Wading Through High Waters

It took a while to slog through my dad's anniversary. Actually, I think I'm still wading through some sadness.

Hubby and I are on speaking terms again. He's been more helpful than usual, so I'm thinking that, at least for the time being, we're on almost the same page. Being on the same page is a bit much to ask, but having him on a quarter of the page I'm on is a huge improvement.

Crazy Land has been chewing up all of my discretionary, write in my blog time. While IT Boy was on his honeymoon, I was the only recourse for Loathsome when his email went berserk. He stalked into my office and asked me if I had a computer. That is so Loathsome. I made him cut to the chase and tell me what was happening. You can't imagine what a huge task it was to just get the basic facts out of him. I was exhausted before I began.

I spent two days working on his computer, then I abandoned all hope. I set his email up on another computer so Loathsome could function while we waited for the return of IT Boy. A week into using that computer, it stopped running the accounting software. Of course, everybody blamed Loathsome for the troubles.

IT Boy got back this past Monday and devoted three days to Loathsome's email. I understand that, as of yesterday afternoon, virtual memory has been restored and it's stopped shutting itself down or freezing up. I had correctly pinpointed the problem and I take some pride in the fact that IT Boy wasn't able to waltz in and fix the problem immediately.

Yesterday I invited my Crazy Land cohorts to join me for a belated birthday celebration/thank you party. Two days after issuing the invitation, I suddenly remembered that I've had several birthday parties when no one showed up. Yes, it was a sad, sad childhood. Nothing like setting yourself up to be hurt and disappointed...again.

Everyone but Golf Pro showed up, though, and I was able to thank everyone for helping me get through three years of breast cancer hell. It was actually better that Golf Pro was MIA. Everyone is even more furious at him than usual.

I'm so happy to have 15 minutes to keep track of what's going on, even if it's on a very minimal basis. I have to try to find a way to work this into my days, which continue to be far too busy. I'm inventive. I'll just put me on my daily schedule.

Loathsome, A Unique Brand of Distraction

This is the second day in a row that I've devoted almost entirely to Loathsome's computer. IT Boy is on his two-week honeymoon, which leaves us without any computer support.

Surprise. I am not IT Ggirl. Error message said not enough virtual memory. I created more virtual memory. I cleaned up the disk and eliminated hundreds of files. Then error message said Microsoft Outlook should be reinstalled because a .dll file is missing. I'm not reinstalling anything, Loathsome. It seems to me that there are systemic problems.

As I tried to understand and work through the many problems, Loathsome required a blow-by-blow explanation of what I was doing and why. Kill me, please. I might as well be speaking Swahili. Loathsome is relentless, as if by telling him, he might be prepared to deal with future problems himself. He's either deluded or he's trying to impress me with his commitment to grasping the workings of Microsoft Windows. Not impressed, as you might imagine.

Up side? Not much time to think about suicide. The baffling thing is that this year is so unbearably sad for me. I've spent at least the last five years being enraged at my father. Even aside from the suicide, I have plenty to be angry about. Most people have trouble understanding how I could have any emotional connection with him at all after he made my life a slow motion, eternal train wreck.

Again, the universe has offered up Loathsome as a distraction. I'm moderately happy to take it.

four days

Remembering the Dragon

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are but princes that are waiting to see us act just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest essence, something helpless that needs our love.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

5 days

Crazy Land Crumbles, Writer Goes Insane

That's me there on the left, standing in the wilderness, looking up to Heaven. Like everyone else on the planet, my financial plight looks very iffy.

Tomorrow morning, the Crazy Land stockholders are holding a meeting to decide the fate of the company. The good news is that I'll definitely be employed at the end of today. Tomorrow is anybody's guess.

This is where what I learned from breast cancer is shoring me up. Can I control any of this--the state of the world economy, the state of Crazy Land or my own financial future? Well, not particularly. If you can't control it, gotta let it go. I'm letting it go again and again. About every 15 minutes at this point.

In the meantime, I'm going about my business, filing workers' comp claims, updating databases, searching for unbilled expenses. What else can you do? It's difficult to stay motivated when it's entirely possible very little of my work will mean anything in 24 hours (give or take a few). Nonetheless, it's important to take care of my responsibilities until they're not mine anymore.

Loss. As I recently shared with a friend, it's been my big lesson for the past decade. I wish I could learn the truth behind it so life won't continue to slap me in the face with it. All I know is that you have to let go. What am I missing here?

