as promised, i'm posting the story i wrote for my semester-long immersion project in my narrative journalism class. it's fairly dramatic, but welcome to the life of my family for the last year or so. :) this piece was voted in the top three in my class of 25, a pretty big honor considering i was probably the youngest person there. so here we go... it's long, but it reads fairly quickly.
*sorry the format is a little off... blogspot wouldn't let me indent or center or anything. lame.
The evening started with a phone call.
I waited in line at Cosmo’s Café for my 12-ounce vanilla chai latte when a call from an unsaved contact in my phone came through. I have never answered phone calls from numbers I don’t recognize—if it’s important, they can leave a message has always been my philosophy—but for some reason unknown to me, I answered that particular call.
It was from a high school friend asking what was going on outside my house in Lewiston. An ambulance, a fire truck, two police cars and a wave of people surrounded the American four-square as police carried out a gun and fingerprinting kit.
“Are you sure it’s my house? Do you even know where I live?” She did. She knew exactly where I lived.
I hung up the phone and called my mom, fear squeezing my heart into mush and a knot forming in my stomach. No answer. Re-dial. Voicemail again.
The two friends I was with tried to placate me: “It’s probably nothing. Just an accident.” I called my then-boyfriend, Ray, and asked him to swing by my house; he was in Lewiston that Friday. He dropped everything and did as I asked. He later told me something in my voice let him know I instinctually knew the news that was coming.
While I prayed to God, a God I still don’t know exists, that someone had broken into my house and my dad had shot them in self-defense, my nerves were livewires and my heart was a kick drum, waiting for my mother to call me back. I tried to pay attention to the swim meet we caught the tail-end of, but all I can remember is the aquamarine color of the pool and the way my stomach jumped to my throat when the name “Mosquito” popped up on my phone. She was calling me back as the meet ended.
“Mom, what is going on?” I relayed the information my friend had divulged on the phone and was met with silence. “Mom, what the hell is going on?” Tears rocked my voice and my legs wobbled as I made my way through the doors to the frozen February night.
“Am, your dad shot himself,” she said quietly, trying to deliver the crippling news as gently as possible.
Collapse. Gasp. Heave. Focus. Breathe.
“Is he alive?” Silence. Dread. Pain. “Mom, is he alive?”
“Your daddy is gone, Am. I’m so sorry.” There were no tears in her voice, just agony.
My phone flew across the concrete as my forehead hit the ground. My heart was collapsing into a hole in my chest, physically hurting as it shattered, screaming for release from the pain. My brain switched from hyper-speed to numb in a matter of seconds—my father, my eccentric, quirky, reliable daddy, was gone.
- - - -
I packed my bag in a blur. I remember thinking “how am I supposed to know what to pack for a funeral?” I was angry. I was shocked. I was scared. I was in misery.
Tears continued to flow while my mind was 30 miles away—down in Lewiston where my mother called my brother, Jordan. He was in his apartment in Moscow getting ready for an evening out with his friends. She called once and he rejected it—it was a Friday night and he wasn’t looking for a conversation with Mom. When she called back immediately, he had to answer.
My mom said she told him the same thing she told me and too many other people over the course of the next week: “Daddy’s gone. He shot himself.”
“I was just in shock pretty much,” Jordan said. “It took me a few minutes to process it. I don’t know, it really hit me… It was very unexpected.”
My brother threw his bag together and waited for me to get to his apartment. I had only seen him cry one time—when I was 9 years old and diagnosed with diabetes—but the instant our eyes met, sobs ripped through each of us as we hugged in the parking lot. We gripped each other tight and held onto one another for minutes: We needed something solid to grasp as our world fell apart.
- - - -
Every light on the main floor of the house was on and the front door was open. February air shocked each time it blew in, but closing the door would have been pointless because so many people were in and out. The television was still on while the paramedics and police milled around—my dad had turned it on, though not the lights, and my mom had no inclination to turn it off.
Everything else was quiet: the police, the paramedics, my mother. She was completely broken up but trying to hold it together with everyone around. It was the calm before the storm—My brother and I were 30 minutes away, and everyone was just waiting. Waiting. Waiting.
Waiting for when we all had to see one another and deal with the situation.
