The Boots My Mother Gave Me (38 page)

“Ma’am, you need to calm down,” the officer warned, coming into the kitchen upon hearing her outburst.

“This isn’t the time or the place, Aunt Clara,” I spoke calmly, trying to maintain my composure.

“You don’t deserve to be here. None of you! You deserted him. Walked out on him,” she squawked.

“Ma’am,” the officer called to her again.

I remained seated beside Kat, afraid if I stood up, I might lunge at her jugular or something. My temper boiled. “Please, get her out of here.” I wasn’t going to stoop to her level, but I wanted to with everything inside of me.

As a kid, I remember seeing a cartoon where this character gets fed up with his nemesis, and he sticks two of his fingers, one up inside each of the guy’s nostrils and picks him up by them, slamming him on the floor from one side to the other, until it knocks some sense into him. That’s what I wanted to do to her. The officer escorted her from the room, leaving us to ourselves.

“Is this really happening?” Kat asked. “I keep thinking maybe I’ll wake up...like it’s just a bad dream. How am I going to explain this to Megan?”

We had a small viewing for him at the local funeral home. Approaching his casket, I half expected him to sit up and start telling us how the ceremony was all wrong, and it should be like this and like that, ordering people around as he used to. I wanted him to. He did not. He just lay there, his eyes closed, his hands one on top of the other, crossed over his stomach.

I put my hand over his. It was cold, completely devoid of blood flow. I leaned my head down next to his ear, quietly singing a bit of
Have I Told You Lately That I Love You,
the old Jim Reeves tune we used to sing together when we strummed around on the guitars. I kissed him on the cheek, feeling my eyes begin to fill with tears.

I stood, returning both of my hands to the side of the casket, looking down at him, and with the tears came anger. It flooded over me like a heat wave. My tears vaporized, halting in their tracks, my
almond
flexing. He simply lay there, so peaceful. It was just like him to make a mess and leave everybody to clean it up. How would we get over this? Why did he do this? To punish us? He always had a reason for everything. What was his reason for this?

“Get up,” I whispered, shaking his casket lightly. He lay there. I could hear his laughter in my head, that laugh he had when he did something terrible and got away with it, when he did something and there was nothing any of us could do about it. I could see him laughing at me. “Get up!” I whispered louder, through clenched teeth, shaking his casket, harder this time. My entire body felt like an electrical current ran through it.

Mom and Kat came to me, one on each side, walking me to the door. And there, in the cold February night, leaning against his Jeep, ready and waiting in case I needed him, was Jeremiah Johnson. I guess it’s true what they say about muscle memory, body memory. At the sight of him, my tense frame calmed, in an instant. For as long as I could remember, I ran to him for comfort and security. My body no longer acting, but reacting, the way it trained itself to do in his presence, relieved, relaxed, and peaceful.

He walked me down the street to the café on the corner, where we sat in a booth way in the back, warming up over a hot cup of coffee. I talked, he listened, trying to work my way through everything, understand it somehow. We sat there for hours, waiting on Kat and Mom.

Kat would not leave Dad until the funeral home director advised her he must close up for the night. She stayed, holding his hand in hers. She must have cried a river for him. I remember her tears running down her face, dropping onto the satin inside his casket.

It reminded me of raindrops on roses. If rain makes the flowers grow, maybe Kat’s tears could make Dad’s spirit flourish. That’s what happens when you die, right? Your spirit is released from your body?

I pictured his casket, the white silk turning into an enchanted garden, blossoming with greens, reds, blues, and yellows, encompassing his body, growing taller and more beautiful until he stood, barefoot in the garden. His feet firmly planted in the soil, a smile on his face, his eyes luminous, his soul free, his spirit awakened, he walked from the never-ending garden into the light.

We buried him the next day with Gram and the rest of the Quinn family, Mom to be buried beside him at her own passing. Aunt Clara determined he should be buried in the same cemetery as the LeBeau’s, where his family rested. His body lay, safely nestled with the Quinns, the people who were more a family to him than his own.