A life of constant instability, conflict, lovelessness and loss--what am I to make of that? I don't even have a therapist to help me work through this. Okay, that's kinda funny. I guess the only thing to do is continue to open my heart to compassion and to pain--not just my own but for everyone who suffers or has or will. Finding humor always helps, so I have to hold on to that understanding, too. Other than that? Beats me.

Oh yeah...a postscript. The great things in my life. I live in a house. I have adequate food and clothing. I'm receiving medical care (at the moment). There are many people in my life who love me and many whom I love. I have an entertaining and brilliant (though not financially productive) husband. My mom is still with me and we're close friends. I have two great dogs. I am not going through chemo, nor am I looking at another surgery (again, fingers crossed). I am not in excessive pain. I can think. I can see. I can communicate. I have a sense of humor, even though it's rather dark and warped. All in all, I'm a very lucky woman.

Prayers, finger crossing, throwing salt over shoulder, saying a mantra...whatever you do, feel free to include me.

Not So Brave

I haven't been reading comments or emails lately. I've been sharing difficult material and, frankly, sometimes I lack the courage to read responses. Please continue to comment and know that, whenever I'm brave enough, I'll read and respond.

Thank you for caring enough to say what's on your mind. I may be scared of that that is, but I'm grateful you join me in my explorations of pain.

Ingrid Betancourt and The Jungle

A couple of days ago, I saw a Larry King interview with Ingrid Betancourt, one of the freed FARC hostages. I was shaken as I saw the trauma in her eyes and watched her try to manage the memories as they arose.

One thing that struck me was that, several times in the interview, she said that "... I think that many things happen in the jungle that we have to leave in the jungle." She may have meant that she doesn't wish to discuss her abuse. She may have meant exactly what she said, that some experiences are better left to the darkness of that place and time.

Though I was not held captive in the jungle for 6 years, I was held captive for 18 years in my own private, solitary jungle without the support of other hostages. This much I know: For her and the other hostages, nothing can be left in the jungle. The jungle is in her head. This is true for everyone: The Gulag, the concentration camp, all of the places where we learn, from personal experience, the extreme cruelty of human beings toward another live on our heads. Watching or hearing other people being tortured never leaves one's consciousness. Our own personal humiliation and deprivation of even the most basic of rights--those minutes and hours live on forever in our minds. Without warning, they reassert themselves and the jungle lives on and you live in it.

It took me a while to recover from the interview. Her words were inadequate to convey the horror and sadness that I recognized in her eyes. I wished that I could wipe it all away for all of those freed hostages, wherever they are.

But the jungle, the Gulag, the concentration camp, the time and locales of extreme child abuse live on forever in our heads. Forever.

Mint Green

Mint green. That's not the right name but that's what I call it. I saw a woman on television with a coat that reminded me. It wasn't mint green, but that's what I call it. I can't see the color truly, because before I can categorize it, I'm inhabiting a different space and time in less than a split second.

Where is it? What went on there? It was not a happy place, not a place for any child to be. I don't know who else was there, but there was someone. I'm too frightened to enter into that moment and define the color. I call it mint green.

I don't want to know. It's been so long since a lost terrifying moment arose from nowhere, spinning back in time. There are predictable triggers for predictable pasts. The way the sun shines in a room. Picking up a stick in the yard. These things shove me back into long ago that seems like right now. But mint green. That's something new.

Having entered that space and time for less than a split second, several times now, there will be no stopping it. Whether I ever remember the place or what went on there, mint green will always invite a flashback.

That's how trauma goes.

I was going somewhere with that sentence, but before I could finish, I was numb. Magically, I'm dissociated. Of course, that's how trauma is, too.

Something Helpless

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are but princesses that are waiting to see us act just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest essence, something helpless that needs our love.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us and we do it with political systems, with all kinds of things that we don't like about our associates or our society. It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better. Blame others. Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground.
- Pema Chodron, In the Gap Between Right and Wrong

You Ask About My Father's Childhood

You asked about my father's childhood. I can give an incomplete and not necessarily thoroughly accurate account. The truth is, there's no one from whom those facts can be obtained. No one in my father's family was completely trustworthy. Only one of his siblings is still living, the uncle who sexually assaulted me numerous times. I'm not certain he's still alive, but as of ten years ago, he was the only one left. I would never ask anything of him.

