Sitting at my desk in a building spaz trying to work through the idea of the death of one's lifetime partner.
So you have these, like, mostly wonderful 30-50 years of marriage (you know, all divorce stuff aside) and then your partner dies.
You know, they die after all this life-building is complete. You've hit retirement, you've bought the overpriced, fuel-inefficient RV, and then this person that has been by your side for decades is suddenly whisked away by a rogue blood clot.
Or whatever.
So you've got these remaining, oh, 1-20 years of your life left without this person that you imagined spending all this "remaining" (depressing word choice, yay!) time with.
But they aren't there.
And your kids have moved out and had families of their own.
And your health isn't getting any better, on average. You could be in shitty health but still truck away for a good decade.
So you hop from senior citizen home to senior citizen home until you can't take care of yourself anymore and then you wind up in one of those homes halfway between a regular senior citizen "home" and a hospice.
And, if you track back a little bit, the last few years of your partner's life could have been filled with pain and you were unable to do anything about it except help him/her get out of bed. Right? Impotent against the body's decay, frustrated and hurting for your partner.
So it wasn't just a happy, easy, in his/her sleep death, it was a miserable, in and out of hospitals, pacing the corridors, drinking shitty coffee and eating even shittier hospital food, watching them sleep, watching then TV on mute or low volume, whatever show happens to be on. And then you watch that show over and over as the days pass, sometimes weeks pass.
And then you get them out of the hospital but, really, they're wasted. More skin and bones than they were.
And you know each trip to the hospital is not going to help them get better, but prolong.
They're almost like little refill stations running rapidly out of gas.
The car is going to stop eventually.
But you keep taking her in and filling her up because of love, because you want him/her not to be in pain, and you've got this hope that things will turn around.
And sometimes they do.
But, eventually, goes back down again.
So, five years later you've gone through the house you guys bought together, someplace either in the naturey-bit of the world or someplace near your kids so you can babysit the grandkids, you've gone through memories and letters and ticket stubs, you've given away all your furniture as you deconstruct this life, boxes and cupboards you haven't touched in twenty years emptied under your fingers. If you're lucky, you'll have an offspring or two there to help you do it, keep you company, tell stories to and think about the good times, keep you distracted from how much everything simply sucks.
Then you take a couple suitcases and your favorite photos and move to this senior citizens' home.
Where you are surrounded by six dozen people in the same situation.
And you're goddamned depressed because you're alone.
And, yeah, the first few weeks, maybe even the first few months, you get visits from your kids, your grandkids, but after you "settle in" and after the novelty of it wears off, the visits trickle to those only inspired by guilt.
And you're still alone. Without your mate. Waking up and reaching for their hand every morning, like you have for the last thirty years, but that hand isn't there buit you can't break the goddamned habit because you've been doing it for so long, so each morning is a reach for the left side of the bed followed by tears.
So you get a cat.
Or some goldfish.
And sit on the edge of your bed in the morning, if you can motivate yourself to get that vertical, and list out these reasons why you should continue moving forward.
And it makes me wonder, overall, if it's easier to live with brief partners, have a life of happiness, and no partner at the end, no one to leave you through death, no one to mourn.
Or if it's easier to go through all of the above, having lost one's partner.
And if, really, for some it would have been easier to not have experienced such things, and for others it was completely worth it, depending on the personality of the person in question.
Where do I want to be? Where will I be? Will I even make it to 30? What will I live and regret doing, regret not doing, and in fifty years, will that be me sitting on the edge of the bed, being stared at by some cat that is decades away from being born, looking for reasons to live?
...........................
The above is why I read other blogs and webcomics at work. Otherwise I drive myself absolutely insane and sit here, like I am, with my eyes kinda like this --> o.O turning into a total spaz, having to call PD and go, "AAAAAAH CHRIST LIFE IS DIFFICULT!!" and then he laughs at me.
Fuck this, I'm spending the rest of my lunch break at Barnes and Noble, reading about hookers.
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Our hearts are read...
I am two arms, two legs, hands and feet, and the brain dictates the flesh.
My tongue has traveled miles of skin, tasting the oil and sweat of men, feeling the dips and ridges of each outer layering.
My great grandmother was an opera singer, parting her lips for audiences through both North and South America, her husband dead too early, she left her only child in the care of other families as she toured, moving away from grief.
I've been in beds across the country, for reasons platonic and sexual, mattresses playing host to my roaming needs. Sheets cold and smooth, wrinkled and warm, flannel pilling up like a soft brillo pad, my body has met them, sweated and slept.
My great grandfather was in the Illinois National Guard. He broke my grandfather's nose with a chair to the face sometime before he passed away, when my grandfather was 10.
These visible reactions, the crooked nose with the charming face, is something that would last in impact, last in romance, bringing him through the series of girls until he married the one that became my grandmother.
My nose is straight, a nearly unnoticeable tilt at the end, something given to me by both parents, a gift that I have buried in the crooks of so many necks, the inside curve of a hipbone, the base of a man's skull, short hairs tickling that slightly curved tip.
My grandmother came out on a bus from Arkansas, into Los Angeles, to find work. She found my grandfather instead, and with him, the left shoe to her right, the matching pair, they created two children that would go on to lead vastly different lives.
My grandfather came out, likely on a wagon, from South Dakota. A serious man, a quiet man, who could only express affection for his wife and daughter- never his son. Popular theory is that he could not stand his wife loving another man, even his own offspring.
These trickles of love and neglect carry down.
When my aunt was young, sometime between nine and twelve years old, she was raped. That changed her, altered her, for the rest of her life. Nothing would be the same, and no one would ever know it had happened, save for her mother, until after she had killed herself in the summer of August 2009, when her husband was going through her childhood writings and discovered this tale.
My grandmother covered it up, from a need for privacy that would pervade her life, a need that I have never felt.
So when my father's older sister took that gun to the garage, she was blowing away forty years of a life she had not asked to lead, a life of fear and bad choices left splattered on a wall behind her.
Leaving us to wonder if the man who took her, used her, had any idea of how much everything would be altered for his few minutes, few hours, of lust.
Lives change in a day.
I sit and look at my dad, now in his late fifties. His family, his original set, is buried together in a cemetery a little less than twenty miles away.
Beloved Mother,
Beloved Father,
Beloved Sister.
He can visit his entire family in one day.
I'm left here to watch, and when I walk into his office, see him trying to pull himself together, constantly at the computer, studying, emailing, reaching to save what he has left of himself, I'm reminded that all stories do not have happy endings.
Some just end.
My tongue has traveled miles of skin, tasting the oil and sweat of men, feeling the dips and ridges of each outer layering.
My great grandmother was an opera singer, parting her lips for audiences through both North and South America, her husband dead too early, she left her only child in the care of other families as she toured, moving away from grief.
I've been in beds across the country, for reasons platonic and sexual, mattresses playing host to my roaming needs. Sheets cold and smooth, wrinkled and warm, flannel pilling up like a soft brillo pad, my body has met them, sweated and slept.
My great grandfather was in the Illinois National Guard. He broke my grandfather's nose with a chair to the face sometime before he passed away, when my grandfather was 10.
These visible reactions, the crooked nose with the charming face, is something that would last in impact, last in romance, bringing him through the series of girls until he married the one that became my grandmother.
My nose is straight, a nearly unnoticeable tilt at the end, something given to me by both parents, a gift that I have buried in the crooks of so many necks, the inside curve of a hipbone, the base of a man's skull, short hairs tickling that slightly curved tip.
My grandmother came out on a bus from Arkansas, into Los Angeles, to find work. She found my grandfather instead, and with him, the left shoe to her right, the matching pair, they created two children that would go on to lead vastly different lives.
My grandfather came out, likely on a wagon, from South Dakota. A serious man, a quiet man, who could only express affection for his wife and daughter- never his son. Popular theory is that he could not stand his wife loving another man, even his own offspring.
These trickles of love and neglect carry down.
When my aunt was young, sometime between nine and twelve years old, she was raped. That changed her, altered her, for the rest of her life. Nothing would be the same, and no one would ever know it had happened, save for her mother, until after she had killed herself in the summer of August 2009, when her husband was going through her childhood writings and discovered this tale.
My grandmother covered it up, from a need for privacy that would pervade her life, a need that I have never felt.
So when my father's older sister took that gun to the garage, she was blowing away forty years of a life she had not asked to lead, a life of fear and bad choices left splattered on a wall behind her.
Leaving us to wonder if the man who took her, used her, had any idea of how much everything would be altered for his few minutes, few hours, of lust.
Lives change in a day.
I sit and look at my dad, now in his late fifties. His family, his original set, is buried together in a cemetery a little less than twenty miles away.
Beloved Mother,
Beloved Father,
Beloved Sister.
He can visit his entire family in one day.
I'm left here to watch, and when I walk into his office, see him trying to pull himself together, constantly at the computer, studying, emailing, reaching to save what he has left of himself, I'm reminded that all stories do not have happy endings.
Some just end.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Don't go and leave me...
I can't sit in chairs like a normal person, armchairs especially. Put me in an armchair, especially when I'm reading, and I'll be sitting in it like I am now: one leg dangling over the side, one foot on the floor, balancing my laptop on my right thigh, iPod wedged between the cushion and the back of the chair, elbow propped up on the other arm... and I still want to move, still want to stretch myself out over this chair. If I did not have this laptop balancing on me, I would.
There are seven people lining the wall to my right, all facing the same direction, almost if they're watching the people outside like a movie being played out.
There is one woman sitting just behind me to my left, playing World of Warcraft, and I'm jealous. I haven't touched that game in years, but it was a good way to waste an afternoon... or a weekend.
Two men on Notebooks, left and forward, one drinking Peligrino... however you spell that drink, I'm too lazy to Google it at the moment. Another man further down the line on a Mac, hunched over.
