The Boots My Mother Gave Me (39 page)

She picked up the casserole, slamming it down into the garbage can. “What kind of mother lets a man misuse her children?” she cried, holding herself up on the counter.

Kat started toward her, getting up from the table. I grabbed her arm, coaxing her back down beside me.

“It took me thirty-two years to leave your father. Thirty-two years of my life! I kept you girls in such a mess.” The smoke detector started up again, incessantly beeping.

“How could I choose a man over my children?” She hoisted the frying pan from the stove, beating the noisy smoke detector from the wall, until it crumbled into a pile on the floor. The sound stopped. You could have heard a pin drop.

“I had every excuse in the book.” She put the frying pan gently back onto the stove. “I finally get the nerve to leave and what does he do? He kills himself!” She slammed her hand down on the counter, hanging her head momentarily, regaining control of her tears before continuing. “I feel so guilty and ashamed. I am tired of being ashamed.” She grabbed at her shirt, clenching it in her fist over her heart. “I thought we would all get our closure, you girls, me, your father. How the hell do you get closure from a ghost?”

Suicide, death, it doesn’t affect the deceased, only the living, those of us left behind. Death in any form is difficult, but suicide’s a real bitch. It’s demoralizing. Most of us put a high value on life. When someone close to us, someone we love, decides life is no more valuable than death, it contaminates our thoughts, makes us reevaluate life, its meaning, purpose, worth.

Some say suicide runs in families, like any other disease. Does that mean my fate is a bullet through my flesh by my own hand? Suicide used to be a topic distant from me, tragic and nonsensical. Now it’s forever a part of me, a little piece in the fabric of my family legacy.

Writers like Shakespeare have glorified it, romanticized it. Others like Plath made it a part of their own destiny, suicide. Maybe it is the only way for some. I wouldn’t propose to tell anyone how to die, no more than I want to be told how to live. But their choices will forever affect those they leave behind.

All of my life, I have borne the weight of my father’s shortcomings. And of my own choosing, I probably will continue to do so, pushing myself, trying harder next time, fully attempting to prove worthy. My dad was one of the most capable, talented, intelligent people I ever knew. But he threw it all away. Chewed it up and spit it out. For what? Addiction? A lost childhood? He could have been so much more. He wouldn’t take responsibility for his life. He wouldn’t own it, but I do own mine.

People say suicide leaves a legacy of pain, guilt, and shame. It’s true. Sometimes it hits me out of nowhere, like a bad car accident, leaving me to lie scarred and broken from the wreckage. It hurts. But I think I’ll choose my own legacy. Essentially, a legacy is a hand-me-down, right? I can pick and choose what I want to keep as my own. I could have accepted my father’s alcoholism or his abusive behavior as my own. So far, I have not.

Those were the legacies he accepted from his parents. I accept that my father committed suicide. I have no other choice. I can’t change it, so I accept it. But I do not have to own it. It is his suicide, not mine.

T
hree months later, mid-May 2007, Santa Fe was enchanting, much like the New Mexico license plate reads. I never intended to stay, just a pit-stop on a random road trip I started after leaving Georgia. I had been here since February, working as a news writer and field reporter for the local news station. It turned out to be a great place to reflect, regroup, and revive, starting anew.

I couldn’t quit wondering where Dad was. Was he in heaven? Purgatory? Some other place people go after they die? The words Adam spoke to me about his mother, now my own concern. Did people who commit suicide go to heaven, or to the afterlife, whichever, wherever it might be located? I heard somewhere that distressed spirits have difficulty passing over. I think my father was distressed most of his life; was he in his afterlife?

I don’t know if he believed Jesus to be his savior. I heard him say so many conflicting things. Sometimes he acted as though he believed in God. Other times it seemed as if he didn’t believe in anything. He lived a tortured soul for as long as I knew him, and I wanted to believe mercy would be bestowed upon him, that he would find safety and warmth, and feel loved at the end of it all. I just wanted him to be at peace.

I had to be in a dream, but it seemed so real. I was in my parents’ home. It looked the same as it did my entire childhood. I stood in the living room, crying, wondering where he was and if he was okay. Dad walked into the living room from the kitchen, plain as day. He wore his usual flannel shirt, blue jeans, leather work-boots, and a cap. He walked to me, put his arms around me, and said, “It’s all right. Everything is okay now.” He smiled at me, and disappeared into the ray of light shining through the kitchen window.

I awoke, sitting straight up in bed, my face wet with tears, crying as I was in my dream. I don’t know if it was coincidence or my subconscious hungry for solace, but I ran with it. I allowed that dream to be my proof that Dad was okay, believing he found peace. It was over.

I ran to the closet, pulled open the door, grabbed my guitar, and leaned against the casing, playing it for the first time in nearly a year. Inspired by Dad, Gram, everyone I knew who had passed, I strummed along, making up lyrics as they came:

I call you,

Wanna hear you say hello again.

You’re not there,

You never will be, this is the end.

I see you,

Only in my dreams, you’re happy then.

Your light still shines,

You know, I miss you my friend.

I know you’re safe in the arms of the angels,

Maybe I’ll see you again, when my time is done.

Let my love forever keep you,

In the meantime, I’m gonna live and let love.

