Solace scarce after soldier's suicide
By Garret Mathews
Monday, August 18, 2008
Christine Knapp carefully removes blades of grass from the blanket that she
keeps tightly spread over her son Adam Fiock's grave marker at St. John the
Baptist Catholic Church Cemetery.
"He's all covered up," the 53-year-old Evansville woman says, her voice
breaking. "I don't want anything to get on him."
Fiock, 26, committed suicide Oct. 6, 2007, at his Evansville apartment,
shooting himself in the head with a pistol. The Castle High School graduate served
with the Indiana National Guard 163rd Field Artillery in Iraq, joining in
1999.
Knapp, a prenatal care coordinator for the Vanderburgh County Health
Department, says her son became increasingly withdrawn after the unit returned in
October 2006. He drank more and occasionally slashed his arms. He stopped going to
his classes at the University of Southern Indiana. Sometimes he didn't leave
his apartment for days at a time.
"I come to the cemetery almost every day after work," Knapp says. "It's my
special place. This is where I ate my Thanksgiving dinner."
She doesn't know what caused her son to end his life.
"In the military, they'll fix your ankle or anything else that gets hurt. Not
your mind. I read accounts all the time about a returning soldier doing this
and another returning soldier doing that."
Knapp looks down at the flowers on the gravestone.
"This is part of the story, too. I don't want people like my son forgotten."
As a youngster, Knapp says Fiock was "very outgoing and fun-loving. Everybody
liked him. Things came easy for him. He was my go-to guy."
She believes her divorce led to tensions at home. Fiock's grades went from
good to average.
"He was very patriotic. When the group was getting ready to leave Evansville
to be deployed, he said, 'Mom, I'm not gonna look at you when we go to the
bus because I don't want to lose my focus.' And he didn't."
When Fiock returned, Knapp believed at first that he was well-adjusted.
"I had just one question. 'Son, did you have to kill anybody over there?' He
said they had to draw down on a car once, but the occupants got out, and there
wasn't any shooting. I was very relieved."
Within a few weeks, Fiock developed a listless attitude about going back to
college and landing a job. He spent the money he had when he came back from the
war and got behind on his bills.
"The person who wanted to go to Notre Dame when he was a little kid and
become a doctor wasn't there anymore," his mother says.
He moved out of her house, bought a used car and got an apartment.
"The last time I saw him was Sept. 20 when we went out to eat. He was
recovering from having cut himself. They discharged him from the hospital, and he had
his medicine. Still, I was worried."
He finally returned her several phone calls 10 days later, saying he was
"just kicking back chilling." He talked about the Oakland Raiders, his favorite
football team.
The time of Fiock's death was about 9 a.m. on Oct. 6.
"It's eerie," Knapp says. "At almost exactly that time, I started to call
Adam to see if he wanted to go work out, but I didn't think he would be awake
yet."
That night, a friend gained entrance to the apartment, saw a leg dangling
over the bed and called 911.
"I was so hysterical I almost drove in front of a train," she recalls. "They
ended up putting me in the hospital overnight for observation. "
Knapp says she took some of her son's uniforms back to the Armory, "and
nobody said they were sorry for my loss or anything like that. When I asked to
keep one of his three footlockers, they told me it was standard issue and had to
be returned."
Knapp shows the small tattoo on her shoulder that bears the date of her son's
death.
"I baked a cake for Adam's first birthday after he was gone. Letting go is
so, so hard."
http://www.courierp ress.com/ news/2008/ aug/18/strugglin g-to-
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