My dad was taken out through the basement door and through the back yard. The neighbors were already peering through the darkness to our house, my mom didn’t want to give them more to talk about. She never saw him again after she found him in our basement coal room, sitting on a box, slouched over with the barrel of the gun on the left side of his face. A couple pink drops were on his sweatshirt but she saw no other damage—just defeat.
- - - -
My father had been sick for months, possibly years, before he committed suicide. Since my graduation from high school in 2008, he had lost weight and was easily confused. He claimed he was having trouble hearing but, in hindsight, I don’t think he could process and understand what people were saying to him. He had a hard time making decisions, like what kind of toppings to get on a pizza, and was detached from everything. It was difficult for him to read the newspaper and fill out forms at the doctor’s office. He went to work about 15 times between Thanksgiving and Feb. 5, the day before he died, and sometimes did not last the entire day. He lost his interest in driving the convertible, something he enjoyed from the day he bought it, and always complained about his head and his stomach hurting.
He wouldn’t get mad anymore. He wouldn’t get sad. He wouldn’t get excited—his emotions were flat. He had become a shell without any of us realizing just how empty he was. My mom got angry with him the day before he died because he came home from work after an hour of being there, and he wouldn’t fight back.
“I tried everything,” she said. “I tried getting mad to get a response. I tried being positive to boost his spirit. Nothing. I cried when I had gotten so frustrated with him and all he could do was hold me and say ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’”
- - - -
The ride from Moscow was silent. My roommate, Jordyn, and our friend D.W., who were both with me when my mom called, drove my brother and I to Lewiston and were able to just let us be in the back seat. No words of comfort, no soothing music—just the gesture of taking us home when we needed it most was enough. I held my brother’s hand the entire way, a huge step in our constantly-fighting-like-siblings-do relationship.
As we rounded the corner of our block, he squeezed my hand tighter than before and we were both thinking the same thing: What are we going to see? We had no idea where my dad had shot himself—Jordan thinking the living room because it was where Dad was most comfortable, me thinking the kitchen because the cleanup of linoleum and countertops would be easiest.
There was nothing different about the outside of my house except the light in the living room was on and the shade was not drawn as it normally would be at night. No police cars. No ambulance. No gawking neighbors. No hearse. Everything was eerily normal until my mom met us in the front yard and reality set in. Again, there were no words. Just sobs and shudders and labored breathing.
Inside the house was the same: My boyfriend held me as I cried, my brother held my mom as she cried, my grandma tried to comfort whoever she could. Once the initial questions were out of the way—Where did it happen? Did he leave a note? Is everyone okay?—the real question became clear: What the hell do we do now?
- - - -
My mom had one more phone call to make that night, to my half-sister, Tiffiny, in Portland. Tiffiny had been estranged from my parents in the year leading up to our dad’s death for personal reasons unknown to me. She sent him a card on his birthday, Jan. 13, but had not spoken to either of my parents since her birthday in December.
My mom called Nick, Tiffiny’s husband, because he is more level-headed and was better able to handle the initial call. They were out to dinner with friends and Nick feigned sickness to leave quickly. When she heard the news, Tiffiny said she had a panic attack—she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t speak and she had that feeling of “Oh God, I’m going to puke. Oh God.” She and Nick, with the help of a couple friends, packed their bags and left that night. At some point they pulled over on the side of the road to sleep and arrived in Lewiston the next morning.
My sister said she felt physically emptied—like an actual piece of her had died and was missing. It seemed surreal, like she was outside herself and watching herself in film. She kept telling herself it wasn’t real. We all tried to tell ourselves it wasn’t real.
- - - -
Saturday morning was hell.
A sleepless night and a crushed heart made for puffy eyes and wild emotions. I drifted in and out of sleep until 7 a.m., spending part of the night in my parents’ room and part of the night in my own. I couldn’t believe my mom was sleeping in her bed—the bed my father had occupied less than 24 hours before and would never sleep in again—as though her world had not just been turned upside-down. I barely had the capacity to recognize her strength—my mind was so filled with anguish—but even then I saw her survival instincts kicking in.
Phone calls, text messages and visitors poured in at all hours of the day. Sympathy, pain and tears came with each, intensifying and solidifying the fact that we were not just having a horrible nightmare. My father was gone and I had no explanation. No note, no clues, no help.
