Suicide is one of those subjects that people tend to avoid, especially on a personal level. Tomorrow will mark eight years since my Dad "passed away." He didn't really pass away. He propped a hunting rifle on the floor, sat in a chair, and shot himself through the heart. I can't exactly go around stating it that way, because it makes other people uncomfortable. What makes ME uncomfortable is saying he "passed away" like he just gently slipped out of existence. Not only did I lose my Dad at a fairly young age (I was 23, my sister was 12, my Dad was only 50) but I lost him in what I think is the worst way possible, by HIS choice. That is the part that hurts the most, he had a choice and he chose to leave - permanently.
I wish I could say that my Dad's death was my only experience with suicide, but it wasn't. When I was 14 my uncle on my Mom's side (that's right, I have suicides and addicts on both sides of the family tree) committed suicide. He chose a handgun through the mouth. My uncle actually lived for several hours with half his head missing, and my Mom and grandparents sitting in the hospital waiting room. I'm being blunt and a bit graphic intentionally, suicide is not a pretty subject and it diminishes the full impact of what it truly is when we try to talk about it in pleasant terms. There is not a damn thing pleasant about it.
I was not close to my uncle at all. In fact, quite the opposite. We mostly saw him at family holiday functions and when I did see him he just gave me that creepy feeling. He always had a cigarette stuck to his bottom lip and it would bounce up and down as he talked. I don't know why, but I can't stand when smokers won't take the cigarette out of their mouth while they talk. Anyways, as long as I can remember he made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Later in life I learned there was a good reason for that. He was a heroin addict by the time he was 16. A drinker, a smoker, and a user of every drug he could get his hands on. In high school he stabbed a kid in the neck and my Mom was known as "Slash's little sister." Of course all this was kept from me until I was an adult, but it really proves the point that its not a bad idea to trust your instincts.
I honestly had no emotion on my uncle being dead, other than situation being unexpected and shocking. What made that situation tremendously difficult was watching my Mom and my Grandparents handle his death. Parents should NEVER have to bury their children - period. It goes against the natural order of things. Watching my grandfather openly break down, over and over, was one of the hardest things I've ever dealt with in my life. It was hard watching my Mom and grandmother mourn as well, but for some reason, I would get pangs in my chest listening to my grandfather bawl. My Mom dealt with things a little differently. She had a lot of anger, and most of it ended up pointed in my direction. To be fair, I was in high school and dealing with depression on my own and we hadn't exactly been seeing eye to eye on anything lately. My Mom was upset on how I responded to the news, I basically didn't respond. I had no emotional response, just shock. After she told me she got in the car and drove off, less than a mile down the road she was in a car accident. Another driver ran a red light, but she told me it was my fault. She explained to me that she was so upset that she had such a cold hearted, callus daughter that she wasn't as aware of her surroundings, and therefore wasn't able to react in time to steer clear of the other driver. He ran a red light, but somehow it was my fault. This could easily take us down a different path into the twisted avenues of my relationship with my mother over the years, but that is not for today. The point is simply that my uncle's suicide had a huge impact on my family, and although everyone reacted in a different manner, the reactions were intense.
Nine years later I found myself once again coping with a suicide, this time my own father. I've gone through every range of emotions in dealing with my Dad's death. ANGER, betrayal, sadness, disbelief, and the never ending questions that haunt me. I don't think about it everyday, but some times when I do it overwhelms me. Those emotions come flooding back and burn with such intensity like I just hung up from getting the call from the sheriff. The anniversary always gets me, reflecting on how much my life has changed and how much he has missed. I don't know how tomorrow will go...but I think I've stirred things up enough for tonight. I can't push emotion, its all there, I can feel it bubbling, but something is telling me to let it rest for now.
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