Death & my life.
I'm 37 years old & I really miss my father. Not to be on a down note here but he's been dead since 1991 & I just don't like the way things happened. It just sucked in general. My brother killed himself in 1989 (I belive it was because he had obsessive compulsive disorder) & my father was miserable with out him, he (my father) had lost his mother at age 13 & he told my mother & grandmother that he had sworn never to get close to anyone again, the only person he let in was my brother, they fished together & discussed things, tied flies & listened to music (though neither one liked the other's music all that well) After my Brother died my father was even more distant than he had been before. My Grandmother was of the opinion that he might just drift away, get in the car & leave & not come back. His solution was a lot more permanent than that. He put a shotgun in his mouth in front of our barn & somehow managed to pull the trigger. He did this on the 5th of July. My mother was in the house reading but didn't think anything of the shotgun blast, she thought a neighbor was shooting off firecrackers, (that wasn't unusual in our neighborhood, when I was growing up, but since most of the firecracker shooters were around my age I still wonder how many firecrackers were going off?) I do know that her only comment on the subject was that she wished he'd taken her with him. That's nice to hear when your immediate family of 4 is down to 2! Of course, I already had Lois & was involved in my own little family unit. My mother came down from her den where she'd been reading a few hours after it happened & found his note on the table, she called 911 & they ? why she would think he would have killed himself, she read them the note (which, to this day I still haven't read) & they sent a car. My mother stayed in the house until the police car came & as soon as they rolled down the driveway the cop got out & told her to stay in the house (the barn formed an 'L' with the kitchen of our house & she could not see him in the 'L' on the ground but the cop in the driveway could. My mother called my uncle 'H'who was on his way out the door to a Bob Dylan concert, if he hadn't left the tickets in the house & had to run back in from the car to get them, he would not have gotten the call (in 91 they didn't have the prevalant cell phones we do today nor did they have caller id as much as they do now- me, I wouldn't have picked up the phone if I was on the way out to a concert!) Needless to say, he missed the concert. I had my Uncle's kids so that he & his wife could go to said concert, they did not come tell me, they went to my mother's house (60 miles away) & began the procedures which go with a sudden death. My grandmother, whom I lived with, was at annother uncles house & they came right away too.
The next morning I got the kids up (miss J was 11, mr J, 8 & Lois 18 months) fed everyone & we were watching mtv, I actualy heard the song that introduced me to Alice in Chains for the first time that day, Man in the Box & to this day, while I like that song very well, I still think of how an hour later my Aunt & Uncle came in greeted their kids & when I asked how the concert was my Aunt said to the kids 'let's go out in the yard & pick raspberries' she took Lois too & so I knew something was up. My Uncle was the one who told us, my grandmother & I, when my brother died too & I'm sure it couldn't have been easy to have to tell me of a second death like that. He did it Baldly, no gentle breaking it to me, just said look, I have some bad news for you, your Father Killed himself yesterday. Then started telling me how he happened to have to go backin the house for the concert tickets. He also told me that my mother was the only one who seemed surprised that he'd done it. I can't really say I was too surprised myself. I remember I packed bags for Lois & I & H & I left within a half an hour. Over the 60 mile drive we said little, Lois slept, I had to ask him to stop so I could go to the bathroom, I remember wherever we went, it might have been a Papa Ginos, the bathroom was down a long hall & I kept thinking as I walked down that long, dim hall 'my father is dead, my father is dead, only 2 of us left now.' The next few days were horific to say the least. When we arrived my mother was holding court with a bunch of her dead childrens society people (aka: "the compassionate friends" I'm sorry, but when you've been mourning the passing of a loved one for 15-20 years & are still just as broken up at the mention of them as you were the day it happened, maybe it's time to try some one on one counseling, yes, I realize I have not lost a child & after seeing what it did to my parents I pray daily that I never will lose a child. But I have lost a brother & my Father both before I was even 23 years old & I truly belive you need to move on after a time) My Uncle, the same one I'd just ridden for an hour with took me aside & said he needed my help with something, he took me out to the front of the barn where the deed had been done & pointed out that there was still blood & other things there on the ground, he made some comment that the Mass State Police were pretty lazy considering they couldn't get it all cleaned up, I went in the barn & got a shovel & scooped the messy sand up & tipped it over the side of the stone wall into the lilac bushes- why he didn't help & why he had to show ME this I'll never know. Our minister tried to counsel me & I broke down & told him a bunch of things I didn't need to burden him with, my misery over my weight, my aggravation over how both of my parents had just stopped living when Ben died (now literaly, not just metaphorically) & how it seemed like such a slap in the face to me & to my daughter who had only me in the world as it was. I had to get a dress, this was july