For the thing which
I greatly feared is come upon me,
and that which I was afraid of
Is come unto me.
I was not in safety, neither
had I rest, neither was I quiet;
yet trouble came.
– Job

According to his obituary in the Sylva Herald, Traig Wade, 36, died on April 4. Although the Sylva Police Department initially verified the fact that Wade had committed suicide, later inquiries for additional information were unsuccessful, and the details of Traig’s life in the weeks prior to his death remain uncertain. An unconfirmed report indicated that Wade had called 911 a week or more prior to his death, stating that he needed help; an ambulance had been immediately dispatched to the Varsity Motel. Apparently, Wade was taken to the C. J. Harris Hospital and from there, he was referred to a mental health institution near Asheville for counseling. Additional unconfirmed sources have indicated that he was released on Thursday, May 3. As his obituary indicates, he died the following day.

For more than a decade, Traig Wade was a familiar figure in this area. Most of us saw him hiking (his walk was a kind of “purposeful march.”) along Highway 107 between Burger King and Sylva. He frequented City Lights Book Store, the Jackson County Library, the library at Southwestern Community College and half dozen video stores in the area. He was a welcome patron and customer, not only because he purchased books and rented videos, but because of his genial personality.

“He would compliment everyone in the library,” said Sandy Molin, “commenting on their attractive appearance. He talked about books and movies constantly. He told us his name was Ian.”

Bill DeVoe, Traig’s employer at Burger King, smiled as he remembered Wade’s explanation for his “preferred name.” “It was Ian Fleming,” he said, “the guy who wrote the James Bond books. Traig admired him and simply decided about six years ago that he would change his name. ‘Ian,’ he would say, ‘my name is Ian Wade,’ and then he would laugh.”

I asked DeVoe about Traig’s family.

“Well, in recent years we were his family. The entire staff here loved the guy. He was estranged from his father, and after his mother died, he only had close ties with his sister and a little niece that he doted on. Each day he arrived for work with a new book and four packs of cigarettes. He only smoked one pack and gave away the rest to the staff.”

Mike Lackey, owner of the Burger King, said, “Ian was one of my favorite people in the world. He was totally dependable. Working here can be frustrating, but when Ian was in the kitchen, laughing and joking, we all felt better.”

At City Lights, I asked Chris Wilcox what Ian read (I decided to call him by his chosen name).

“Science fiction, fantasy, suspense and espionage works in the vein of Day of the Jackal. He ordered more books than any other patron of the store.” Donna Searles, who knew Ian at two of her part-time jobs, talked to him at Smoky Mountain Video and the SCC library.

“Ursula Le Guin was a favorite, especially The Left Hand of Darkness. I remember that his favorite fairy tale was ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ Did he really read a book each day? “Well, he may not have finished every single one of them,” conceded DeVoe, “but he began a new one each day I think he finished the majority.”

I asked if Ian was religious.

“Very much so,” said DeVoe. “He carried a pocket Bible and would sometimes ask us about what we thought, and if we believed in what he called ‘the war between Good and Evil.’”

Donna told me that Ian was fascinated by ideas such as alternate universes, life on other worlds and reincarnation. “He had one of the most imaginative and inquiring minds I have ever encountered.” She also noted that he gave books away and often left her a bag filled with paperbacks on her desk.
So, what happened to this genial, intelligent and courteous man?

“His mother died some five years ago,” said Opal Ward at the Jackson County Library. “Ian had lived with her for quite some time, and after her death, I sensed a change in him. I don’t think he ever recovered.”

DeVoe said that another incident may have contributed to Ian’s state of mind. Several months ago, the death of Mike Lackey’s daughter plunged Ian into a deep depression.

“She was a familiar figure at Burger King, and her death seemed to remind him of the loss of his mother. He was suddenly living that experience over again,” said DeVoe.

At some point in the last few years, Ian had sought professional help. He told several friends that he had been diagnosed as a manic depressive and had started taking a variety of medications. However, he later told others that he was a paranoid schizophrenic and mentioned that he sometimes “heard voices.” Ian confided to several friends that he disliked the drugs and complained that when he took them he was not “himself.” About two months ago, he suddenly told DeVoe that he was quitting his job at Burger King, saying simply that he had “some serious problems.”

Everyone noticed a significant change in his demeanor. Ian was losing his genial personality. He talked of a feeling that “dark forces” were closing in on him. He withdrew to the cheerless confines of a small room at the Varsity Motel. He had his books, of course, but he had stopped reading. (Some people have said that the books were detrimental to Ian, causing him to live in a fantasy world. Well, many of us who, like Ian, read a great deal, suspect that just the opposite is true. Sometimes, it is the books that keep us going.)

During the last six weeks of his life, I suspect that Ian suffered indescribable psychological pain. The few people who saw him during this period say that he became increasingly withdrawn, and that he seemed to have lost any enjoyable response to the world around him. A familiar pattern for people suffering from severe depression is a growing sense of panic and dislocation. The world seems cold, even sinister. Most of us can escape stress momentarily by sleeping, but for people in deep depression, even this temporary relief is denied them.

William Styron, the author of Darkness Visible (a book about his own narrow escape from suicide), notes that friends, family and even physicians experience “a failure of sympathy” simply because of “the inability of healthy people to imagine a form of torment so alien to everyday experience.”

In the final stages of their torment, many manic-depressives experience an inability to communicate and seem increasingly apathetic. They simply stop calling out, asking for help because they finally come to believe that all help is beyond them. Ian stopped walking to the library and the bookstore. He stopped talking, pushing out, making contact. Finally, in a tiny room so sterile and bleak that it could only increase his sense of isolation, he surrendered.

Despite the precise textbook classifications of various kinds of mental illness, most victims are not “classic examples.” In other words, they may exhibit many symptoms of a specific type, yet fail to have others. In addition, individuals sometimes embody a cross-section of symptoms from a variety of conditions such as paranoia, compulsive behavior and depression. Based on Ian’s comments to his friends, his condition seemed to be such a mixture. There are other possibilities, of course. Were some of Ian’s symptoms feigned? Did he dramatize some aspects of his illness and conceal others? Only one thing is certain. On the day that Ian Wade died, he was as blameless in his own demise as a victim of terminal cancer.

(Gary Carden is a writer and storyteller who lives in Sylva.)

 

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