Carolyn, you're free.

That's what the therapist said, but Carolyn Hetherwick just felt lost.

Despite all her achievements, she had never had the slightest sense of freedom. First it was the master's degree in 1970. Then came the workaday grind and a mentally ill son who needed constant care. Along the way there was a devastatingly depressed husband and a grandson with his own set of problems.

There were insurance claims to file and government agencies to rattle and teachers who had to be educated about her son's problems. And all the while, there were the hospitals, years and years of sterile hallways and lousy food as she sat at the bedside of one family member after another, telling them they would be OK: son, husband, grandson.

Then suddenly, at age 60, she was no longer responsible for anyone but herself.

It happened one afternoon last August. Her husband, Bryan, shot their 5-year-old grandson and then himself in front of the Monroe police station.

Carolyn blames many of her family's problems on mental illness. But they could just as easily be blamed on job loss and a depressed economy, on government cutbacks, or the difficulty of accessing what mental-health services remain. She could blame the hospital that didn't think Bryan was sick enough, or the system that allowed him to acquire a handgun with ease. Others might simply blame Bryan.

But this story isn't about blame. It's about a family - well-educated, middle-class, loving and generous - and what happened when they lost their footing.

At a stage in life when many women are long set in their ways, she has had to ask herself: Who am I? What do I want?

After much thought, she decided to keep fighting.

Problem widespread

Carolyn Hetherwick sees mental illness everywhere. "We're not an isolated situation," she said of her family.

MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES Carolyn Hetherwick stands outside the Monroe police station, where her husband shot and killed himself and their grandson last August.

Indeed, by the time of the shootings, a major mental-health task force in Washington had been meeting for months, listening to stories like the Hetherwicks' and trying to figure out how to mend the state's problem-plagued mental-health network - from the local emergency rooms that are so jammed they can't admit patients, to the community programs that don't seem to exist, to the state hospital that costs too much.

On Dec. 7, they asked for Carolyn's help. Would she be willing to tell her family's story in front of this group? Tomorrow?

The task was by no means easy. It would be the first time she talked about the shootings in such a public way, and she'd have to do it in front of scores of people. Then again, how could she refuse?

"I could give into not having a husband after all these years," she later explained. "But what's that going to accomplish?"

Carolyn worked furiously into the night, writing and rewriting, surrounded by photos of Bryan and her grandson that crammed her living room. No, this wasn't easy. Finally, she came up with a phrase. "I want you to look at these images," she would tell the group, "and I don't want them ever to leave your mind."

There's more to the story of Bryan Hetherwick, she would explain, than a single horrific act.

They were in love

How do you summarize your husband of 39 years?

Carolyn starts at the beginning. They met in ninth grade, in a suburb of New Orleans, and, as corny as it sounds, she said they were meant to be together.

Bryan wanted to be a minister. Carolyn wanted to study Christian education. They talked about joining the Peace Corps and married when they were both 21.

"He was a true Southern gentleman," she said. Bryan held doors open for Carolyn and wouldn't take a seat until she did first. He was honest, loyal and made her a cassette tape of love songs for each anniversary.

"They were in love," their daughter, Michele, said.

After deciding the ministry wasn't for him, Bryan went into insurance, becoming a casualty underwriter handling major accounts. He was good at it.

But Bryan seemed so very depressed. Eight times over the course of their marriage, Carolyn put Bryan in the hospital for psychiatric treatment. He took antidepressants and went to counseling, yet nothing seemed to cure him.

But Bryan was only one of her problems.

Two infants adopted

Imagine parenthood without respite. Imagine round-the-clock guard duty over a child no baby-sitter could possibly handle. Imagine finding your son in such a rage that he chewed off the windowsill.

This was Carolyn and Bryan's life.

After seven years of trying to have children of their own, in 1972 they adopted a 12-day-old boy and named him Roy; three years later, they adopted Michele, just three weeks old.

For much of his youth, Roy would explode into spells of screaming and ranting for hours. He broke the windows in his bedroom until they were finally replaced with Plexiglas. He was kicked out of schools.

HETHERWICK FAMILY / THE SEATTLE TIMES Brennan Hetherwick and his grandparents Carolyn and Bryan Hetherwick celebrate Brennan's fifth birthday in this family photograph.

By 13, he was in a psychiatric hospital. Back then, they hospitalized mental patients longer, which Carolyn says helped her son.

But Roy still had problems. He was diagnosed with various mental illnesses, but the one that stuck was bipolar disorder.

"Family life in a household dealing with a bipolar child is about as unpleasant as it comes," according to "The Bipolar Child," a book by Demitri and Janice Papolos that Carolyn has turned to for answers. Guilt, anger, confusion and fear become the family's operating mode, the book explains. Even things like going to a restaurant with a bipolar child are off-limits because any little change can set off a torrent.

Through Roy's youth, Carolyn was a schoolteacher and later taught college courses and worked as a consultant to public schools in Texas. But when she pulls out a thick folder of paperwork tracking some of Roy's history, it's clear that he was her real full-time job. There are diagnoses and phone numbers and calculations of doctors' bills. There are letters she sent to government officials pleading for help, and responses that are little more than lists of still more agencies to call.

Some mothers' hopes are crushed by bureaucracy, but through sheer persistence, Carolyn grew adept at penetrating the barriers to services. Her motto: When one window is closed, God opens another.

The lesson would come in handy again and again. Especially after Roy had a child of his own.

Pair inseparable

Thank goodness for grandparents.

That's what Carolyn remembers the Texas judge saying in March of 2000 when, with Roy's consent, he awarded custody of 11-month-old Brennan to Carolyn and Bryan, who then lived in a suburb of Dallas.