Paintings on the walls, good high ceilings, I'm sitting in an armchair on a small stage, perfect viewpoint for the rest of the coffee shop, listening to Placebo's MEDS album, which makes me think of my Placebo-obsessed acquaintance that offered up the DP for me last November, when GV8 and I were in an off-phase.
Screw this position, I'm wedging myself backwards and crossing my legs.
Oh, holy fuck, I've wrapped my power cord around my torso with my shifting. I'm as bad as a tiny (stupid) hyper-excited mutt on a leash. God, I'm a winner.
I was going to start this sentence off with "It has been an interesting weekend..." but then I realized that it's rare when I don't have an interesting (at least to me) weekend.
As some of you may remember, last night was my friend's Wake.
I drove down PCH in the rain, watching the coastline, passing Shore House, munching on some rarely bought Taco Bell. Thick clouds during the early evening, heaping fresh water into salt water, the oil barges lit like industrial Christmas trees hammered by waves, with me the only occupant in my vehicle, the car felt like an exploratory vehicle in hostile, foreign environs.
Taco Bell allowed me to pick up something I haven't drank in years: Mountain Dew.
It was a tribute, a tribute that was not only thought of by me, as it turns out.
When I was 18, I started hanging out with a group of guys once a week at an informal sparring practice at a local park.
I don't mean sparring like karate, kung fu, taekwondo, no, nothing with actual rules.
It had been a stage-fighting group before I ever came on the scene. But then that morphed into a Ren Faire fighter practice, which was then taken over by some guys who just liked to fight with practice swords.
I don't know why I took to it. But I did. Even now, you can put a three foot long stick in my hands and I can beat the hell out of someone with finesse and skill.
I had odd hobbies, I know.
That's where I met Matt. He showed up, moving down from Washington, about a year into my time with these men. I was instantly attracted to him. He was cocky and smart, good body, good face. Rebellious. We would sit in his junker of a car and play music for each other, introduce bands to each other. I kept hoping he would ask me out, but another girl dived on him with religious fervor.
The group of us, after practice, used to go to a nearby LAN cafe, chug Mountain Dew all night and play Day of Defeat and Counterstrike until 2AM, when we'd get booted out. I'd go crash with one of the guys, popping M&Ms and playing Rummy until the both of us curled up and fell asleep on his huge bed.
That was years ago.
The last time I saw Matt was at BlizzCon 2007. I have a few friends who work at Blizzard, so I am usually able to get a weekend pass to go flirt with industry men and hang out with my nerd circles.
He had changed some.
Understatement.
He had put on a chunk of weight, almost unrecognizable weight on his face, and had started balding badly even though he was only around 29 or 30. We chatted for a little bit, but my grandmother was in intensive care that summer (and would die shortly after that convention) and I got the phone call that prompted me to finally flip my father the bird and move out that same day.
Not well done of me, but I could not take any more stress at the time.
I found out later, talking with one of my friends that is like a brother to me, that Matt's girlfriend had cheated on him, prompting him, as he had a habit of doing, to go into a depressive state and move in with family in Washington. He was only down for the convention.
That was what he did. Physically yoyo-ing with girls. He'd move to Washington when he broke his heart in California, then move back to California when someone broke his heart in Washington.
He was always depressed.
Some of us are.
I drove down PCH, into Huntington Beach, east on Main Street, through the rain, people on either side of my car in the faux-darkness, walking to bars and restaurants, casting their colored glows onto the shining asphalt, heels splashing through puddles.
I lost myself in the rain and the dark, the neighborhood that Main Street leads into is a maze to me. Listening to The American Dollar and watching the cars travel towards and past me, lights streaking outwards, their passage echoing like a seashell held to my ear, rolling ocean of drivers in the night.
Spotted a street name I recognized, checked my compass and kept going, instinct proving true.
I passed the house, looking for the stop sign that meant parking was ahead. Flipped a quick U, doing that thing that my father lectures me will take the sides off my tires but it feels so good when my hair lifts off my face from that centrifugal pull.
Fixed my lipstick in the mirror, MAC and more MAC. Lipstick that was pointless, but I did it anyway. It's little things that keep us grounded, little things that remind us of our reality, the where and the who that we are.
I walked through the rain, jacket over one arm. I saw Fox in his suit. The years have given him a paunch, his suitjacket curving outwards over his frame, his glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose. Those are new, things that time gave him as the years passed. Ferret, my brother/friend, was outside as well, cigarette to his lips, always smoking, as long as I've known him. He looks the same. He's always looked the same. Time doesn't seem to touch him.
Hugs, arms around torsos, glowing ends of cigarettes held away for greetings.
Ferret and I talk for a bit, another man steps outside and starts massaging my shoulders by way of hello. We hug, I excuse myself inside.
There's already ten or fifteen people here. Faces I know, faces that came in after I stopped spending the majority of my time within this social circle, when Rick and I started dating, when my work schedule shifted to nights and my social life died. I was 20 when I got that job, 20 when I said goodbye to the ease and low pay of retail.
These are the girls. The boys brought them in, brought them in as friends, would-be dates, girlfriends. Lovers or fuckbuddies are rare in this circle. It's about relationships, even though the only person married in it is the alpha male of the group, Fox. His wife is a beautiful and friendly blonde, someone I've admired for years.
I look at them, their clothes, their postures. They integrated in a way I never did. This group does not eject girls when they shift from girlfriends to ex-girlfriends unless something bad happens, so most of them stay and form into this faceless (to me) female mass. Even when they get boyfriends or husbands in other groups, it seems, they always come back to this one.
Ferret's girlfriend is my favorite. She's a slim, red-headed engineer. Very practical, very funny. They've been dating for over six years now, arguing about children (he wants them, she doesn't), which stops them from getting married. Ferret is very family oriented, wants his own brood of little Ferrets.
There's an older woman on the couch in the living room, surrounded by a few other girls... they seem a couple years older than I am. Introductions are made, I do my usual vaguely witty disarming and non sequitur humor. I'm harmless, I'm not here to fight, not here to step on toes, I'm one of the guys.
Another old friend walks by, eyes glassy. He hugs me, introduces me to his girlfriend, yet another girl with another bizarre name (he never dates girls with normal names), but he's obviously distracted with his grief.
I step into the kitchen, scritch the two tiny dogs that belong to Fox's wife while talking to the people gathered around the appetizer table. It's awkward, my social position. Most of the girls don't know where I'm from, don't know who I am in relation to anyone else. I'm not part of their herd.
I'm never part of the girl herd.
Note: the rest of this post was written while listening to Placebo's Blind on repeat, so if you want my background music, there you go. If you do listen to it while reading this, please let me know how it goes. I've always wanted to set my writing to music, see how it changes the experience of the reader.
Ferret's girlfriend comes over and we talk and joke while I pet the dogs. She's been around for awhile, dated and slept with most of the main members of the group over the years, starting in high school. I always forget that they're all older than I am, late twenties, early thirties. History that I don't know about.
Ferret comes over as his mate gets distracted by another. I cock my head at him as the crowd starts flowing back towards the living room in a natural movement.
"What happened?"
"What?"
"What happened with Matt? No one told me."
He gestures to the door and we step into the backyard. He lights another cigarette, starts talking. Matt said his goodbyes to some local friends in Washington, then drove out to a bridge, made a noose, tied it to said bridge, and jumped off with it around his neck.
His body was found by hikers.
I hadn't expected that from him. He had seemed more like a suicide by gun sort of guy, but it had been years, and the three other suicides this last year had been by guns, so I suppose I'm biased in my expectations.
It made me think. Matt was so very into nature, so very into being out in the wilderness, climbing and exploring, using his body. He loved the green of Washington.
I imagine him driving through winding forest roads, up the mountain of his choice, nighttime, the only car on a two-lane road, trees illuminated solely by his presence, kneeling in front of his headlights on the bridge, to see to tie the rope.
What was this, then? A quiet breath into the night, knowing these are the last few minutes you'll be breathing air, the last time you will see the sky you've spent your life growing beneath. Your last sight, look around, a three-hundred and sixty degree rotation of your body, the one-hundred and eighty degrees of the horizon, dark and unknown, moths gathering around your source of light, their hungry need and soft wings, the tiny "tink" when they bounce off the glass of your car's headlights. Gravel under the soles of your feet, each tiny rock grinding, rolling, getting stuck in the tread of your shoes.
How long did you keep that rope?
How many times did you look at it?
Did you lift it, feel the weight in your hands, the tight twine, the fibers... did you hold it to your face, inhale the scent of the last item you would feel. A simple rope, picked up in a hardware store. Did the man at the counter even know what he was selling you? Your death in a plastic bag, receipt included.
No returns for this one, though.
You put it around your neck, loose and innocent, resting against the spot where many girls have buried their faces and moaned into your ear, fingernails digging into your back. Your body has known pleasure, the fingers that tied the knots tangled in your lovers' hair, stroking the insides of their thighs, the eyes that you are about to close watched their skin tremble under your touch, hips bucking towards you, lips opening to whisper gasps.
A running leap? I'd like to think so. I'd like to think of you launching yourself towards fate, towards your next adventure, full of excitement and curiosity like you used to be.
Not broken and beaten, not like you were. I don't want to think of you like that.
I miss that young man.
I don't like to think of what happened, of the way life shaped you, the stumbling blocks that descended from circumstances, piling up in your path until there was no way but down, nothing to do but trip and fall.
They played a video, a collection of pictures of you. You as a child, you in your tux with your girlfriend, now Ferret's girlfriend, ready to walk out the door to Winter Formal. She had her long red hair piled on top of her head, ringlets around her face, beautiful. You were wearing her father's tie, a colorful mess. You two must have danced all night, met up with a younger Ferret and Fox on their own dates, causing mayhem like the three of you did. Ferret's girlfriend was sitting beside me, tears rolling down her cheeks one after the other, silent.