though & it was hard to find a black one, my friend Jackie took me to look for one & when I got Lois belted in the car & sat down to ride to the mall I said to her 'we're going to pretend this is a normal shopping trip, we're going to pretend I'm not shopping for a dress to wear to my fathers funeral' Later she told me she really admired how I could put it all away like that & just go on. I know now I should have been crying on her shoulder, I know now that not crying at all, which is what I did, was really bad & unhealthy. I couldn't cry though, because I was pissed, I was so angry I could not speak most of the time, I remember the graveside service, because my family is so screwed up we didn't have a regular funeral, we had a small graveside service & a memorial service (or did we? you know, I can't remember, I think the graveside service was it) I was pissed there too, during the ministers readings I was staring at the casket. Thinking about my grandmother's comment while I was feeding Lois breakfast that morning & commented that it still didn't seem possible that he was dead. My grandmother said 'well, I'm sure it would seem more real if you could see him dead but there wasn't enough of the head left to allow a viewing.' To this day I still do not understand why people felt so compelled to tell me things like that. So they'd set up chairs beside the grave, I was in one, my grandmother in annother & my Mother in the next. I sat there raging inside how dare he, how dare he leave me with this bitch, [my mother, the woman who 5 years later, when I was pregnant with my second child & expressed worry that I could never love the second as much as I did the first said: 'Oh, don't worry about it, when you have the second, everything the first does is just annoying & drives you nuts' (I was her first child)]
I sat looking at the rest of the mourners, I could see Jackie & her mother in the semi circle on the other side of the coffin & Chrissie & her mother, I felt like there was a wall of glass on the other side of the coffin, seperating me from everyone else, no one else knew how I was feeling, everyone said I was 'holding up so well' it was because my rage was keeping me going I was ripping mad, more furious than I can ever even begin to express, this almost got out at home after the service, we adjourned to the house for cold cuts & other food & a dead child person cornered me in the kitchen. She had the nerve to try to tell me that lots of siblings of dead children feel like the parents obsess over the dead one & doesn't care about the living ones that it's just not true. I stood there staring at this woman & I hope at least half of what I was feeling & thinking showed in my face (I've been told many times that I have a transparent face & all my thoughts & feelings show on it) exactly what I was thinking was: "lady, you have GOT to be kidding me, my father just KILLED HIMSELF because he missed my brother so much, I wasn't enough, my not even 2 year old daughter wasn't enough, nothing would have been enough because MY brother is dead & you're going to tell me he cared about me? he didn't give a shit about me, the last time he cared about me is when I went in to the hospital to have my kid because he was hoping I'd have a boy he could bond with like he did with my brother. Once he knew I had a daughter he didn't give shit one & how dare you even begin to presume you have the slightest clue as to what my father was thinking or how my mother acts when no ones around for her to put a show on for"
I recently posted a comment on a blog where a woman I used to know blogs often about how much she misses her brothers & her father who have died in the past few years. I mentioned that I belive not mourning my father's death because I was too consumed with rage contributed to a sort of insanity for a few years after his death. I do belive this, I don't dare look back at my diarys of that time because I'm afraid of what I would find, I remember being alone at the house with Lois while my grandmother was with my mother, someone had to be at the house in Haverhill because it was a historical landmark & we had to give tours so 3 weeks out of 4 I was there & Phil was with my mother until Christmas time. The first few weeks Jennie stayed with me for which I am still profoundly grateful, she was one of my closest friends & while she did have problems of her own (a crazy boyfriend among other things) she was there for me in a way none of my other friends have ever been. I was still pretty enraged though & didn't really mourn as I should have, after Jennie had to go home to be with the crazy boyfriend so HE wouldn't commit suicide I was alone with Lois alot, I had to keep it together because anytime between 10 & 5 tuesday thru saturday & 1-5 on sundays anyone could just ring the doorbell & I had to drop everything & show them around the old rooms. I remember Chrissie was going to come visit a few times but didn't due to multiple things & I cried every time she'd call & say she couldn't come, I cried at the drop of a hat that summer, now I belive it was because I wasn't crying about my father's death so I cried about everything else,
When my Brother died it was a shock, My grandmother was on the phone & was making a collage & my uncle barged in & shouted why aren't you ready to go, my granmother said 'what? what are you talking about?' & my uncle shouted 'Bens dead! didn't they call you?' we packed in 2 minutes & I cried all the way down there. I cried for the next 2 days, we all did. you just don't expect a 16 year old to die. It was a total shock & we cried constantly. the memorial service & the graveside service were full of weeping. I never cried when my father died, as I said I was too pissed off, I cried for years after though.
Posted by Becky
at 12:01 AM EDT
Posted by Becky
at 7:29 PM EDT
