rich and chris were away at a basketball camp, summoned from the gym to see their father. my father is not a man to show a lot of emotion, but he was his eyes were teared up. took his glasses off, said your mother killed herself. she overdosed on drugs. jim, who was headed into the third grade, was the next to find out. it was pretty tough to handle at 8 years old. i used to have a recurring nightmare that she was in the hospital, and i would go up to the doctor and tell the doctor that she s not dead, she s just asleep. as the perrys tried to come to grips with their mother s death, all they could point to were her long bouts with depression. the family traced rita s mental illness to the loss of her firstborn child, a boy named tommy who had died as an infant. rita had been a nurse and believed, while pregnant with tommy, her exposures to x-rays caused the illness that proved fatal. she could never move on from