I watched you grow through photos, photos taken before I ever met you, a history of events and adventures, of hairstyles and wardrobe changes, searching for who you were.
I listened to your mom, the older woman on the couch I mentioned earlier, sobbing over the music, her old, discolored fingers clutching a crumpled tissue. Her son. Her son never reaching forty, a marriage she would never attend, a daughter-in-law she would never meet, grandchildren that she would never have. No more Thanksgiving dinners with you serving turkey, no shopping for ugly sweaters for you at Christmas, no phone calls just checking in.
She poured herself into you, wanting you to be healthy and strong, wanting you to be happy, wanting to give you everything she could.
But she couldn't give you whatever it was you needed. Or maybe you wouldn't let her.
I told Ferret, when we were standing in the backyard, that I meant I wanted to know what had happened to make you kill yourself, not how you had killed yourself. I did not want the images, did not want the feelings of your last moments.
I'm not that good of a friend.
He said that you had always been depressed, had been out of work, had felt like a continual burden to those you loved, felt like you'd never be able to give anything back, make anything of yourself.
It seems like such a common sentiment.
When the video finished, Fox made the announcement that everyone was going to go to a local park, probably in the rain, a park that you loved when you were alive and in California. They handed out tea lights and paper tea light holders, but I said my goodbyes and left.
I was not part of his life then, felt like it was no longer my place.
I drove through the rain, drove and thought. My wheels carried me down the freeway, my mind so wrapped in you, in life and the things that shape us, I cannot remember my drive home.
I could have driven all night. I could have taken PCH up the coast, my car cutting through the rain, music playing. I could have started a new life, left this all behind, like you did. I could have driven to Washington, could have found the bridge that you crossed. How symbolic wooden slats become when they connect two distant points.
By the time I reached my parents' house, the rain had mostly stopped. I carried my laundry inside, went upstairs to my old room and changed into my pajamas, tossed my laundry into the washing machine, then wedged myself on the couch between my mother and father, curled up under a blanket, listening to my father's breathing change from awake to asleep, then the snores.
He's getting old. His father used to do the same thing when I was younger. I remember watching old westerns on cable with him sitting in his brown recliner, the same snores climbing out of his mouth as John Wayne saved the day.
I kissed him and my mother goodnight, climbed the stairs once more, to my old room, my empty bedroom. Blue carpet, white walls, two windows. A strip of memory foam and a sleeping bag laid out on the floor for me, since Mom knows I won't sleep in the guest room if I don't have to.
I laid in my makeshift bed, navy sleeping bag with beige lining, the flattest pillow I could find under my head. I'd like to say the I spent time in reflection, pondering events and courses of action. I'd like to say many things, like that I have faith in the way things will turn out, that I know what will happen two weeks from now, that everything will be okay, that my family will not continue this sad downward spiral as we try so hard to recover from what happened in December.
I would like to tell myself that I'm strong. So many people tell me that, yet I've seen no proof other than my ability to shut off my brain for short periods of time so I can survive.
I would like to tell myself that my mother will be happy again, that life will untangle itself and she's be smiling and laughing soon.
I so desperately need to hear that this is worth it, that everything I've done, everything I will do, ensures something good. Ensures that random events created by unexpected little actions will not ripple out and destroy the good.
I'd like someone to tell me it's okay. That what I am witnessing with my parents is just a minor setback. That good people do have happy endings because they deserve it. My father has spent the majority of his adult life caring for his family and providing for all of us. He's given up so much to give us this life, to make us happy and make sure we have all the opportunity in the world. They've done everything they were "supposed" to do to "earn" happiness, and yet...
This.
This happens. Much like it does. Disappointments as we all struggle towards the top of the water, mouths open and desperate for the crumbs of success that are tossed in our direction, butted out of the way by those with stronger muscles, stolen from when those with quicker fins dart in front of us.
I don't know what I expected.
But I do know I'm clinging to ideals that don't exist, hoping that something or someone will prove me right.
Good night, Matt.
There are seven people lining the wall to my right, all facing the same direction, almost if they're watching the people outside like a movie being played out.
There is one woman sitting just behind me to my left, playing World of Warcraft, and I'm jealous. I haven't touched that game in years, but it was a good way to waste an afternoon... or a weekend.
Two men on Notebooks, left and forward, one drinking Peligrino... however you spell that drink, I'm too lazy to Google it at the moment. Another man further down the line on a Mac, hunched over.
Paintings on the walls, good high ceilings, I'm sitting in an armchair on a small stage, perfect viewpoint for the rest of the coffee shop, listening to Placebo's MEDS album, which makes me think of my Placebo-obsessed acquaintance that offered up the DP for me last November, when GV8 and I were in an off-phase.
Screw this position, I'm wedging myself backwards and crossing my legs.
Oh, holy fuck, I've wrapped my power cord around my torso with my shifting. I'm as bad as a tiny (stupid) hyper-excited mutt on a leash. God, I'm a winner.
I was going to start this sentence off with "It has been an interesting weekend..." but then I realized that it's rare when I don't have an interesting (at least to me) weekend.
As some of you may remember, last night was my friend's Wake.
I drove down PCH in the rain, watching the coastline, passing Shore House, munching on some rarely bought Taco Bell. Thick clouds during the early evening, heaping fresh water into salt water, the oil barges lit like industrial Christmas trees hammered by waves, with me the only occupant in my vehicle, the car felt like an exploratory vehicle in hostile, foreign environs.
Taco Bell allowed me to pick up something I haven't drank in years: Mountain Dew.
It was a tribute, a tribute that was not only thought of by me, as it turns out.
When I was 18, I started hanging out with a group of guys once a week at an informal sparring practice at a local park.
I don't mean sparring like karate, kung fu, taekwondo, no, nothing with actual rules.
It had been a stage-fighting group before I ever came on the scene. But then that morphed into a Ren Faire fighter practice, which was then taken over by some guys who just liked to fight with practice swords.
I don't know why I took to it. But I did. Even now, you can put a three foot long stick in my hands and I can beat the hell out of someone with finesse and skill.
I had odd hobbies, I know.
That's where I met Matt. He showed up, moving down from Washington, about a year into my time with these men. I was instantly attracted to him. He was cocky and smart, good body, good face. Rebellious. We would sit in his junker of a car and play music for each other, introduce bands to each other. I kept hoping he would ask me out, but another girl dived on him with religious fervor.
The group of us, after practice, used to go to a nearby LAN cafe, chug Mountain Dew all night and play Day of Defeat and Counterstrike until 2AM, when we'd get booted out. I'd go crash with one of the guys, popping M&Ms and playing Rummy until the both of us curled up and fell asleep on his huge bed.
That was years ago.
The last time I saw Matt was at BlizzCon 2007. I have a few friends who work at Blizzard, so I am usually able to get a weekend pass to go flirt with industry men and hang out with my nerd circles.
He had changed some.
Understatement.
He had put on a chunk of weight, almost unrecognizable weight on his face, and had started balding badly even though he was only around 29 or 30. We chatted for a little bit, but my grandmother was in intensive care that summer (and would die shortly after that convention) and I got the phone call that prompted me to finally flip my father the bird and move out that same day.
Not well done of me, but I could not take any more stress at the time.
I found out later, talking with one of my friends that is like a brother to me, that Matt's girlfriend had cheated on him, prompting him, as he had a habit of doing, to go into a depressive state and move in with family in Washington. He was only down for the convention.
That was what he did. Physically yoyo-ing with girls. He'd move to Washington when he broke his heart in California, then move back to California when someone broke his heart in Washington.
He was always depressed.
Some of us are.
I drove down PCH, into Huntington Beach, east on Main Street, through the rain, people on either side of my car in the faux-darkness, walking to bars and restaurants, casting their colored glows onto the shining asphalt, heels splashing through puddles.
I lost myself in the rain and the dark, the neighborhood that Main Street leads into is a maze to me. Listening to The American Dollar and watching the cars travel towards and past me, lights streaking outwards, their passage echoing like a seashell held to my ear, rolling ocean of drivers in the night.
Spotted a street name I recognized, checked my compass and kept going, instinct proving true.
I passed the house, looking for the stop sign that meant parking was ahead. Flipped a quick U, doing that thing that my father lectures me will take the sides off my tires but it feels so good when my hair lifts off my face from that centrifugal pull.
Fixed my lipstick in the mirror, MAC and more MAC. Lipstick that was pointless, but I did it anyway. It's little things that keep us grounded, little things that remind us of our reality, the where and the who that we are.
I walked through the rain, jacket over one arm. I saw Fox in his suit. The years have given him a paunch, his suitjacket curving outwards over his frame, his glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose. Those are new, things that time gave him as the years passed. Ferret, my brother/friend, was outside as well, cigarette to his lips, always smoking, as long as I've known him. He looks the same. He's always looked the same. Time doesn't seem to touch him.
Hugs, arms around torsos, glowing ends of cigarettes held away for greetings.
Ferret and I talk for a bit, another man steps outside and starts massaging my shoulders by way of hello. We hug, I excuse myself inside.
There's already ten or fifteen people here. Faces I know, faces that came in after I stopped spending the majority of my time within this social circle, when Rick and I started dating, when my work schedule shifted to nights and my social life died. I was 20 when I got that job, 20 when I said goodbye to the ease and low pay of retail.
These are the girls. The boys brought them in, brought them in as friends, would-be dates, girlfriends. Lovers or fuckbuddies are rare in this circle. It's about relationships, even though the only person married in it is the alpha male of the group, Fox. His wife is a beautiful and friendly blonde, someone I've admired for years.