Later the same day, Mom called. She had flown back to Georgia to prepare the house for sale. We took a vote on it, and none of us wanted to keep our family home. We figured it was a good time to let go of everything. Get rid of the things in life that weigh you down, right?

“Hey, Mom,” I answered the phone.

“Well,” she said, and that gave it away. Her tone of voice, her manner, everything, she was about to tell me something. I didn’t know what, but it was something that mattered. “I just came from the police department. You remember the officer who investigated your dad’s suicide?” I nodded my head, as if she could see me through the phone. “He called this morning and asked me to pick up your dad’s things.” She paused. “Are you there?”

“Uh-huh. Yes, I’m still here.”

“I couldn’t hear anything.” That’s because I was waiting for the bombshell, whatever it was she worked her way up to telling me. “So I go to meet him, and we have a nice talk. He was very understanding, very sympathetic. He handles a lot of suicide cases, you know. I didn’t realize so many people take their own lives.”
Okay, Mom, get to it already,
I’m thinking to myself, growing more nervous.

“So anyway, he hands me your dad’s clothes. And then he hands me this folded up piece of paper. I look at him kind of thrown off, as if to say,
what’s this?
And he says, ‘That’s the note.’ I said, what note? And he answers, ‘The letter...your husband’s suicide letter.’”

My legs buckled as I stood there listening, thankful there was a note, but completely afraid of what it said. I found the nearest chair and sat down. I had made up my own reasons over the past few months as to why he killed himself. I came to terms with those reasons, began to accept them. Now I would hear the truth. What if my father’s truth was completely different from what I thought? Was his truth too brutal or painful to accept? I was beginning to free myself from my own guilt, we all were. Did he blame us?

“Harley?” Mom inquired.

“I’m here.”

“I told him we didn’t know there was a letter. He said, ‘The sister gave it to one of our officers, your husband’s sister, she found it lying on the kitchen table that night.’”

Aunt Clara?
How could she do that? How could she know there was a note and let us think there was nothing? I knew she didn’t like us, but my God, that was just cruel.

“Apparently, she took it off the kitchen table before anyone got there. She
was
the first one there that night,” Mom said. “Later on, her daughter saw her messing with the piece of paper in her coat pocket. So she confronted her, found out what it was, and made her give it to the officer on scene.”

I remained speechless, the pieces finally coming together. No wonder we couldn’t find a note that night. Aunt Clara already found it.

“He assumed we knew all along,” Mom added.

“Was it addressed to her or something? Why would she take it?” I tried to justify it somehow, disbelieving even she would do something so rotten.

“No. It wasn’t addressed to her, not even a mention of her name.”

“Then why would she think it was hers to take?” Would she really stoop so low? You don’t mess with a man’s last words to his family. Who does that? What kind of human being does that?

“Why does she do anything she does? Because it suits her purpose.” Mom paused. “The officer confided she even showed up at the police station at a later date, requesting the note be given to her. He said she was very adamant about getting the letter, even demanding it,” Mom said, baffled at the thought. “He explained it was not addressed to her, and for that reason he legally could not give it to her. She had no right to it whatsoever.”

“So there’s a letter, an actual note with Dad’s words on it?” I asked, still disbelieving.

“Yes. I’m holding it, Harley, right here in my hands.”

And it ended, just like that. Uncertain as to whether he intended to start another page, or if he simply went through with his plan of suicide at that point. His handwriting changed drastically from the beginning to the end of the letter. The ink became darker, and the words became shaky, ill-formed, harder to read, as if his emotional state escalated with his thoughts.

My mind flooded with relief, accompanied by a steady dull ache starting in my chest. I was relieved he came out of his denial. Relieved he could tell himself the truth, after all of these years. The courage that must have required. Did he know how brave he was? He was on his way, couldn’t he see that? Admitting things, coming out of denial, is the first step, right?

Maybe he would have been receptive to treatment and rehabilitation at that point. Maybe he could have recovered and lived his life with eyes wide open, a second chance. It hurt like hell to hear him say those things about himself. He wasn’t dumb. He wasn’t evil. He wasn’t a bastard. I didn’t want him to hate himself. I loved him.

I
lay in bed two nights later, the place that held me since hearing Dad’s letter. My eyes open, staring at the ceiling, embracing the quilt Kat made me years ago, a piece from one of Dad’s old handkerchiefs adjacent to Jeremiah’s high school football jersey. Contemplating things, life, I attempted to find that little slice of heaven where consciousness finally gives in to sleep.

Had he set us free? Mom learned to fly, making her own way, taking a chance on herself, finding it a safe bet. She delivered, starting her life anew in her mid-fifties. Kat and Megan moved to Philadelphia, settling into their new surroundings. Kat would start at The Art Institute summer semester to begin her Bachelor’s degree in fashion design. She stepped out, making waves in the ocean of life with Megan in tow, always a brave one, my sister. Everybody was leaving Georgia, Pennsylvania, nothing holding them back. Hopefully Dad was free, too, at least his spirit at peace.

What was I to do? I had nothing and no one to run from anymore, nothing to fix, no one to rescue, no one to run to. What would I do? Oddly enough, dysfunction becomes completely normal, functional to those who live in it most of their lives. Could I function without dysfunction? It’s like Batman and The Joker. Could you have one without the other? So much of myself defined by, in spite of, because of, my father. Who was I without him?