Free When I Was Young and In My Prime by Alayna Munce

crisis line aren’t really suicidal. Some of them are just simply in over their heads. Sometimes a single mother will call at her wits’ end saying that she saw the crisis line number in the lineup at the food bank, and you can hear the baby crying in the background and you can tell from her grammar and her diction what kind of family she comes from, if you take my meaning. Sometimes I positively long to interrupt and say, We were, dear, not we was.  
    And some of the callers are just old. Those are the calls I do best with—I like to think of them as my specialty in a way, although it doesn’t work that way of course. There’s one old lady who calls every once in a while rather confused—can’t remember when garbage day is and can’t for the life of her figure out how to find out. Or sometimes she’ll call us to find out what day of the week it is. Once she called while I was on shift and she was crying, saying, I just dropped a vase full of freesia on the kitchen floor. What should I do? she kept saying, Help me Martha, I don’t know what to do. She sometimes calls us Martha, so that’s what they’ve christened her in the logbook, Martha, though I pointed out in one of my logbook entries that her name isn’t Martha—that’s obviously the name of somebody else in her life, so it doesn’t really fit to call her Martha, if you see what I mean. Well in any case, technically we’re not supposed to encourage this kind of call, and some of the other volunteers have tried to make referrals—set her up with local homecare you know—but I don’t mind talking to her when she calls. It’s nice and satisfying to have some concrete way to be of help sometimes. I always picture her in a kitchen rather like my own, only with a crucifix where our clock is. She must be Catholic. Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, she’s always saying. Lord have mercy, between every sentence.  
    Of course, there are the times when we get a call from somebody who’s actually suicidal. If there’s somebody else on shift I’ll pass it on to them. They try to always pair up a less experienced volunteer with one who has more experience. Once, though, Marie-Lou Cromwell, who’s actually a therapist in real life, called in sick at the last moment and there was no one to replace her, so I was on shift all by myself. I usually take afternoon shifts since I’m retired, and from reading the logbook you get the idea that most of the suicide calls are night shift ones. In any case, this one day when I was all alone, wouldn’t you know it, I got a real suicide call. I could tell right away it was serious because the young man’s voice was so distant and his silences were so... well, so silent. And long. Oh I can still remember those silences. Gives me a shiver thinking of them. I was trying to juggle so many things at once—trying to remember everything I’d learned in the training about techniques for drawing a person out—what to say, what not to say, and at the same time trying not to remember how in the training my instinct was always to say the exact thing you’re not supposed to say, and then trying to remember all the business about making a contract, getting the caller to make you a promise, and at the same time trying to find out where they are so you can send the police, and all the while trying to give them a sense that there’s something to live for. Well, for pity’s sake. All that and at the same time making sure they know you’re really listening because they can tell, you know, and sometimes they’ll just hang up on you if your mind is wandering. But then on the other hand trying not to be pushy or say too much because they’ll hang up then, too. All that whirling around my head like a blizzard in those silences of his.  
    Well finally, after about four or five silences when I kept thinking he was