I look at them, their clothes, their postures. They integrated in a way I never did. This group does not eject girls when they shift from girlfriends to ex-girlfriends unless something bad happens, so most of them stay and form into this faceless (to me) female mass. Even when they get boyfriends or husbands in other groups, it seems, they always come back to this one.
Ferret's girlfriend is my favorite. She's a slim, red-headed engineer. Very practical, very funny. They've been dating for over six years now, arguing about children (he wants them, she doesn't), which stops them from getting married. Ferret is very family oriented, wants his own brood of little Ferrets.
There's an older woman on the couch in the living room, surrounded by a few other girls... they seem a couple years older than I am. Introductions are made, I do my usual vaguely witty disarming and non sequitur humor. I'm harmless, I'm not here to fight, not here to step on toes, I'm one of the guys.
Another old friend walks by, eyes glassy. He hugs me, introduces me to his girlfriend, yet another girl with another bizarre name (he never dates girls with normal names), but he's obviously distracted with his grief.
I step into the kitchen, scritch the two tiny dogs that belong to Fox's wife while talking to the people gathered around the appetizer table. It's awkward, my social position. Most of the girls don't know where I'm from, don't know who I am in relation to anyone else. I'm not part of their herd.
I'm never part of the girl herd.
Note: the rest of this post was written while listening to Placebo's Blind on repeat, so if you want my background music, there you go. If you do listen to it while reading this, please let me know how it goes. I've always wanted to set my writing to music, see how it changes the experience of the reader.
Ferret's girlfriend comes over and we talk and joke while I pet the dogs. She's been around for awhile, dated and slept with most of the main members of the group over the years, starting in high school. I always forget that they're all older than I am, late twenties, early thirties. History that I don't know about.
Ferret comes over as his mate gets distracted by another. I cock my head at him as the crowd starts flowing back towards the living room in a natural movement.
"What happened?"
"What?"
"What happened with Matt? No one told me."
He gestures to the door and we step into the backyard. He lights another cigarette, starts talking. Matt said his goodbyes to some local friends in Washington, then drove out to a bridge, made a noose, tied it to said bridge, and jumped off with it around his neck.
His body was found by hikers.
I hadn't expected that from him. He had seemed more like a suicide by gun sort of guy, but it had been years, and the three other suicides this last year had been by guns, so I suppose I'm biased in my expectations.
It made me think. Matt was so very into nature, so very into being out in the wilderness, climbing and exploring, using his body. He loved the green of Washington.
I imagine him driving through winding forest roads, up the mountain of his choice, nighttime, the only car on a two-lane road, trees illuminated solely by his presence, kneeling in front of his headlights on the bridge, to see to tie the rope.
What was this, then? A quiet breath into the night, knowing these are the last few minutes you'll be breathing air, the last time you will see the sky you've spent your life growing beneath. Your last sight, look around, a three-hundred and sixty degree rotation of your body, the one-hundred and eighty degrees of the horizon, dark and unknown, moths gathering around your source of light, their hungry need and soft wings, the tiny "tink" when they bounce off the glass of your car's headlights. Gravel under the soles of your feet, each tiny rock grinding, rolling, getting stuck in the tread of your shoes.
How long did you keep that rope?
How many times did you look at it?
Did you lift it, feel the weight in your hands, the tight twine, the fibers... did you hold it to your face, inhale the scent of the last item you would feel. A simple rope, picked up in a hardware store. Did the man at the counter even know what he was selling you? Your death in a plastic bag, receipt included.
No returns for this one, though.
You put it around your neck, loose and innocent, resting against the spot where many girls have buried their faces and moaned into your ear, fingernails digging into your back. Your body has known pleasure, the fingers that tied the knots tangled in your lovers' hair, stroking the insides of their thighs, the eyes that you are about to close watched their skin tremble under your touch, hips bucking towards you, lips opening to whisper gasps.
A running leap? I'd like to think so. I'd like to think of you launching yourself towards fate, towards your next adventure, full of excitement and curiosity like you used to be.
Not broken and beaten, not like you were. I don't want to think of you like that.
I miss that young man.
I don't like to think of what happened, of the way life shaped you, the stumbling blocks that descended from circumstances, piling up in your path until there was no way but down, nothing to do but trip and fall.
They played a video, a collection of pictures of you. You as a child, you in your tux with your girlfriend, now Ferret's girlfriend, ready to walk out the door to Winter Formal. She had her long red hair piled on top of her head, ringlets around her face, beautiful. You were wearing her father's tie, a colorful mess. You two must have danced all night, met up with a younger Ferret and Fox on their own dates, causing mayhem like the three of you did. Ferret's girlfriend was sitting beside me, tears rolling down her cheeks one after the other, silent.
I watched you grow through photos, photos taken before I ever met you, a history of events and adventures, of hairstyles and wardrobe changes, searching for who you were.
I listened to your mom, the older woman on the couch I mentioned earlier, sobbing over the music, her old, discolored fingers clutching a crumpled tissue. Her son. Her son never reaching forty, a marriage she would never attend, a daughter-in-law she would never meet, grandchildren that she would never have. No more Thanksgiving dinners with you serving turkey, no shopping for ugly sweaters for you at Christmas, no phone calls just checking in.
She poured herself into you, wanting you to be healthy and strong, wanting you to be happy, wanting to give you everything she could.
But she couldn't give you whatever it was you needed. Or maybe you wouldn't let her.
I told Ferret, when we were standing in the backyard, that I meant I wanted to know what had happened to make you kill yourself, not how you had killed yourself. I did not want the images, did not want the feelings of your last moments.
I'm not that good of a friend.
He said that you had always been depressed, had been out of work, had felt like a continual burden to those you loved, felt like you'd never be able to give anything back, make anything of yourself.
It seems like such a common sentiment.
When the video finished, Fox made the announcement that everyone was going to go to a local park, probably in the rain, a park that you loved when you were alive and in California. They handed out tea lights and paper tea light holders, but I said my goodbyes and left.
I was not part of his life then, felt like it was no longer my place.
I drove through the rain, drove and thought. My wheels carried me down the freeway, my mind so wrapped in you, in life and the things that shape us, I cannot remember my drive home.
I could have driven all night. I could have taken PCH up the coast, my car cutting through the rain, music playing. I could have started a new life, left this all behind, like you did. I could have driven to Washington, could have found the bridge that you crossed. How symbolic wooden slats become when they connect two distant points.
By the time I reached my parents' house, the rain had mostly stopped. I carried my laundry inside, went upstairs to my old room and changed into my pajamas, tossed my laundry into the washing machine, then wedged myself on the couch between my mother and father, curled up under a blanket, listening to my father's breathing change from awake to asleep, then the snores.
He's getting old. His father used to do the same thing when I was younger. I remember watching old westerns on cable with him sitting in his brown recliner, the same snores climbing out of his mouth as John Wayne saved the day.
I kissed him and my mother goodnight, climbed the stairs once more, to my old room, my empty bedroom. Blue carpet, white walls, two windows. A strip of memory foam and a sleeping bag laid out on the floor for me, since Mom knows I won't sleep in the guest room if I don't have to.
I laid in my makeshift bed, navy sleeping bag with beige lining, the flattest pillow I could find under my head. I'd like to say the I spent time in reflection, pondering events and courses of action. I'd like to say many things, like that I have faith in the way things will turn out, that I know what will happen two weeks from now, that everything will be okay, that my family will not continue this sad downward spiral as we try so hard to recover from what happened in December.
I would like to tell myself that I'm strong. So many people tell me that, yet I've seen no proof other than my ability to shut off my brain for short periods of time so I can survive.
I would like to tell myself that my mother will be happy again, that life will untangle itself and she's be smiling and laughing soon.
I so desperately need to hear that this is worth it, that everything I've done, everything I will do, ensures something good. Ensures that random events created by unexpected little actions will not ripple out and destroy the good.
I'd like someone to tell me it's okay. That what I am witnessing with my parents is just a minor setback. That good people do have happy endings because they deserve it. My father has spent the majority of his adult life caring for his family and providing for all of us. He's given up so much to give us this life, to make us happy and make sure we have all the opportunity in the world. They've done everything they were "supposed" to do to "earn" happiness, and yet...
This.
This happens. Much like it does. Disappointments as we all struggle towards the top of the water, mouths open and desperate for the crumbs of success that are tossed in our direction, butted out of the way by those with stronger muscles, stolen from when those with quicker fins dart in front of us.
I don't know what I expected.
But I do know I'm clinging to ideals that don't exist, hoping that something or someone will prove me right.
Good night, Matt.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Finally got through reading (not responding, ha!) to the hundreds of emails that amassed for me at work the day and a half I was off.
Stayed up last night with C, watching Jeepers Creepers, which I had seen before, but shouting at the television about "stupid white people" with C (who is from El Salvador) and their "stupid white people problems" and "oh, goddammit, just run already" made me feel better.
Yes, I know, I'm white.
But at least something isn't trying to eat my eyes.
...that last sentence would not make sense if you have not seen that movie. I don't suggest seeing it, but if you feel like screaming ineffectually at your glowing electrical box, it is a good choice.
I've hit a numb spot.
I suppose that is good, overall.
And I'm going to be trying to go to Florence for a two month creative writing course at the end of May, through my school. When I graduated from college, I regretted three things: never staying in a dorm, never studying abroad, and never going to school full-time without being employed, doing the college student thing.
So, if I do go to Florence, I will be staying in a dorm. I will be studying abroad, and since I am quitting my job near the end of January, I will be finally going to school full-time and actually be able to immerse myself in my classes.
It's going to be expensive (Upwards of $6K). I can't really afford it. I'm going to be applying for the scholarships for this program like crazy.