Just heartache.
I was trapped inside an emotional bubble. Tears sprang from my eyes without warning—I didn’t even bother to wear makeup that day. I could laugh about memories of my father being shared, still expecting him to walk in the back door any moment. I replayed over and over, to a sickening degree, the scene my mother found the evening before. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I could barely breathe without wheezing from pain. I didn’t know when the ache would end, but as the days stretched on, I wondered if it ever would.
The funeral was held Thursday and the church hit capacity. Friends and family poured in from all over to pay respects to my father—he had no idea how many lives he touched. The priest used an analogy in the eulogy to annotate how my father died, sparing the word “suicide,” since it was a Catholic church. He described it as being trapped on the fourth floor of a burning building with all doors blocked. Do you jump out the window or sit and wait for the fire—the depression, the helplessness, the agony—to consume you? My father jumped in hopes of something better rather than waiting to be taken over.
After the funeral, the mourning in our family continued for weeks. Though we put on good faces and returned to school and work, it was clear each of us was still shaken. Eventually the mourning faded and grieving took its place. We each had internal demons to battle on our own, some more trying than others. There were days when we were not motivated, days we were so depressed ourselves it was a struggle to get out of bed. My mom summed up the feeling in a single phrase: “It’s the saddest I’ve ever been, but I don’t want to die… I’m not without hope.”
- - - -
The man my father was when he died was not the dad I had growing up. He used to be a stable force, a reliable perfectionist who gave heart and soul without ever talking about it. He was at every baseball game, every dance recital, and every parent-teacher conference. His family always came first and he was proud of us.
My dad was quirky—during his “mid-life crisis” six years ago he grew his hair out and got a perm—and he had a unique sense of humor. He never said much—he just thought a lot and came out of left field with comments that would leave you scratching your head as he chuckled to himself.
He enjoyed things as unique as himself. He once found a piece of drift wood shaped like a hand giving the middle finger and anchored it in the garden facing the neighbors… He hoped they’d get the message. He caught dozens of praying mantises… And froze them. Thawed them. Sculpted them. Then hairsprayed each into place and mounted them in glass cases as art forms.
My dad was a packrat and loved to tinker around the house—but if something couldn’t be fixed with duct tape, it couldn’t be fixed at all. He was creative, artistic and quietly romantic. When he saw a rose in the garden worthy of my mother, he’d clip it, place it in a vase and set it next to her chair in the living room. He was social and a good conversationalist, but he had insecurities. He always wanted to be the “cool” guy, so when his quirks made people laugh, they were laughing with him, not at him. He felt deeply, but was not much for sharing his feelings out loud; he was better able to show his love than talk about it.
He loved 70s rock-and-roll music and spending time outside. The question of why my dad, a relaxed and easy going free-spirit, ended his life has plagued everyone he knew for over a year, and we are just now reconciling the fact we may never get an answer.
- - - -
According to the Suicide Prevention Action Network, Idaho had the 10th highest rate of suicide in 2006, the most recent statistic year available. In 2008, 81 percent of Idaho suicides were completed by men; 65 percent of those suicides involved a firearm, 13 percent higher than the national average. The availability of guns in this area, as well as the finality of their use, contributes to the reason that particular method is so often chosen. Working age men in Idaho (18- to 64-years-old) commit suicide at a rate of 25.8 of 100,000 people, the third highest demographic of people in the state.
The death of my father fits into each of those categories. Though it is a slight comfort, in a macabre and morbid sort of way, to know he was not the only one to feel suicide was the answer, the statistics still don’t explain why. Why could my father, who could not even decide on pizza toppings, decide to irrevocably take himself away from us? Why couldn’t he wait for the results of his blood work to come back before he acted? Why couldn’t we deal with whatever the issue was and keep him here? Why couldn’t he have asked for help?
I asked myself these questions, as did the rest of my family, every day for months. We assume he was scared of what the doctor would tell him at his follow-up appointment. He was afraid it would be cancer, or something equally as emotionally and financially taxing on the family, and he wouldn’t want to put us through that. He felt he had no other choice. He was always one to do things his own way—suicide was just him being orderly. As my sister put it, if you felt like you were becoming someone you weren’t, and you felt awful all the time and had no hope of getting better, would you consider ending things on your own terms so you wouldn’t burden anyone else? It wasn’t selfish… It was selfless. He had to have been braver than any of us could grasp to pull that trigger—no one can understand that feeling of being on the brink unless they have been there.