I'm going to try to remember the names of his brothers and sisters, though the names I knew them by were nicknames or terms of endearment my grandmother used. The sisters: Jewel, Sis (I never knew her name), Eddie, Ruby, Audrey. The brothers: Frank, Melvin, and Jack. Eddie and Frank died before I was born.

When I say that the family wasn't trustworthy, I don't mean that they were all liars (though they might have been). I mean that mental illness touched all of them, that their singular and shared histories were heavily colored by that illness.

My grandmother was orphaned when she was a girl, along with a brother with whom she was very close. I'm not sure how she lost her parents, but I believe there was a fire. I think she had other siblings who also died. Blanche, my grandmother, and her brother Ernest were sent off to an orphanage and ultimately farmed out to various families where they functioned essentially as indentured servants. I can't imagine the treatment they must have endured.

My grandmother married the son of one of those families. I think his family was well-to-do. Or maybe they only thought they were. My grandfather was ultimately disowned, but I don't know why. I don't know how old my grandmother was when she married. I don't even know my grandfather's first name.

Jack, Sis and Eddie were the first set of children born. There was a significant amount of time between the first children and the second group. My grandfather fulfilled his responsibilities to both sets in exactly the same way: he left. He always found a need to work elsewhere, leaving his wife and children to sharecrop in order to survive. Though my grandfather was working, he never sent money to his family. It was a harsh survival. Many times they had nothing to eat, they had very little clothing and it was probably not in the best condition. My dad said that he and his family were ridiculed at school because of their financial circumstances. I have no way of knowing whether that's true. I think it's just as likely that they were ostracized and made fun of because they were crazy. Who knows.

Both of my grandparents were brutal disciplinarians. One of my father's ears was permanently injured from my grandmother's penchant for twisting the kids' ears as punishment. According to several of my aunts and uncles, my grandmother would throw or strike with anything that was handy: a frying pan, a piece of wood for the stove. She had a savage temper.

I don't have any specific tales about my grandfather's disciplinary techniques other than that my father couldn't bear to bring himself to discuss it. I believe that he sexually abused all of his children. My father had a dark secret that he wished to share only with me after I became an adult. I heard him once speak to my (abusive) uncle about him, saying, "You don't know what he did to me."

What I know is that sexual and physical abuse ran rampant in my family. Perhaps my grandmother was sexually abusive, too. I think that's a distinct possibility.

I can't continue at the moment. Sometimes when I think about my father's family, I'm emotionally overwhelmed. I was very, very close to my grandmother. I can't tell you how it pains me to believe her capable of that behavior. So on that note, I have to stop. With any luck, I'll be able to continue the tale tomorrow.

Happy Birthday, Daddy

I almost forgot. Happy birthday, Dad. I'm still angry. I'm still heartbroken. I'm still wounded. I'm still haunted. I still love you, anyway.

You're the only father I'll ever have. I wish everything could have been different, that you could have been different. Nonetheless, without you, there would have been no me. For better or worse.

Thank you for the gifts you gave me, even though they were harsh gifts. Thank you for the many lessons in compassion. You had a terrible life, that I'm sure of. I celebrate your will to survive, at whatever cost. I celebrate your talent and intelligence.

In the infinite, numinous universe, we have always been in agreement. You were the Buddha sent to teach me. I hope I learned those lessons well. I hope you're finally proud of me.

I miss your craziness. I mostly miss the hope that I could understand your pain, that I could heal you of your suffering.

Happy birthday, Daddy.

The New Rules, Reiterated

Hubby and I both forgot our anniversary a couple of weeks ago. It dawned on me over the weekend that we'd missed it...again. I'm not good with the anniversary/birthday/special event thing.

I wonder if that's because, as I was growing up, we never celebrated anything. I'd get a birthday gift and Christmas gifts, I got cards for my Mom and Dad and bought gifts when I could. It always felt like work, though, even (or especially) when I was the recipient. "Celebration" was never a word that had much meaning to me. Observances of that type were onerous and treacherous. Bad things were guaranteed to happen; they were danger zones that cropped up from time to time in the endless, gray progression of time.

As I grew older, I learned how important it is to honor special days or rites of passage. Celebrating became a "should" in my life. If I'm a mentally healthy, spiritually grounded person, I should incorporate some times for rejoicing in my life. That's the rule.