But I don't want to spend the rest of my life regretting all these things I never did because I was too afraid or didn't have the money. If things go as they look like, I'm going to be debt free by mid-January. Yes, I'm going to be unemployed and broke, but at least it will be done. Functioning on minimum expenses. Focusing on school, writing, scholarships, Master's program application, picking up the odd job, and getting my body back in shape.
Or so the theory goes.
Things never go quite as planned.
Obviously.
Things shift. I can't imagine actually getting everything taken care of, financially and application-wise to land myself in Italy this summer. But it won't happen for sure if I don't try.
I went out to dinner with my parents, sister, and navy housemate last night. My father was running on three hours of sleep, at the same point I get at where babbling becomes normal and laughing to the point of falling over in one's seat is expected.
When I left, he hugged me, held me to him and told me that he would make sure to get me to Italy this summer, that he loved me more than anything in the world, and to watch myself because we're essentially the same person and this time of year is hard for us, with the seasonal depression combined with the chronic depression. He's worried that I'm disconnecting from everything.
My sister is the first of our family not to inherit the depression, even though she takes after my father's side of the family more than I do, at least on a physical level. She's the odd duck, being the normal family member.
...and I just got a phone call that one of my friends killed himself on Wednesday.
Great.
I'll be over here, having another fantastic day.
Stayed up last night with C, watching Jeepers Creepers, which I had seen before, but shouting at the television about "stupid white people" with C (who is from El Salvador) and their "stupid white people problems" and "oh, goddammit, just run already" made me feel better.
Yes, I know, I'm white.
But at least something isn't trying to eat my eyes.
...that last sentence would not make sense if you have not seen that movie. I don't suggest seeing it, but if you feel like screaming ineffectually at your glowing electrical box, it is a good choice.
I've hit a numb spot.
I suppose that is good, overall.
And I'm going to be trying to go to Florence for a two month creative writing course at the end of May, through my school. When I graduated from college, I regretted three things: never staying in a dorm, never studying abroad, and never going to school full-time without being employed, doing the college student thing.
So, if I do go to Florence, I will be staying in a dorm. I will be studying abroad, and since I am quitting my job near the end of January, I will be finally going to school full-time and actually be able to immerse myself in my classes.
It's going to be expensive (Upwards of $6K). I can't really afford it. I'm going to be applying for the scholarships for this program like crazy.
But I don't want to spend the rest of my life regretting all these things I never did because I was too afraid or didn't have the money. If things go as they look like, I'm going to be debt free by mid-January. Yes, I'm going to be unemployed and broke, but at least it will be done. Functioning on minimum expenses. Focusing on school, writing, scholarships, Master's program application, picking up the odd job, and getting my body back in shape.
Or so the theory goes.
Things never go quite as planned.
Obviously.
Things shift. I can't imagine actually getting everything taken care of, financially and application-wise to land myself in Italy this summer. But it won't happen for sure if I don't try.
I went out to dinner with my parents, sister, and navy housemate last night. My father was running on three hours of sleep, at the same point I get at where babbling becomes normal and laughing to the point of falling over in one's seat is expected.
When I left, he hugged me, held me to him and told me that he would make sure to get me to Italy this summer, that he loved me more than anything in the world, and to watch myself because we're essentially the same person and this time of year is hard for us, with the seasonal depression combined with the chronic depression. He's worried that I'm disconnecting from everything.
My sister is the first of our family not to inherit the depression, even though she takes after my father's side of the family more than I do, at least on a physical level. She's the odd duck, being the normal family member.
...and I just got a phone call that one of my friends killed himself on Wednesday.
Great.
I'll be over here, having another fantastic day.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Doesn't hurt me...
I've been without words the last few days, forcing myself to write.
It's not over yet.
Skipping over headstones in heels, flared skirt, red button-up, black hair braided to one side, keeping it off the back of my neck, the heat, the sweat on my back, carrying the coffin, a being a female pall-bearer is somehow appropriate for my life. A whimper escapes my uncles lips from where he sits in his wheelchair, looking at pictures propped up on the casket, their wedding day when he still had use of his body, when he was still a complete man. Red carnations, the family flower, my father left behind by both his parents and now his sister, cut off from his past, from his family, his base.
In the car, me his companion, he tells me of his days at the brink, riding the edge in bars and clubs in Hollywood, the jail time, the arrests, the fights, the drugs, the alcohol, and how desire for my mother made him turn his life into something different.
I tell him that's not allowed. It's too Hollywood. Didn't he know that he had to become dissatisfied with the idyllic existence she provided and take off after a few months to a year, back to his wild, alpha male ways?
I speak at the funeral, for once my own words.
I am the only speaker who does not cry.
It makes me feel like a fake. Everyone else breaks down, and here I am, detached and watching, speaking only because my father asked me to. My sister speaks after me and becomes so very emotional we cannot understand her words through her tears until my mother comes up and holds her hand.
I came close to crying when my mother broke down. I felt the tears building and knew that if I did choose to allow one or two of them to escape, people would assume I was crying for the loss of my aunt, not realizing that I feel not her loss, but the anguish of others, that I would be crying for the pain that my family feels that somehow escapes me on a direct level, but through them comes back to me.
I do not wish them to hurt.
I stay with my father when he is left alone. I gather and refine the edges to ease the organization for my mother.
Sweat rolls down my back.
Small talk, introductions, I fix the unsnapped suspenders on my great uncle.
My back and shoulders are covered in bite-marks from GV8, from the previous night and earlier that morning. Whenever anyone pats my shoulder or back, I hide my wince. I end up looking like a leopard whenever he is done with me.
I watch. I look for ways to help and monitor movement. I sit in the pew with my family (mother-father-sister-sister's boyfriend-me), ankles crossed, and when we pray, I stare forward.
Red carnations, white roses.
My grandfather's obsession with flowers, vegetables, fruits, anything green and growing, stemming from a childhood spent in South Dakota, where very few things grow.
Red carnations, the gifts to my grandmother, of their perfect, devoted love.
We place them on the casket, we toss rose petals and my mother remarks how the wind always picks up whenever this happens, which is true, but I take no meaning from it.
Scattering, a quick flick of the wrist, I stand on my grandmother's grave.
It has been almost two years since she passed, and I think of the days, the hospital visits, the nights spent in the ICU, reading books and talking in whispers, placing the moistened pick sponges on her lips because she could not take in fluids. And now her body is rotting in the earth.
It makes me hope that her idea of heaven is real, that her god exists for her.
Tonight will be spent cleaning and organizing. I need to exercise some control.
I'll think of lips against my neck, the slight touch of someone's breath upon my skin, and warm hands. I will think of the holes we dig and how that simple action can be such an isolator, and of the man that does not exist, the companionship I will seek with my typical naive hope, and the fear that maybe, one day, I'll realize that I am, indeed, alone, and settle for a false relationship with someone that does not suit, but at least enables me to pretend.
It's not over yet.
Skipping over headstones in heels, flared skirt, red button-up, black hair braided to one side, keeping it off the back of my neck, the heat, the sweat on my back, carrying the coffin, a being a female pall-bearer is somehow appropriate for my life. A whimper escapes my uncles lips from where he sits in his wheelchair, looking at pictures propped up on the casket, their wedding day when he still had use of his body, when he was still a complete man. Red carnations, the family flower, my father left behind by both his parents and now his sister, cut off from his past, from his family, his base.
In the car, me his companion, he tells me of his days at the brink, riding the edge in bars and clubs in Hollywood, the jail time, the arrests, the fights, the drugs, the alcohol, and how desire for my mother made him turn his life into something different.
I tell him that's not allowed. It's too Hollywood. Didn't he know that he had to become dissatisfied with the idyllic existence she provided and take off after a few months to a year, back to his wild, alpha male ways?
I speak at the funeral, for once my own words.
I am the only speaker who does not cry.
It makes me feel like a fake. Everyone else breaks down, and here I am, detached and watching, speaking only because my father asked me to. My sister speaks after me and becomes so very emotional we cannot understand her words through her tears until my mother comes up and holds her hand.
I came close to crying when my mother broke down. I felt the tears building and knew that if I did choose to allow one or two of them to escape, people would assume I was crying for the loss of my aunt, not realizing that I feel not her loss, but the anguish of others, that I would be crying for the pain that my family feels that somehow escapes me on a direct level, but through them comes back to me.
I do not wish them to hurt.
I stay with my father when he is left alone. I gather and refine the edges to ease the organization for my mother.
Sweat rolls down my back.
Small talk, introductions, I fix the unsnapped suspenders on my great uncle.
My back and shoulders are covered in bite-marks from GV8, from the previous night and earlier that morning. Whenever anyone pats my shoulder or back, I hide my wince. I end up looking like a leopard whenever he is done with me.
I watch. I look for ways to help and monitor movement. I sit in the pew with my family (mother-father-sister-sister's boyfriend-me), ankles crossed, and when we pray, I stare forward.
Red carnations, white roses.
My grandfather's obsession with flowers, vegetables, fruits, anything green and growing, stemming from a childhood spent in South Dakota, where very few things grow.
Red carnations, the gifts to my grandmother, of their perfect, devoted love.
We place them on the casket, we toss rose petals and my mother remarks how the wind always picks up whenever this happens, which is true, but I take no meaning from it.
Scattering, a quick flick of the wrist, I stand on my grandmother's grave.
It has been almost two years since she passed, and I think of the days, the hospital visits, the nights spent in the ICU, reading books and talking in whispers, placing the moistened pick sponges on her lips because she could not take in fluids. And now her body is rotting in the earth.
It makes me hope that her idea of heaven is real, that her god exists for her.
Tonight will be spent cleaning and organizing. I need to exercise some control.