We tortured ourselves—like all survivors of suicide—with no true explanations until we realized no matter how many times we ask “why,” we will never get the real answer. The one person who could give us the insight is gone.
And we are left picking up the pieces.
- - - -
The effects of suicide radiate out in levels. The ring of people closest to the person lost is hit the hardest. The children, the spouse, the parents, the siblings—they lose an entire piece of themselves. The next level—the friends, the co-workers, the acquaintances—lose a person they will never forget. Another level out—the friends of family members, the friends of friends—see the repercussions and do what they can to help. The furthest level out—strangers—hear the story and sympathize with the inner rings.
Our friends do not treat us differently than they did before my dad died, though they often think their words and actions through more carefully. They don’t throw around the phrase “it made me want to kill myself” as liberally as most anymore, and they make certain on Dad’s Weekend, his birthday, Father’s Day and Feb. 6 we are taken care of and distracted. They pick us up when we are down and always lend listening ears when we have the urge to talk, but that’s how it has always been and the consistency is a comfort.
My family acts much in the same way. Regardless of the gaping hole in our lives, we still treat each other with the love and respect we always have. We look out for one another and we take care of each other. As a family, we have dealt with the situation as well as anyone can expect. Our bonds have tightened; we think our decisions through more and consider the effects our actions will have on one another and the people around us. But as my brother put it, it’s almost better to keep our relationships with one another as they were before rather than over-exaggerate them and try to make them stronger—they need to be natural, not forced.
- - - -
Each person in my family and those close to us has dealt with the loss of my father differently. I chose the path of standing up and speaking out: I gave an interview to the Argonaut three months after it happened and spoke at a suicide prevention seminar on campus close to the one-year mark. After each, I had strangers approach me on campus to applaud my bravery and tell me how much my strength touched them. It is easier for me to talk about it and put it out in the open, rather than compartmentalize it and bury it, only to have to drudge it up later. I take solace in my friends and family and devote energy and attention to schoolwork to keep myself occupied. I look for the positive things in my life to remind me it is OK to be happy, and I talk to my dad any time I need to.
Jordan would rather not talk or think about the situation if he can help it. His close friends know how our dad died, but perhaps not the method. About 15 of his fraternity brothers attended the funeral, and his friends and co-workers have offered to help in any way they can, but they recognize he prefers to not talk about it and just leave him be. Like the rest of us, my brother still thinks about our father every day, but he doesn’t dwell on it and he doesn’t get depressed anymore.
“It happens. Shit happens. I mean, if there was a backward button that would be awesome. But it’s just one of those things. The guy in the sky had a plan.”
Tiffiny finds comfort in her husband and her daughter. Though having a baby was the most life-changing and special thing to happen to her, it broke her heart for Ellie to be born less than a year after our dad died.
“I hate that he isn’t able to be a grandpa and hold Ellie and play with her and stuff like that. That breaks my heart. But then I wonder if he would be able to be that grandpa I think about because of how sick he was. And that’s a different sort of heartbreak.”
She said her faith has also helped her heal, knowing she can put some of her worries and hurt into God’s hands and trust He loves her and has welcomed our dad into Heaven and looks over him.
My mom uses her stubbornness, her tenacity, to keep this situation from beating her. She has a sense of pride and doesn’t want to give people more to talk about than they already have. She has a grandchild to watch grow and children to see succeed. She said she doesn’t know what else to do—it’s either get up and put one foot in front of the other or curl up in a ball and wither away.
“I can’t do that. I can for a few days—we all have our moments—but I guess I’m just too stubborn. I know people talk. Hell, we gossip when we hear things. But eventually that will be tamped down. I’m too damn stubborn to let the gossipers have any more ammunition to gossip with. I am not going to be a victim.”
- - - -
My family has often been told since the tragedy how strong we are—but the outside world has not seen us at our worst.