Unfortunately, because it was never a part of my growing-up experience, those observances never became a habit. It feels like something I've tacked onto my life and, when I forget anniversaries or birthdays, I feel like a failure. If I manage to remember and make special arrangements for festivities, it's stressful and joyless. It's a lose-lose proposition.

Every day I get up in the morning and give thanks for all of the blessings in my life, past and present. This is celebration, also. I have to remind myself that I'm not a failure if I forget "special" events (including my own birthday). I have to remind myself that, because every morning begins with prayer, every single day is a celebration.

Hubby and I forget our anniversary on a regular basis. It doesn't mean we don't love each other or that either of us feels unloved because we've forgotten. It's a thing we laugh about together.

I'm trying to learn to let myself be as I am, especially right now as I continue to struggle with fatigue and pain. Learning that lesson and living it is its own challenge. Everything in my life is exactly as it should be, including the consequences of a life I did not choose. I'm officially lightening up.

Two Crazy Lands Collide

I spent most of Friday morning with Owner, liberating kitties stuck under our office building. We'd had some people out to close up all access to the areas underneath both buildings. Unfortunately, we forgot to check whether there were any live animals under there.

Owner called me while the Information Superhighway and I were having our usual pre-8:00 a.m. conversation. Owner buzzed the Highway and wanted to know if I was there. I knew my day was going to get off to a bad start. He wanted me to find a hammer so he could break some boards the workers used to permanently close a crawlspace door. I couldn't find a hammer. Wait a minute. It immediately felt like a bad dream from my childhood.

My dad could never find his tools. He never looked for his tools. He either made me, my mom or his wife go look for them. If we couldn't find them or if we didn't find them fast enough, bam! Another great opportunity for him to physically hurt someone. I tend to get anxious when people ask me for tools and that kind of post traumatic stress disorder anxiety is hard to get rid of once it's arisen. It was with me all day.

I couldn't find a hammer. Owner called again and demanded that I get downstairs. We'd only been at the task for ten minutes, but it already felt like years. I went downstairs and found he'd broken the boards without a hammer. The next problem was that we needed to ensure that the cat(s) got out before we boarded it back up. We sat at the patio table and waited. And waited. And waited. Owner told me I had to stay there until the cat(s) came out. Again, it seemed too familiar, like when my dad told me to go outside and look for a lost ring and not to come back in until I found it. Or a million other times when I had to stay somewhere until I accomplished something inherently impossible, knowing that when I was unable to accomplish it, my dad would use it as an excuse to hurt me more. (There would be some physical violence during the attempts to accomplish the impossible, on a periodic basis, depending on how good my dad wanted to feel.)

Friday morning, as I sat there and tried not to think about the number of allergens in the air, Foot Lady came out to smoke a cigarette. She wanted to know what was going on, so I filled her in. She made some comment about the workers boarding up the entries to the crawlspace under the main building. Something clicked.

I hadn't seen my black and white boy kitty and his best pal in a couple of days. I'd also noted that not much food had been consumed during that time. I had assumed that they were hiding out, waiting for the workers to go away. It dawned on me that they had to be under the building.

I walked along the side of the building next to Lillian's house. I called as I walked and, about half way down the alley, I heard a little meow coming from one of the air vents. Good news, bad news. They were going to be liberated, but I had to tell Owner in order for that to happen.

Owner came downstairs and found a way to let the cats out. Black and white kitty stuck his head out of the hole about 15 minutes after it was opened. He's always been very skittish and you know being trapped under a building for a couple of days couldn't have done much for his nerves. Later on, I found him lounging around the monkey grass as if nothing ever happened. I was still worried about his pal, but she showed up Saturday morning.

The funny thing is that, until I started writing, it didn't dawn on me how triggering the whole event had been. My conversation with the Superhighway first thing that morning triggered a flashback and I wrote off my all day jumpiness to that. I guess Friday was an all-around Remember Dad day. I hate it when I have those days. Another is coming up. His birthday is May 16. I'm going to start steeling myself for it right now. Maybe someone would like for me to find a hammer. Or a child's ring in a huge yard.

Everything and Nothing

I've read that everyone we meet has been sent to teach us something. If that's so, I'm hard at work.