I'll think of lips against my neck, the slight touch of someone's breath upon my skin, and warm hands. I will think of the holes we dig and how that simple action can be such an isolator, and of the man that does not exist, the companionship I will seek with my typical naive hope, and the fear that maybe, one day, I'll realize that I am, indeed, alone, and settle for a false relationship with someone that does not suit, but at least enables me to pretend.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
This is a good home...
Funeral is tomorrow. 11AM.
Death is something I have not been exposed to much. Yes, all of my grandparents are dead.
Grandfather, mother's side, lung cancer and liver failure due to a life of excess.
Grandfather, father's side, multiple strokes and diabetes.
Grandmother, mother's side, mental deterioration until the body broke down.
Grandmother, father's side, Emphysema.
I was... 5 years old, fourteen years old, twenty years old, twenty four years old.
Spaced out deaths.
Family friends have died, yes. Some of them that I have known my entire life.
And I am unfazed.
I am the nominated eulogy reader. I am the one who does not cry at funerals, even when everyone around me is breaking down. My mother lets people know that if they cannot complete what they have written about the deceased, I will be perfectly able to get through it.
I stand at the podium, at the altar, wherever we are conducting the service, and read aloud the words of others.
I wonder if I don't realize the immensity of it.
Or if I'm blocking it out, like I have trained myself to do with so many other emotions. It's a lifetime of training, that pushing away.
The pain hits you, you nod at it, and shove it into a closet until you have time to examine it and lick your wounds.
My aunt... I am more concerned about those around us, those she left behind, than her death. Her funeral, the arrangements, the constant phone calls, watching my mother navigate the house, phone pressed to her ear, address book nearby, calling, calling, calling. Notifications, details, logistics.
I feel nothing for the loss.
I ache for my father, I ache that I cannot stop this pain, that I cannot take this blow for him. My skull pounds in the frustration of knowing one is impotent.
The best I can directly do is touch, hug, and make phone calls.
The best I can indirectly do is shadow my mother, make sure she is taken care of, make sure that she is not upset, make sure that she is not stressed and overwhelmed.
By knowing that I do this, my father is able to retreat in his grief and focus on himself, not worrying about his wife.
It seems like such a small thing to do, but it is all I can.
When he called me, the next day, I was at work. From his tone, I stepped out of the office. When he asked me to sit down, I did so on the edge of the nearby wall. I thought something horrible had happened, something that would make me collapse. Worry about my mother choking me.
And then he said that his sister had killed herself.
Such relief.
How sad, how true.
I was relieved.
He talked to me, told me about his guilt in not calling me right away, told me his guilt in wishing he didn't feel like he had to tell me, that he was going to ruin my weekend with this knowledge.
He talked. I listened.
He talked about how upset he was, in the brief words that he uses, barest acknowledgements of suffering, but for him that is merely a sign of how incredibly broken he was inside.
He told me how my mother and sister had freaked out. How upset they were. That they're unable to control their emotions, he says, like we are. That we put our heads down and go.
That's one of the only times he's truly admitted how alike we are in more than our work ethic or driving skills. That inside, we are too much alike.
I don't know how to comfort without touch.
I don't know what to say or what to do.
Death is... foreign. I've never mourned due to death, so to try to relate to someone who is experiencing that loss, to know the social patterns I must engage in... it's a blank wall.
I crawl around it, looking for clues, but I do not know what to do with someone mired in grief.
I kept quiet and listened, then planned my workload so I could leave the office early and be there for my mother.
That's all I can do.
Death is something I have not been exposed to much. Yes, all of my grandparents are dead.
Grandfather, mother's side, lung cancer and liver failure due to a life of excess.
Grandfather, father's side, multiple strokes and diabetes.
Grandmother, mother's side, mental deterioration until the body broke down.
Grandmother, father's side, Emphysema.
I was... 5 years old, fourteen years old, twenty years old, twenty four years old.
Spaced out deaths.
Family friends have died, yes. Some of them that I have known my entire life.
And I am unfazed.
I am the nominated eulogy reader. I am the one who does not cry at funerals, even when everyone around me is breaking down. My mother lets people know that if they cannot complete what they have written about the deceased, I will be perfectly able to get through it.
I stand at the podium, at the altar, wherever we are conducting the service, and read aloud the words of others.
I wonder if I don't realize the immensity of it.
Or if I'm blocking it out, like I have trained myself to do with so many other emotions. It's a lifetime of training, that pushing away.
The pain hits you, you nod at it, and shove it into a closet until you have time to examine it and lick your wounds.
My aunt... I am more concerned about those around us, those she left behind, than her death. Her funeral, the arrangements, the constant phone calls, watching my mother navigate the house, phone pressed to her ear, address book nearby, calling, calling, calling. Notifications, details, logistics.
I feel nothing for the loss.
I ache for my father, I ache that I cannot stop this pain, that I cannot take this blow for him. My skull pounds in the frustration of knowing one is impotent.
The best I can directly do is touch, hug, and make phone calls.
The best I can indirectly do is shadow my mother, make sure she is taken care of, make sure that she is not upset, make sure that she is not stressed and overwhelmed.
By knowing that I do this, my father is able to retreat in his grief and focus on himself, not worrying about his wife.
It seems like such a small thing to do, but it is all I can.
When he called me, the next day, I was at work. From his tone, I stepped out of the office. When he asked me to sit down, I did so on the edge of the nearby wall. I thought something horrible had happened, something that would make me collapse. Worry about my mother choking me.
And then he said that his sister had killed herself.
Such relief.
How sad, how true.
I was relieved.
He talked to me, told me about his guilt in not calling me right away, told me his guilt in wishing he didn't feel like he had to tell me, that he was going to ruin my weekend with this knowledge.
He talked. I listened.
He talked about how upset he was, in the brief words that he uses, barest acknowledgements of suffering, but for him that is merely a sign of how incredibly broken he was inside.
He told me how my mother and sister had freaked out. How upset they were. That they're unable to control their emotions, he says, like we are. That we put our heads down and go.
That's one of the only times he's truly admitted how alike we are in more than our work ethic or driving skills. That inside, we are too much alike.
I don't know how to comfort without touch.
I don't know what to say or what to do.
Death is... foreign. I've never mourned due to death, so to try to relate to someone who is experiencing that loss, to know the social patterns I must engage in... it's a blank wall.
I crawl around it, looking for clues, but I do not know what to do with someone mired in grief.
I kept quiet and listened, then planned my workload so I could leave the office early and be there for my mother.
That's all I can do.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
It's funny. For once, I don't feel like writing. This is the last thing I want to be doing right now.
Okay, not the last thing.
The last thing I would want to me doing right now would be being eating alive by sharks or gang-raped by a pack of Down Syndrome kids.
Actually, I think I would prefer the sharks.
...Yeah, thinking on that, definitely the sharks.
Took off from work a little after noon, drove down to C's place to grab my stuff, hit Hot Java for their Mocha Blast, skated by the non-official student bookstore to grab my texts for this semester, and then headed home.
$230 for textbooks, though I've knocked that down with aid of Amazon, and am going to be trolling used bookstores tomorrow with my mother to see if I can find the other items, get it below $150.
Speaking of Amazon, yeah, me on that site is not a good thing. I think a sort of subconscious financial preservation has kept from from using it in the past.
Well, I used it for the first time. And overshopped, picked up some things that I did not need, that were not on my required reading material list.
Ah well.
Got home, my mother and sister were at the grocery store, so I did what I do when I'm sitting at home and have no idea when I'm going to be put in motion: watch whatever channel is marathoning America's Next Top Model.
No, that isn't sarcasm. I love that show. It's my weakness. I'm fascinated by the photoshoots and the make-up and fashion and the photography itself... drool.
They got home, a couple hours(!) later. By then, I had vaccuumed and cleaned up the kitchen, returned things to their proper places so my mother would not walk in and drop her shoulders like she does when the house is messy and she's feeling overwhelmed.
We ran an errand involving one of the cats, talked and planned out the next few days, about the relatives that are coming into town and the sleeping/bathroom arrangements.
Let me do some backstory here, father's side of the family.
My grandfather was raised on a farm in South Dakota with his sister. I do not remember the reason behind it, but he decided to move to Los Angeles and started working for SCE.
My grandmother was raised on a farm in Arkansas with her two sisters, one of which died fairly recently, the other of which committed suicide in her 40s. She went to a school for typists and decided that, once she graduated, she was going to move to Los Angeles to find work.
So she and her best friend packed up their steamer trunks (which I still have hers with her name engraved on it) and hopped on a bus heading west.
They moved into a house that was renting rooms to women, headed by an older married couple, and worked at whatever jobs they gained of which I do not know the details of.
My grandfather was friends with the owner of this house, and he happened by one day while the girls were out in the front yard and demanded an introduction to the woman that would become his wife.
They began dating, my grandfather constantly taking her out to shows at the Hollywood Bowl (the programs from some of which I still have), but she decided to move back to Arkansas.
They wrote. They wrote and wrote and wrote and we have so many letters, even recorded records my grandfather made.
And she came back, bringing with her a cake.
My grandfather used to say as soon as she stepped off that train with that cake, he knew that she was the one for him.
So they married.
Eventually, she had their first child, my father's older sister. My grandfather doted on her, though not as much as he doted on his wife. She was spoiled and fixated on, loved deeply.
Then my father was born.
Something wasn't right, though. Theory has it that my grandfather became jealous of the amount of attention his wife was spending on their son. She was his world, his everything, children were a secondary matter, and any attention she was not spending on him... no, he didn't like it at all.