"That baby was so intelligent," Carolyn said. By age 3, he knew his states and his months and the full name of just about every wild animal. Brennan and his grandfather, whom he called Papa, were inseparable.

As a preschooler, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder. Instead of taking his rage out on windows, like his dad, Brennan directed it at Carolyn and later himself. Because Carolyn was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the 1980s, she was less able to handle the physical assaults.

It was as if Carolyn and Bryan were thrust back in time - another parenthood with no respite, only now they were in their 50s. The good thing was, this time she knew exactly what to do.

"I was relentless," she said.

She got Brennan therapy early, and doctors put him on psychiatric medications. That didn't stop his rages, but allowed some degree of stability. Carolyn got Brennan into a special class in the public school. He was proud to help his classmates in wheelchairs and was just as generous with his imagination, taking them on pretend adventures.

Finally, things seemed to be going smoothly. Then came June 2003.

That's when Bryan was laid off after his employer, TIG Specialty Insurance, was bought by another company.

After that, Bryan spent many hours of many days sitting in a recliner, motionless except for his wiggling toes and pulsing temples. Carolyn said that's how she knew he was thinking.

After a year of unemployment, with their savings dwindling, they decided to join Michele, her husband and their two young girls in Monroe, thinking there might be insurance jobs here.

Within two months, Bryan and Brennan would be dead.

Arrangements fall apart

Things got worse quickly. Four weeks after their June arrival in Monroe, Bryan was in such bad shape that Carolyn called police, afraid he would take his own life.

Officers arrived to find Bryan nearly catatonic. That afternoon, they took him to one hospital, which, after a wait, sent him by ambulance to another. By around noon the next day, he was released after doctors decided he wasn't sick enough to stay.

"Unless they had some magic dust, I don't know how they could possibly think he was not going to hurt himself," Carolyn said later.

Meanwhile, the elaborate prior arrangements she made for Brennan were falling apart. The Monroe School District said that since it was so late in the year, Brennan shouldn't start until the fall. There was no summer school in Monroe for kids like him.

Another agency said they would accept him, but that their other clients were ages 9 and up. That wouldn't work. Still another program accepted 5-year-olds - but only from King County.

Without steady day care and battling another MS relapse, Carolyn couldn't handle Brennan alone. The last week in July, Bryan picked up Brennan from yet another day-care trial and left with more bad news: Brennan couldn't return until they lined up a one-on-one aide.

By this point, it appears Bryan had lost all hope.

Daddy's death trip

The afternoon of Aug. 5, Carolyn ran out to sign some medical forms. When she got back, Bryan and Brennan were gone.

Carolyn calls it "Daddy's death trip." First, they drove up to Mukilteo, where a private gun dealer sold Bryan a handgun on the spot, as Brennan sat outside in his car seat. (Because the gun was from the dealer's personal collection, a background check and so-called "cooling-off" period weren't required.)

Then Bryan drove to the Monroe police station, arriving around 6:30 p.m. A witness saw Bryan get Brennan out of his car seat, put his arm gently on the boy's back and then walk with him toward the front entrance.

He then yelled something that no one really caught, pulled out his weapon and shot Brennan and himself. Bryan left Carolyn only a brief note: "I didn't want to leave you alone with Bren." As horrific as his actions were, Carolyn believes Bryan thought this was the only answer that wouldn't force her to care for Brennan alone.

Still, how does a survivor live with something like this?

As her therapist explained it, Bryan had entered the "dead zone," where he was neither thinking nor feeling.

"His mental illness took over," Carolyn said.

Searching for clues

I'm trying to figure out who I am.

Carolyn Hetherwick repeats it several times in the course of a conversation.

As the months pass, she keeps turning the pages of her life, looking for clues. She loves to sew, to hike and to tend a little garden out back. That's something. Between Bryan, Roy and Brennan, she never had much of a social life - but nothing's stopping her now, she thought.

Over time, strangers began to seek her out. One day, Carolyn got an e-mail from a local mother asking her for advice on getting services for her mentally ill son. Another woman followed soon after, and more after that. At the very least, she can assure them they're not alone.

"Nobody knows how to get into the system," Carolyn explained. She would tell them how to fight until they found a loophole.

Soon Roy, now 32, needed her help, too, to stop his benefits from being cut off after Bryan's death. She couldn't let that happen.

Bit by bit, she began to realize that she had something more to give. Finally, she realized: The only thing to do was take her fight public.

When one window closes, God opens another.

"Look at these images"

By last December, the mental-health task force had already logged about 60 hours of discussion over seven months of meetings. They had heard so many stories of psychosis and sadness that it was hard to keep them straight.

Carolyn was exhausted, having stayed up until 4 a.m. preparing to speak. But she lurched into her presentation as best she could.

"I want you to look at these images and I don't want them ever to leave your mind," she said.

With these words, this petite Southern grandmother, this newcomer from Texas, held about 100 strangers rapt.

She made sure to point out that she was able to find services for Bryan and Brennan in Texas, but not in Washington.

"We need more family members who are willing to stand up and scream and holler and come out of the closet," she said later.

Maybe, she thought, this horrible experience - and the stories of others - could somehow help.

By March, the governor signed a bill that over time will require some health insurance to cover mental-health treatment at the same level as physical health, a major goal of the task force. State officials still are working on revamping other aspects of the system, including the logjam in local ERs.

Meanwhile, she clings to her message: There's more to the story of Bryan Hetherwick than a single horrific act.

Maureen O'Hagan: 206-464-2562 or mohagan@seattletimes.com