I encounter my father, in various guises, everywhere. I'm surrounded by narcissists--at work and at home. Hubby is so self-involved that I'm surprised he even notices I'm in the room. Sometimes I'm not sure that he does.

Stepson doesn't know anything about me. He never asks about what I'm interested in, what my life is like. He knows nothing about my childhood. Our conversations are always about him.

Not everyone in Crazy Land is a narcissist, but we've got more than our share. The Foot Lady, Crazy Employee, Owner, Loathsome, The Golf Pro--for all of them the world is a mirror.

If there's anything at which I'm expert, it's dealing with narcissists. Unfortunately, the way I deal with them is very unhealthy. Being highly intuitive, I'm able to figure out what they want and how they want it, then give it to them. Not so difficult, really. Generally what they want is validation; only preferences for the means of validation differ between individuals. I anticipate their needs. I hide my own. Or I believe the needs I have can't be met by other people.

I'm so chameleon-like that everyone thinks I'm like them, but I'm not, you know. There are a lot of things I have to fake. I don't know what occurs in non-catastrophic childhoods. It's as alien to me as living on another planet. It's such a strange thing, to try so hard to picture what "normal" (for for that matter, dysfunctional) childhood looks like. I won't ever know.

So what am I learning? Apparently, not much. I continue to live with a man who has an absolutely astounding sense of personal entitlement. At work, I shift certain characteristics to the foreground and others to the background, depending on who I'm with at any given time. I'm not pretending to be someone I'm not; I'm merely rearranging parts of my personality. Morphing into someone others find more palatable and easy to understand is probably one of those things I'm supposed to learn not to do.

At the moment, I think the lesson to be learned is to love myself, just as I am. That's a mighty tall order. I've lived my life, dedicated to figuring out how to fit in with everyone else, working on social skills, fixing the things that were wrong with me.

I've decided to stop trying to change myself into someone I'm not. What does that have to do with my dad? Everything and nothing.

Juvenilia

Since I don't have much to say today. I decided to post a poem sent to me from an old friend. I wrote it when I was 16 (so, you know, read it with compassion) after my father drove to a local city to see his 18 year old girlfriend, whom he had married 5 years previously. We were speeding along in the darkness, I was sitting in the backseat, hating him with a vengeance. I wrote the poem, in part, as a way to ignore him. So here goes:

Highways of Darkness

Highways in the darkness,
breathing wind like icy softness.
We are racing toward Heaven
or wherever we may be going.
My mind is like a ribbon--twisted and misleading
and it will take a new eternity
to untangle your mind from within it.
Perhaps it will unravel
when the light up dawn is upon us.
But until then the darkness is beautiful,
for we've never seen the light
on the highways of forever.

Monday, Bloody Monday

Hubby is angry with me and hasn't spoken to me since late afternoon Thursday. It's a highly triggering situation, mirroring a period in my early teens when no one in my house spoke to me for a couple of months. I'm reminding myself that I don't live in danger anymore. Not speaking is simply not speaking.

Today, I'm bogged down with a pre-qualification questionnaire from one of our clients. If I were to gaze into my crystal ball, I'd predict this is going to keep me bogged down for a bit.

The problem with working through lunch is that I tend to forget the lunch part.

Return of the Inner Fascist

"For most of us, the state we're in most of the time is distraction" ~ Joseph Goldstein

Hubby is out of town until Wednesday, researching an article he's writing, so I was left to my own devices last night. I enjoyed the silence, caught up on some reading and then watched television for a little while. That's when things started to fall apart.

My Inner Fascist made a reappearance. She's been under control for months, but she made a reappearance last week, relentlessly reminding me of what a terrible person I am. It's good to know she hasn't lost her edge. Last night, the little Black Shirt reviewed some memories and found me lacking. The harangue began and I started crying.

At first, I thought I was crying about the television program I'd been watching. The program were a little sad, but since I raised my antidepressant medication, I haven't been crying much. It finally dawned on me that it was the terrible words, the crushing failures enumerated that brought me to tears.

I discussed the Inner Fascist with my with therapist last week. She asked me how I manage to stop that critical voice left over from childhood, when perfection was required in order to survive. I told her that I'm a master of distraction. I've lived my entire life coping by distracting myself. I'm a pro. She wondered whether the Inner Fascist is a manifestation of that very survival mechanism.