My father was raised with this hostility, to the point of where, in high school, my grandfather ceased to acknowledge his existence. Mail would be thrown away, callers would be told they had the wrong number, that no one by that name lived there. The breaking point, I believe, was when my father was offered a full scholarship to the school of his choice- any school would take him- and my grandfather, still not acknowledging him, refused to sign any papers that would allow this to take place.
So he moved out.
Couch-surfing and living in his car, attending Pasenda City College, where he met my mother. Where she continually refused him and his advances because he was such a known player. A "man about town" she called him.
The first time he proposed, she informed him that she wouldn't marry him on a stack of Bibles.
He wore her down eventually.
Then there was a car accident, one that nearly killed him. Between the near-loss of his son, and my mother's influence, the gap between father and son started to mend, though it would never fully heal.
During this, though, my aunt continued to be raised as the golden child, protected, loved, nutured. She had depression issues, but we all did, and still the only two people in my family that imbalance has skipped was my grandmother and my sister.
But something was wrong with my aunt.
And she married.
She married a small-time actor, they traveled the world, lived in Asia for a few years, until she was finally able to escape him. You see, he had anger issues. Abuse, isolation, beating, I do not know how bad it was, but we do not talk about it much.
She escaped and they divorced.
Years later, she met her second husband. I was born by then, as was my sister. The wedding was held in Big Bear and I still remember the awful flowery dress I wore, the silverware against the glasses and the speeches.
They married and moved to Arkansas to be with the rest of the family, the few of us that did not end up in Los Angeles.
And things were good.
Until the accident.
Until the day that her husband, a construction worker, had a beam break under him and he fell six stories, paralyzing himself from the chest down.
It has been many years since that has happened, I was still a child, not even in my teens, remembering seeing him again, that tall, strong, and tanned man, weathered face, kind eyes, large beaked nose, constant button-up shirts, though not the business kind, but more of a western look with those bolo ties that my grandfather also favored. I remember the wheelchair, the novelty of it.
Physical therapy, surgeries, legal battles, more surgeries and more surgeries.
They would travel in their motorhome, going from Arkansas to Los Angeles, then up north, camping and seeing the country, a motorhome full of dogs and cats that they would park in my grandmother's large backyard for a few months, spending time with the family, my parents driving us up to visit, me staying for weeks in the summer with my aunt feeding my book habit, coasting along Main Street to the library that she would occasionally volunteer at, and I would return back to my grandmother's with stacks and stacks of books, maxing out the limit allowed, searching for hours for those that interested me, browsing the ancient computers for topics and ideas, hunting for perfect pages and information.
My uncle's back got worse, so they stopped traveling and bought a large property in Arkansas, and a mobile home to place beside their catfish pond. I never did visit.
To deal with her constant depression, my aunt decided to try an experimental surgery, having a device implanted in her skull that would send electrical shocks through her brain in the theory that it would stimulate serotonin production. It didn't seem to work, would just send her into coughing spasms when it went off on its set schedule.
When I was 13, my grandfather, my father's father had a series of strokes. Combined with his diabetes, he passed away. This was an interesting time for me, as it solidified the role I continue(d) to play. My mother still tells the story of how, when I went up to visit my grandfather one weekend, and saw how wrecked my family was over it, over his inability to remember where he was, what was going on, and the look on his face when he would glance at his wrist and see that hospital band and know that something was horribly, horribly wrong and the last few days, weeks, months, that he had would be spent in this haze of not knowing, of not truly being with his wife, his everything, and this great silent man would tear up, look at us, look at me with those eyes overwhelming in their desperation, in their knowledge...
I kicked everyone out.
I saw this and told everyone to leave. To go get food, to nap, to get out of the hospital and regroup and take as long as they needed because I was there and I would take care of it.
And they did leave.
At 23, my grandmother started going south. She lived ten years past her husband's death, and we all assumed to our core that once one of them went, the other would be behind them in months.
But she did not.
She stayed up in the High Desert, in Hesperia, in the house that they designed together, the house that they built together, their dream house, with the stray cat that her husband charmed, a calico that went from sleek to chubby with the food they gave it.
Ten years in that house.
Ten years alone, sleeping a bed built for two, in a bathroom with two sinks, with the record player that would fill their days and nights with the music that they loved, that they danced to, a closet full of his clothes, a dresser unused, a table set for one, a connected pair of recliners that they raised due to her bad hip, where they would lean back and watch westerns together on TMC and AMC.
They moved to the High Desert because of her lungs. Because the Los Angeles air was so bad for her, was doing such damage to her already weak lungs, that they had to go somewhere cleaner, somewhere drier. So they moved from their house on Ivar Avenue in Temple City, a house on the same block where my parents purchased their first house so they were close, and moved an hour away from life, from family.
When I was 24, she died.
We pulled the tube out of her throat that was working her lungs for her, the family gathered around, I watched the blood on the end of that plastic pipe catch on the corner of her mouth, and she died.
My aunt went further downhill.
In my grandmother's will, it was determined that everything was to be left to my father, because my grandmother knew that her daughter would be unable to take care of herself and was relying on my father to do it. This included the house, her dream house, because she was afraid that her daughter would wreck it in the way that she does.
My father was unwilling to sell this house.
Not because it was his parents' house, something that was built for love, a physical representation of their goals realized, but because he knew that his brother-in-law would not outlive his sister, and he needed a place, a house, where she could live because she would be unable to fend for herself when that time came.
Almost two years later, his sister shot herself in the head.
I'm stuck between two places.
The feelings of my father, of his assigned role, not just as an adult, but as a child, to protect his older sister, his mentally frail and emotionally unstable sister, and then having her kill herself, having her not talk to him, to have that bond of life experience shared not reach across the miles, that she could not pick up the phone, that he did not catch on when he talked to her... not just that, but to have the last person of his original family die, someone he assumed would be there with him until the end, someone that he would continue to age with, to care for, to celebrate with... and she left.
The feelings of my aunt.
The point at which one is either so unstable that, without forethought, takes a gun and ends their lives, or the alternative. The planning. Picking out a weapon. Spending days, weeks, months, eyeing this gun as your exit out. Picking your location, daydreaming, hoping, being so lost in the idea that you need to leave, that there is nothing worth living for, that people would be better off if you would just go ahead and do it already. Imagining your funeral. Imagining the crime scene team scrubbing the blood and brains out of the woodpanelled walls or white paint on the inside of your trailer, knowing that your husband will not be able to enter that room, will not be able to look at that wall that pieces of your skull flew across, that splatter, knowing that he would have to be the one to find you, that there was no other option, and the damage that would do to him was so outweighed by your own pain you no longer cared, that he would spend the next several days, several weeks, sleepless, phone ringing off the hook, social pressures coming down, the constant questionings of okay, and he's wondering if he is okay, what he's going to do, why the woman he promised himself to love and cherish and protect left him voluntarily, that everything should have been able to be worked through and did he do something wrong, was there anything he could have done, did he say something to you that set you off, what were his last words to you, when did he tell you that he loved you, and he combs over the memories of the last time he talked to you, wondering if his missed those signs, wondering if the way you ran your fingers through your hair, touched his arm, hugged him, kissed him, eyed the drawer or closet where the gun was stashed and if only he had noticed, if only he had been paying attention.
When the gun went off, did he hear it?
Did he rush to you in his wheelchair or with his cane or crutches, wondering if you were okay, wondering what had happened? Was he asleep, woken by the noise, not hearing when you left the bed? Was he out fishing, or out in town? What was the last thing you said to him, and how long did you stare at the gun before you finally lifted it to your head? How long did you wait, how many breaths did you take before you determined that you had breathed enough that this one, this one was the last one? How many times prior to this had you lifted that gun and put it back down? How many times had you told yourself you would not do such a thing, that you would get help, that people loved you, people needed you, and you weren't done or you were just too afraid of what would happen once that bullet entered your skull, weren't ready to know, and then the pain and depression outweighed that fear, lifted that gun, weightless and you knew it was time.
Did you close your eyes? Were you crying? Was it a mechanical movement, or were you sobbing, hunched over in the dark, in the light? In one of your shirts, usually with cats on it, and the wooden animal earrings, big brown framed glasses- were they on or off? Did you not want to see? Did you set them on a table? Did you have a drink, or many, to dull the nerves?
Or did you just dive right in?
Okay, not the last thing.
The last thing I would want to me doing right now would be being eating alive by sharks or gang-raped by a pack of Down Syndrome kids.
Actually, I think I would prefer the sharks.
...Yeah, thinking on that, definitely the sharks.
Took off from work a little after noon, drove down to C's place to grab my stuff, hit Hot Java for their Mocha Blast, skated by the non-official student bookstore to grab my texts for this semester, and then headed home.
$230 for textbooks, though I've knocked that down with aid of Amazon, and am going to be trolling used bookstores tomorrow with my mother to see if I can find the other items, get it below $150.
Speaking of Amazon, yeah, me on that site is not a good thing. I think a sort of subconscious financial preservation has kept from from using it in the past.
Well, I used it for the first time. And overshopped, picked up some things that I did not need, that were not on my required reading material list.
Ah well.
Got home, my mother and sister were at the grocery store, so I did what I do when I'm sitting at home and have no idea when I'm going to be put in motion: watch whatever channel is marathoning America's Next Top Model.
No, that isn't sarcasm. I love that show. It's my weakness. I'm fascinated by the photoshoots and the make-up and fashion and the photography itself... drool.
They got home, a couple hours(!) later. By then, I had vaccuumed and cleaned up the kitchen, returned things to their proper places so my mother would not walk in and drop her shoulders like she does when the house is messy and she's feeling overwhelmed.
We ran an errand involving one of the cats, talked and planned out the next few days, about the relatives that are coming into town and the sleeping/bathroom arrangements.
Let me do some backstory here, father's side of the family.
