you know what I’m saying? Especially with the person you love, so— Caption: Grief stricken, Alex’s parents blame Shirley. Shirley Gonzales: I do feel a lot of guilt and a lot of responsibility. I feel like everything that we went through led him to that point. Financially, emotionally, there were just a lot of different stresses on him. And it just—I mean, to this day, it eats me up. And people—I had his family members, some of them judging me. Some of them didn’t want to talk to me. I had one of them actually tell me that I broke his brother down, and that I was going to answer to God. And that really hurt. Caption: Calling on her faith, family and friends, Shirley begins the healing process. Shirley Gonzales: I had people who had been hanging around our house for months that weren’t there. I had people that didn’t even know that were there for me more. I had people on Myspace that showed me so much support and love, and gave me so much encouragement. And it just really helped a lot.