People aren’t there to see me cry while hanging shelves in my apartment because my dad isn’t helping like he should be. They aren’t there when I write to him in a private journal, when I beg the universe to give me one more day with him. People aren’t there when I wake up from nightmares, chest heaving, sobs forming, trying to re-repress the images my unconscious drug up. They aren’t there while I cry, thinking about future events my father will miss. At these times I try to be stoic… and fail in my attempts.
People aren’t there to see my brother step up to be the man of the house and take care of the jobs my father used to. They aren’t there to see him help my mom where she needs it while stepping back to try to make her more independent. They aren’t there to see him wish our father would see him graduate from college in May or be the one to walk me down the aisle instead of him.
People aren’t there when my sister feels the need to be the strong sibling because she is the oldest, the anchor. They aren’t there when she holds her 5-month-old daughter, knowing she will never meet her Grandpa Mike, and hating that fact. They aren’t there when regrets pour in with the pain as she thinks about the rocky relationship she had with our dad when he died, and struggles to maintain her strength.
People aren’t there when my mother sits, overwhelmed, trying to figure out how to replace the roof, replace the furnace, pay the bills and support a family without going into bankruptcy. They aren’t there when she has to fix something around the house with no guidance or experience. People aren’t there when her self-confidence is drained because she doesn’t have her companion, her teammate, anymore to back her up in decisions she makes and endeavors she pursues. They aren’t there when, more than anything, she wants a hug from my father, but has to make do with his pillow and calming breaths.
We each have regrets in regard to my father. I wish I had called him earlier that day like I had the urge to—the sun was shining, I was out of class and I missed him, but I figured he was either at work or home sleeping and I didn’t want to bother him… I figured I would see him soon enough.
My brother also wishes he had called him more recently than his birthday, though they never had a relationship where they talked every day, so at the time it wasn’t strange.
My sister regrets not reconciling with him sooner. Since my father was such a stable force in our lives and he’d always been there for her before, why wouldn’t he be there when she was ready to resolve their issues? She was wrong in thinking that and now has to tackle a weight on her shoulders the rest of us are not burdened with.
My mother regrets fighting with him the night before, though they didn’t go to bed angry. She also regrets not giving him a kiss good bye that morning when she left for work—he looked like he was sleeping and she didn’t want to wake him—but she said she doesn’t regret the last thing she said to him on the phone was “I love you, good bye.”
I suppose our weaknesses are relative, but they seem to ebb and flow freely.
- - - -
The morning of Feb. 6, 2010, one year after my father took his own life, my mother sat on the couch, heating pad on, her legs curled underneath her. The newspaper was folded and set aside, already read, and her attention was through the front window with the blinds open. A blanket spilled across her lap and she held my father’s Niagra Falls mug of coffee in both hands, poised at her mouth, ready to drink at any second.
Eyes Close. Inhale. Sip. Swallow. Exhale. Eyes open.
It was the same scene as 18 months earlier, minus one major element.
My mother and father woke up to read the newspaper, drink coffee and begin their day with one another for almost 23 years. Despite the lack of companionship, my mom’s routine hasn’t changed.
She has fallen back into the same day-to-day pattern as before, however lonely, because it is all she knows. She hasn’t missed a day of work to grieve since the week she took off after my father died. She comes home each night to watch television and work on projects around the house when she has the motivation. The routine helps her get from point A to point B to point C through the day, though it keeps her from being more social because it is now so ingrained into her lifestyle.
There have been changes. My mom no longer wears her wedding ring, though not by choice—she sliced her ring finger while cooking a few weeks after the incident and the pain still keeps her from being able to wear her ring. Perhaps that is my dad’s way of keeping her from wearing anyone else’s ring. She spends many nights eating cereal for dinner because cooking for one is not satisfying. She imagines herself finding another companion, but doesn’t see another marriage in her future. She spends more time on the phone with us now and has re-arranged the living room furniture to suit her preference, rather than my father’s.
But his clothes still hang in the closet and sit on the chest at the foot of their bed. His jerry-rigged contraptions continue to keep our house functioning and his truck still sits in the garage, ready to be driven. His trinkets litter the house and his duct-tape-bandaged wall upstairs remains unfixed. His presence is everywhere, even though he’s gone. And though our routines have all picked back up and settled into place, it is his comfort that keeps the normalcy in our lives, even when our world has changed entirely.