My grandfather was raised on a farm in South Dakota with his sister. I do not remember the reason behind it, but he decided to move to Los Angeles and started working for SCE.
My grandmother was raised on a farm in Arkansas with her two sisters, one of which died fairly recently, the other of which committed suicide in her 40s. She went to a school for typists and decided that, once she graduated, she was going to move to Los Angeles to find work.
 |
So she and her best friend packed up their steamer trunks (which I still have hers with her name engraved on it) and hopped on a bus heading west.
 |
They moved into a house that was renting rooms to women, headed by an older married couple, and worked at whatever jobs they gained of which I do not know the details of.
My grandfather was friends with the owner of this house, and he happened by one day while the girls were out in the front yard and demanded an introduction to the woman that would become his wife.
They began dating, my grandfather constantly taking her out to shows at the Hollywood Bowl (the programs from some of which I still have), but she decided to move back to Arkansas.
They wrote. They wrote and wrote and wrote and we have so many letters, even recorded records my grandfather made.
And she came back, bringing with her a cake.
My grandfather used to say as soon as she stepped off that train with that cake, he knew that she was the one for him.
So they married.
Eventually, she had their first child, my father's older sister. My grandfather doted on her, though not as much as he doted on his wife. She was spoiled and fixated on, loved deeply.
Then my father was born.
Something wasn't right, though. Theory has it that my grandfather became jealous of the amount of attention his wife was spending on their son. She was his world, his everything, children were a secondary matter, and any attention she was not spending on him... no, he didn't like it at all.
My father was raised with this hostility, to the point of where, in high school, my grandfather ceased to acknowledge his existence. Mail would be thrown away, callers would be told they had the wrong number, that no one by that name lived there. The breaking point, I believe, was when my father was offered a full scholarship to the school of his choice- any school would take him- and my grandfather, still not acknowledging him, refused to sign any papers that would allow this to take place.
So he moved out.
Couch-surfing and living in his car, attending Pasenda City College, where he met my mother. Where she continually refused him and his advances because he was such a known player. A "man about town" she called him.
The first time he proposed, she informed him that she wouldn't marry him on a stack of Bibles.
He wore her down eventually.
Then there was a car accident, one that nearly killed him. Between the near-loss of his son, and my mother's influence, the gap between father and son started to mend, though it would never fully heal.
During this, though, my aunt continued to be raised as the golden child, protected, loved, nutured. She had depression issues, but we all did, and still the only two people in my family that imbalance has skipped was my grandmother and my sister.
But something was wrong with my aunt.
And she married.
She married a small-time actor, they traveled the world, lived in Asia for a few years, until she was finally able to escape him. You see, he had anger issues. Abuse, isolation, beating, I do not know how bad it was, but we do not talk about it much.
She escaped and they divorced.
Years later, she met her second husband. I was born by then, as was my sister. The wedding was held in Big Bear and I still remember the awful flowery dress I wore, the silverware against the glasses and the speeches.
They married and moved to Arkansas to be with the rest of the family, the few of us that did not end up in Los Angeles.
And things were good.
Until the accident.
Until the day that her husband, a construction worker, had a beam break under him and he fell six stories, paralyzing himself from the chest down.
It has been many years since that has happened, I was still a child, not even in my teens, remembering seeing him again, that tall, strong, and tanned man, weathered face, kind eyes, large beaked nose, constant button-up shirts, though not the business kind, but more of a western look with those bolo ties that my grandfather also favored. I remember the wheelchair, the novelty of it.
Physical therapy, surgeries, legal battles, more surgeries and more surgeries.
They would travel in their motorhome, going from Arkansas to Los Angeles, then up north, camping and seeing the country, a motorhome full of dogs and cats that they would park in my grandmother's large backyard for a few months, spending time with the family, my parents driving us up to visit, me staying for weeks in the summer with my aunt feeding my book habit, coasting along Main Street to the library that she would occasionally volunteer at, and I would return back to my grandmother's with stacks and stacks of books, maxing out the limit allowed, searching for hours for those that interested me, browsing the ancient computers for topics and ideas, hunting for perfect pages and information.
My uncle's back got worse, so they stopped traveling and bought a large property in Arkansas, and a mobile home to place beside their catfish pond. I never did visit.
To deal with her constant depression, my aunt decided to try an experimental surgery, having a device implanted in her skull that would send electrical shocks through her brain in the theory that it would stimulate serotonin production. It didn't seem to work, would just send her into coughing spasms when it went off on its set schedule.
When I was 13, my grandfather, my father's father had a series of strokes. Combined with his diabetes, he passed away. This was an interesting time for me, as it solidified the role I continue(d) to play. My mother still tells the story of how, when I went up to visit my grandfather one weekend, and saw how wrecked my family was over it, over his inability to remember where he was, what was going on, and the look on his face when he would glance at his wrist and see that hospital band and know that something was horribly, horribly wrong and the last few days, weeks, months, that he had would be spent in this haze of not knowing, of not truly being with his wife, his everything, and this great silent man would tear up, look at us, look at me with those eyes overwhelming in their desperation, in their knowledge...
I kicked everyone out.
I saw this and told everyone to leave. To go get food, to nap, to get out of the hospital and regroup and take as long as they needed because I was there and I would take care of it.
And they did leave.
At 23, my grandmother started going south. She lived ten years past her husband's death, and we all assumed to our core that once one of them went, the other would be behind them in months.
But she did not.
She stayed up in the High Desert, in Hesperia, in the house that they designed together, the house that they built together, their dream house, with the stray cat that her husband charmed, a calico that went from sleek to chubby with the food they gave it.
Ten years in that house.
Ten years alone, sleeping a bed built for two, in a bathroom with two sinks, with the record player that would fill their days and nights with the music that they loved, that they danced to, a closet full of his clothes, a dresser unused, a table set for one, a connected pair of recliners that they raised due to her bad hip, where they would lean back and watch westerns together on TMC and AMC.
They moved to the High Desert because of her lungs. Because the Los Angeles air was so bad for her, was doing such damage to her already weak lungs, that they had to go somewhere cleaner, somewhere drier. So they moved from their house on Ivar Avenue in Temple City, a house on the same block where my parents purchased their first house so they were close, and moved an hour away from life, from family.
When I was 24, she died.
We pulled the tube out of her throat that was working her lungs for her, the family gathered around, I watched the blood on the end of that plastic pipe catch on the corner of her mouth, and she died.
My aunt went further downhill.
In my grandmother's will, it was determined that everything was to be left to my father, because my grandmother knew that her daughter would be unable to take care of herself and was relying on my father to do it. This included the house, her dream house, because she was afraid that her daughter would wreck it in the way that she does.
My father was unwilling to sell this house.
Not because it was his parents' house, something that was built for love, a physical representation of their goals realized, but because he knew that his brother-in-law would not outlive his sister, and he needed a place, a house, where she could live because she would be unable to fend for herself when that time came.
Almost two years later, his sister shot herself in the head.
I'm stuck between two places.
The feelings of my father, of his assigned role, not just as an adult, but as a child, to protect his older sister, his mentally frail and emotionally unstable sister, and then having her kill herself, having her not talk to him, to have that bond of life experience shared not reach across the miles, that she could not pick up the phone, that he did not catch on when he talked to her... not just that, but to have the last person of his original family die, someone he assumed would be there with him until the end, someone that he would continue to age with, to care for, to celebrate with... and she left.
The feelings of my aunt.
The point at which one is either so unstable that, without forethought, takes a gun and ends their lives, or the alternative. The planning. Picking out a weapon. Spending days, weeks, months, eyeing this gun as your exit out. Picking your location, daydreaming, hoping, being so lost in the idea that you need to leave, that there is nothing worth living for, that people would be better off if you would just go ahead and do it already. Imagining your funeral. Imagining the crime scene team scrubbing the blood and brains out of the woodpanelled walls or white paint on the inside of your trailer, knowing that your husband will not be able to enter that room, will not be able to look at that wall that pieces of your skull flew across, that splatter, knowing that he would have to be the one to find you, that there was no other option, and the damage that would do to him was so outweighed by your own pain you no longer cared, that he would spend the next several days, several weeks, sleepless, phone ringing off the hook, social pressures coming down, the constant questionings of okay, and he's wondering if he is okay, what he's going to do, why the woman he promised himself to love and cherish and protect left him voluntarily, that everything should have been able to be worked through and did he do something wrong, was there anything he could have done, did he say something to you that set you off, what were his last words to you, when did he tell you that he loved you, and he combs over the memories of the last time he talked to you, wondering if his missed those signs, wondering if the way you ran your fingers through your hair, touched his arm, hugged him, kissed him, eyed the drawer or closet where the gun was stashed and if only he had noticed, if only he had been paying attention.
When the gun went off, did he hear it?
Did he rush to you in his wheelchair or with his cane or crutches, wondering if you were okay, wondering what had happened? Was he asleep, woken by the noise, not hearing when you left the bed? Was he out fishing, or out in town? What was the last thing you said to him, and how long did you stare at the gun before you finally lifted it to your head? How long did you wait, how many breaths did you take before you determined that you had breathed enough that this one, this one was the last one? How many times prior to this had you lifted that gun and put it back down? How many times had you told yourself you would not do such a thing, that you would get help, that people loved you, people needed you, and you weren't done or you were just too afraid of what would happen once that bullet entered your skull, weren't ready to know, and then the pain and depression outweighed that fear, lifted that gun, weightless and you knew it was time.
Did you close your eyes? Were you crying? Was it a mechanical movement, or were you sobbing, hunched over in the dark, in the light? In one of your shirts, usually with cats on it, and the wooden animal earrings, big brown framed glasses- were they on or off? Did you not want to see? Did you set them on a table? Did you have a drink, or many, to dull the nerves?
Or did you just dive right in?
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