His parents misused him in life, as a child, helped mold him into the bitter soul he became. Why on earth would he want his final resting place with them? I couldn’t decide who I was most angry with at the moment, him or them. Maybe someone should have slapped them around, called them names, and told them how worthless and unloved they were.

Maybe someone did. Maybe that’s why they did those things to him. Family tradition? I know we’re not supposed to talk or think ill of the dead. But I wanted to shake them, rattle their coffins until their souls stirred, awakened and distressed, the way my father lived most of his life, thanks to his childhood.

My dad took a twelve-gauge shotgun and blew a hole in his chest, where his heart used to be. Were we supposed to accept that, understand and live with that for the rest of our lives? How did we not see it coming? How did we miss the signs? Were we so delusional, hoping and believing he would get better, we completely missed the fact he was capable of killing himself? It seemed like he was coming around.

My mind went back to the conversation I had with him shortly after Mom left, when he said one day he would get up the nerve to end it all. Was that my warning? Was there something I could have done? There had to be.

He planned it out to a tee. It was February and freezing cold. He put on a full bodied snowmobile suit, with his boots and gloves, went to the woodshed, propped the shotgun up on a neatly stacked pile of wood, stood in front of it, and tipped the trigger with his finger. The box of shells from which he loaded the gun, brand new, only one shell missing, with the packaging perfectly intact, was stowed away neatly in its place in the closet. He literally planned the whole thing.

It wasn’t as if it happened in some fit of anger, guilt, remorse, or something, where he just grabbed it up and blew his heart out, spontaneously, in the moment. He actually planned it out, step by step. How morbid is that? How heartbreaking is that? To think he went through it alone, planning his own death, by himself.

The police investigation verified it a suicide, and the coroner’s report, thankfully, led us to believe he died instantly upon impact, as physically painless as possible. But what must he have gone through mentally, psychologically, standing in front of a shotgun, by himself, preparing to pull the trigger? I can’t even imagine. Was he mad, sad, cold, crying, calm, or terrified? What the hell must have gone through his mind?

Nobody should die alone. Everybody should have someone as they depart from the earth, someone who loved them, someone to hold their hand. Shouldn’t they?

My father died alone. He left nothing, no explanation, no letter, nothing. I searched the place up and down, inside and out, the house, the barn, the woodshed, and the vehicles, everywhere, sure I would find something, a letter, a sticky-note, anything with some commentary, some final goodbyes. He left nothing. Did we mean that little to him, nothing? Was that the significance of the lack of a suicide note?

He had the forethought to go to the woodshed to kill himself, so as not to leave a
mess
in the house. He bundled up, dressing heavily to absorb the majority of the blood he would lose upon impact. He even left a list on the calendar of dates he paid the utility bills and the taxes, and what future dates they were due. He left a note on the steering wheel of the truck, stating it needed new spark plugs and the date he last changed the oil, but he didn’t have the time to leave a suicide note? No
I love you’s.
No
I hate you’s.
No goodbyes, nothing.

Kat asked me why I thought he did it, a question with endless theories. I guess he could have done it to get even, to have the last word, to manipulate and hurt us, even in death. Maybe he did it because he truly believed he couldn’t live without Mom, or because he couldn’t live with himself anymore. It would make sense he died somewhat a martyr, ending his own life to set us all free, knowing he couldn’t change, or wouldn’t.

Some theorize people who commit suicide are mentally unstable, crazy. I chose to believe it was a choice, maybe irrational, maybe not, but a choice. It sounds strange, doesn’t it? A choice would be a decision, maybe about what you’re having for dinner, not taking a shotgun and blowing a hole through your own chest, right?

But if I believed he made a choice, he had a say in his own destiny. He had some power over his fate. I tried to put myself in his shoes, imagining I did the things he did and said the things he said. I could see why he would do it, why he would feel suicide was the only option.

I don’t know that I ever knew my dad to love himself. The way he abused himself, his body, and others, I think he felt awful inside, completely wretched. Can you imagine living with that? Looking at it every day in the mirror? Knowing when you go to bed at night, you’re going to wake tomorrow, the same person.