What a concept! Of course! Instead of hating my parents when I was a child, I found it easier to hate myself. When my life was too terrifying, I distracted myself by launching into a litany of my own faults. All children, on some level, take responsibility for all of the bad things that happen to them, to their parents, to their world. Many, many bad things happened in my family.

Life would be better, my family would be better if I were better. I could ease my mother's pain and sadness, I could calm my father's rages, if I could only be more obedient, smarter, kinder. My father would have no need for a second family living in my own house, he would cease to find other children more worthy of compassion than I if I could be more worthy of love.

The Inner Fascist came along to help me focus less on the real causes of my anguish and to make me toe the line. She believed that rigorous criticism could still save the day. As time went on, the voice became more insistent and the list of requirements grew. There was a long period in my life when nothing I ever did met her standards and she noted each and every one of my imperfections, no matter how small. She noted them loudly and without compassion. The child who needed her help to survive became consumed by a constant cruelty. As if the outer dark wasn't cruel enough.

The Fascist lives on. When I'm anxious or angry or sad, she chimes in with the many ways I've failed. She stomps on me with her boots, rages against me and, by doing so, forces me to focus on something other than, say, going to Houston tomorrow.

I was unable to silence her last night, though I returned to my book about an NBA player to distract me (from her distraction). I slept very little. Today, I'm too tired to worry about Houston. The Inner Fascist has taken off her boots and black shirt. I hope she sleeps long and peacefully.

Wasp

"Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you cannot bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond the pain." ~ St. Bartholomew

I hate the holidays. I can't remember a time when I didn't. I think, for a while when I was very young, I imagined that there was some possibility for "happy" holidays, but I don't think the vision was well-developed or lasted very long.

When I was a child, the holiday season always meant at least a solid month of my dad enjoying his favorite sport even more regularly than usual. His favorite sport was hurting people. My birthday, the days leading up to Thanksgiving, from then until New Year's day, Easter--they were all really fine excuses to engage in torture. Sometimes it would last for an hour or so, sometimes a day, sometimes many days. He tortured my mom. He tortured me. He tortured us both. Sometimes he tortured my pets.

It's funny that I'd forgotten how easy it is to dissociate when I think back to those times. I feel blank. My brain has clicked to a different channel. The channel is called "Numb."

Just to add some extra zest to the whole holiday festivities, my dad upped the ante by killing himself nine days before my birthday, a bare month from Thanksgiving. That event has cast a lovely glow over the holidays, too.

The weather is changing. Right now, the sun is shining and I'm watching leaves being blown off the trees. Tomorrow, it will be cold and windy. While I get ready for Thanksgiving dinner, the past will be replaying itself in the back of my mind. No one will hearing it buzzing around in my brain like a wasp.

I hate the holidays.

The More Suffering, The Better

"Where does discipline end? Where does cruelty begin? Somewhere between these, thousands of children inhabit a voiceless hell." ~ Francois Mauriac

My mom and I were watching a Thanksgiving-themed program on the Food Channel this weekend. She reminded me that my dad wouldn't allow her to have a potato masher. When we had mashed potatoes, she had to do it with a fork.

It's a small, mean thing to make one's work harder than it has to be. It was just another way my father enjoyed making her life miserable. I have to remind myself periodically: My father thought it was fun to watch other people suffer. The more suffering, the better.

Remembering that fact always makes me feel like someone has stabbed me in the heart.

Reasons Why He Made The Decision, Part 1

"I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime." ~ Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Ten years before my father's suicide, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He had watched the disease ravage one of his brothers, ultimately leaving him paralyzed and at the mercy of other people whom he'd mistreated for years. My uncle's family apparently repaid him in kind and his long deterioration was accompanied by cruelty, I've been told.

My father was successfully treated for his cancer, but he was never able or willing to let go of the fear that he, too, would one day find himself unable to move, unable to think and completely dependent on others. No one, not the oncologists, not my mother, not I could make him see past his delusion. Of course, when my Mom had thyroid cancer, my dad was convinced she would die, too. Ever the optimist, my dad.

This was the beginning of the end for him.

Anniversary

" As anyone who has been close to someone that has committed suicide knows, there is no other pain like that felt after the incident. " ~ Peter Green

Ten years ago today, my dad grabbed a shotgun and went to a neighbor's house. He knocked on the door and asked the neighbor if he could borrow a bullet to kill a snake. My father took the bullet, walked out into the front yard and made the decision.