A Mother Talks About Losing Son Who `Had It All'

She knew I had the medical examiner's report about her son. That's what you do for stories, make copies of all available public documents. I had gotten the report after Diana Hardwick-Smith wrote me.

She wrote, "My Kurt was five weeks shy of his 22nd birthday. He was a much loved, kind, sensitive guy. To all who knew him, he `had it all.' " Then her Kurt killed himself on the morning of Sept. 28, 1992.

Her Kurt was of the same generation as Kurt Cobain of Nirvana. Her Kurt even had a sister named Kim, just like Cobain. Her Kurt had written an apologetic suicide note, saying he was sorry, but he couldn't go on, just like Cobain.

The mom wanted to talk to me about her Kurt. She had read what I had written about Cobain's suicide. It was not a particularly sympathetic piece that generated much criticism. It was the letters from the relatives of those who committed suicide that mattered the most to me.

"When I read your column, it was exactly how I would have felt two years ago," the mom said. That was before there was a knock on her door at 6:15 in the morning, asking if she was related to a Kurt Hardwick.

Retracing the steps

Over the past months, the mom had retraced every step of her son's life, trying to find answers. "I've got it down to two or three hours a day," she said. She was talking about the hours she spent going over and over everything to do with Kurt.

But she hadn't been able to call the medical examiner's office. Now she asked to read the investigator's report.

"Apparent Suicide - Jumped from Aurora Bridge . . .," it began.

"At the scene I found the deceased lying face-up on the pavement . . . Evidence of trauma included: abrasions on the anterior torso and face and palpable extremity fractures . . . consistent with the assumption that he plunged from the bridge to the parking lot, a distance of about 150 feet . . ."

The mother began crying. "Oh, my. Oh, my," she said. "My poor son."

Kurt Hardwick was raised in a loving family that cared much about him. His parents had divorced when he was a baby, but it was an amicable split. He had a middle-class upbringing, complete with a collection of Matchbook cars when he was young and Little League baseball. He had no scrapes with police, he didn't have a drug problem. He had good grades and then enrolled in Western Washington University, with his parents paying for his schooling expenses.

Behavior left no clues

When he was alive, although Kurt fretted about what he wanted out of school, and later a career, there was nothing in his behavior that made his relatives worry. Lots of college kids haven't figured out what to do with their lives.

Diana Hardwick-Smith last saw her son alive on a Sunday afternoon, the day before he killed himself. She had given him a $200 check so he could buy a TV set.

Kurt had driven down from Bellingham for the weekend. He and some buddies had gone to some Pioneer Square bars. About all they noticed was that Kurt had been quieter than usual.

Kurt shared an apartment with another college student. The roommate didn't notice anything unusual, either. That Sunday night, Kurt went to bed early while the roommate watched a movie on TV.

Then, sometime in the middle of the night, Kurt woke up, made the two-hour drive to Seattle, parked his car on a side street near the Aurora Bridge, locked the car, left a note on the seat, walked to the bridge, and jumped. "That was my son, parking the car so as not to inconvenience anyone," the mother said.

On an envelope, Kurt wrote, "I'm sorry I had to do this, but my life has become full of terrible confusion. Please forgive me. I love you all. Love, Kurt."

That was it.

The mom now had to find some answers for an act for which there are no clear answers. Kurt's sister, Kimberly Patrick, also needed answers. She's 26, a teacher who's a stay-at-home mom with a baby daughter.

Maybe her brother didn't feel like he was good enough, Kimberly said.

"I don't know what standards he would have used. He was certainly good enough in his parents' and my eyes," she said. "I think a lot of times there isn't just one answer. It'd be easier if there was one. I just don't know. It made me real sad that he must have felt we'd all be better off without him."

In the days and weeks after the suicide, Kimberly cried, and, sometimes when she'd close her eyes at night, she'd see images of her brother jumping.

Those images don't haunt her anymore. Sometimes, Kimberly wears one of her brother's old sweatshirts. "It makes me feel better," she said.

Searching for answers, healing

Kimberly and her mom go to Survivors of Suicide meetings. The mom bought 75 books that she thought would help her; she visited her son's apartment; she went to the Aurora Bridge and even carved his initials on the railing; she tried to recall how he might have shown his depression. Those answers, too, were elusive.

Perhaps it was the time the family went to Las Vegas for his 21st birthday. In restrospect, he seemed quiet and depressed. Perhaps it was the conversations she had with Kurt about what he'd major in in college. Perhaps that's as much as he could talk about his depression.

On the date of his birthday last year, the mom wrote a letter to her son. She said, "To know you suffered is the most heavy cross I bear. I have tried many, many times to feel the pain you were in. If it was anything like the pain I feel in losing you, I know it was unbearable."

Since the suicide, the mother has met others whose relatives killed themselves. "It was people just like us," she said. Decade by decade, suicide rates of white males keep going up. In 1970, it was 18 suicides for every 100,000 white males. In 1990, it was 22 suicides for every 100,000 white males.

`Arm yourself well'

The mom showed me the eulogy she had written for her son.

"Kurt went into this battle unarmed," it said. "If there is such a battle in your life, arm yourself well. Seek out the professionals in this kind of fight. Then the dragons don't have as much power."

She showed me a notebook full of pictures of her Kurt, Christmas pictures, golfing pictures, graduation pictures.

I went through the pictures, one even taken three weeks before Kurt Hardwick died, and there was nothing in them, nothing that remotely indicated he would have ended up on the Aurora Bridge.

But he did.

"I look at that picture, and maybe for that minute he felt happy," his mom said about that last photo taken of her smiling son. "Then he was pulled down."