We are least forgiving of ourselves. Even though we forgave him, he never forgave himself. He never forgave his parents. He held onto that anger, hate, and resentment. Whatever his age when his parents damaged him permanently, I think he froze in time, developmentally. His body and his mind sprouted, but his emotional growth was paralyzed, trapped in time. That’s how he behaved, like a young child, selfish and needy, ineffective in his coping, throwing temper tantrums, expecting the world to revolve around him.

The problem was, he had the intellect and physical attributes of an adult, making for a powerfully dangerous combination. I think he got caught up in trying to do the right thing, finding it easier to do the wrong thing. He fought his own demons for years. Maybe he grew tired of fighting, tired of hurting people, attempting to change, only to revert back to bad habits. I could understand that. I’m not excusing it, or condoning it, but I don’t blame him. I don’t hold it against him.

A
t Kat’s a few days later, I ended a phone call with Adam, another of life’s parallels. I remembered the night we rode from Denver to Dallas and he told me about his mother committing suicide. I phoned him that afternoon, searching for insight.

Kat and I had very different ways of coping. I searched, reflected, and talked. She simply wanted to put it behind her. She overheard me talking with Adam, sparking further conversation after I hung up the phone.

“Harley, killing yourself doesn’t make sense, you know,” she said. “You can talk about it all you want, but it’s never going to make sense.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t hurt you to talk about it,” I pointed out, returning the receiver to the phone.

“Killing yourself doesn’t make sense,” she repeated.

“Maybe not to you or me, but it must make sense to someone, because a lot of people do it.” I had no idea how many people, in fact, until we became affected by it personally.

Mom came into the living room. “This is no time to get into an argument, girls.”

“So you think Dad made a conscious, logical decision to kill himself?” Kat continued.

“It had to be his decision. He pulled the trigger.”

“Just be thankful he didn’t take any of us with him,” Mom interjected calmly, in her usually reserved manner.

“I don’t want to believe it was a decision. It makes me feel better to think, maybe, he was crazy or something. He freaking killed himself. Who the hell does that? It’s morbid. I don’t want that legacy for me, you guys, for Megan.” Kat started to get teary-eyed.

“I’m sorry,” I said immediately.

“It’s okay.” She tapped both sides of her face, halting further tear formation. “Do you smell that?” she asked, sniffing the air.

“Oh, I forgot about my casserole.” Mom quickly made her way to the kitchen. “Megan requested that for dinner tonight.”

Kat and I followed after her. She opened the oven door. Smoke quickly began to fill the air, setting off the smoke detector. Mom backed away from the stove, coughing. I grabbed a pair of oven mitts, pulled the casserole from the stove, and quickly shut the door, attempting to trap the rest of the smoke inside. Kat prudently turned the oven off and picked up a hand towel, fanning the smoke detector, making it stop momentarily. The casserole was charred, completely black on top. Kat and I looked at each other, then to Mom. We all burst out with laughter. It felt so good to laugh.

It was either laugh or cry at this point. I always wondered what the connection was between crying and laughing. How is it a person can laugh so hard they cry or cry so hard they end up laughing?

“I like my casserole like I like my fish...blackened,” Kat said, snapping me on the butt with the dishtowel. We howled. Mom laughed lightly, her facial expression changing as though she might cry.
Oh, no, don’t cry,
I thought to myself.
It’s okay.

“I wanted pizza anyway.” I headed to the freezer, pulling out a large frozen pizza. “Dinner will be on the table in minutes. Just in time for Megan when she gets off the school bus.”

“Do you want me to get the fan?” Kat asked. The smoke detector continued to sound.

“What I want is for you girls to sit down,” Mom spoke low, controlled. We just looked at her. “Now!” she said. We did as she told us, completely thrown by the rise in her voice, generally so pleasant and soft. She picked up the hand towel, fanning the smoke detector hastily until it stopped beeping. Kat and I watched wide-eyed, sitting at the table beside one another. Pulling a spatula and a knife from the drawer, she attempted to cut into the unforgiving casserole.

“You girls have to stop coming to my rescue. I know you’re used to it. You’ve done it all your lives...and I’ve let you.” She continued while trying to salvage dinner, “I’m supposed to look out for you. What kind of mother keeps her children in an abusive home?”