Don was the youngest of 3 children.  His brother and sister were quite a bit older than he was so he was the real “baby” of the family.  His father worked for the post office at the main Boston office.  His mother died when he was 14 and he was never allowed to grieve for her.  His father, being from Maine, was a real “down east” Yankee, who didn’t believe in showing emotions, discussing feelings, etc.  He sent Don to relatives in Maine to “get over” his mother’s death.  Not long afterwards a very close friend of Don’s died from an infection.  This, on top of his mother’s death, had a profound effect on him.  But again, he never really grieved.  

Don worked in sales.  For several years he worked “on the road” selling sporting goods all over New England.  He loved to fish and spent his off-hours fishing and he belonged to a couple of fishing clubs and tied his own fishing flies. 

Don also loved jazz and had many friends who played in groups around the area.  He spent a lot of time at jazz clubs, went to the Newport Jazz Festival several years and had an unbelievable jazz record collection. 

Don and I were married in 1964.  We had met about a year before when I was working in a show room for a company that made patches for various groups.  As I have an uncle named Donald Kimball Laing, I had noticed his name in some of the records.  So when he came in to place an order for one of his fishing clubs we began talking about this.  He left, but was back about 15 minutes later and asked me out.  He said it was something he very rarely did – to ask someone out after just meeting them; and I told him it was something I never did – to go out with someone after just meeting them.   

After we started dating, the company he worked for went out of business and he began working in various stores selling sporting goods or appliances.  A few years before he died he began selling on the road again but only in our immediate area.  He wasn’t what you typically think of when you think of a salesman though.  He wasn’t as extraverted as one would expect but he was very congenial and had a very dry sense of humor.   

Don was a caring, gentle, very special person.  Four years after we were married we had our first child, Becky.  He was a fantastic father, ahead of his time in that he changed diapers, bathed and took care of her the way fathers are beginning to do now.  He used to make up stories for Becky about Charlie Brown, Snoopy (her favorite characters) and her having adventures.  She still has some of them on tapes.  Ben was born about 5 years later and Don was thrilled to have a son he could share his interests with and he took care of Ben the same as he had Becky.  As Ben got older he did share his interests – especially fishing - and they were extremely close. 

Don loved life and was extremely interested in everything that was going on – to the extent that he once said he hoped when he died the world would end because he didn’t want to miss out on anything.   

But when Ben died of suicide, at age 16, Don was a different person.  It was as though his life and any interest in life were gone.  He had never learned to deal with death and to lose the son he was so close to was just more than he could handle. 

I knew he wasn’t coping well and tried to help him with things I was learning at The Compassionate Friends but it wasn’t enough.  Still I never dreamed that he would take his own life.  Even though I had been contemplated doing it, I never dreamed that he was even contemplating it. 

But on July 5, 1991 as I sat upstairs reading, I heard a loud bang.  As the day before was the 4^th I thought someone had set off an extra firecracker. But a while later when I went downstairs I noticed a yellow pad of paper on the kitchen table with 3 laminated pictures across the top of it.  I went over to look at it and moved the pictures (one of him and Ben, one of Ben fishing and one of Becky and her daughter) and found his note.  I started going through the house, then began to go out the back door towards the barn but something stopped me. I went back and called the police. As they got out of the car I saw them looking towards the barn – he was there where he had taken a shotgun, put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger…

Love and peace,
Karen K.
Karen Kimball