.ruminations on a suicide.
I had to write a personal essay for my english comp class this week. I find the class to be enjoyable, but of course, it would only be better if it were a class to see who's more British(English Competition, get it?), so I'm making do with writing things instead.
Here's the essay.
The other shoe dropped with one phone call from a doctor in Philadelphia. There are some instances in life when you are completely aware of something gone horribly awry, or rather, peculiarly resolved, before returning a call to an unknown number. I knew for certain that my father had finally killed himself. He had been in the middle of a sex change, an attempt to quiet the voices he heard. I hadn’t spoken to him in years, having cut off contact to save my sanity. In the intervening minutes, I spoke with my mother, my aunt, my grandmother, and finally the coroner’s office who told me that they had identified the body, but had difficulty tracking down next of kin due to lack of identifying paperwork found on site.
When I spoke to the coroner, I was told there wasn’t much of a body to autopsy, and that Dad had been dead for at least a few weeks before discovery. The police had to break in through a window and had found there to be no food in the house. My family and I made the call to visit Dad’s house that night to search for a will. The officers had found nothing when they had searched the office. I was bewildered because Dad had always kept a fire-safe with all of his important documents.
We pulled into up the side street to the house, and the car caught the overgrown lawn in the glare of the headlights. The silver truck he drove was nowhere to be seen. Later, we would find that, it too, was repossessed. Lights shown from inside the house in the bathroom, front office, living room and basement. My aunt and grandmother pulled up behind us in two separate cars, along with my cousin and my father’s cousin. I had not expected them to be there and it just added to the feeling of circus that I was starting to develop.
I trudged past the overgrown lawn and over the cracks that had split the driveway into chunks of asphalt. Up the stairs of the deck I had helped layout and build, to the glass french door at the back of the house. I noted that the siding hadn’t weathered the years well. I stepped into the house after unlocking the backdoor with the bronze key I had since childhood. The kitchen counter was littered with empty spice containers and used tea bags. There were dishes in the sink and the refrigerator was empty except for an half used container of water. On the kitchen table stood Dad’s purse and cellphone, surrounded by newspapers and part of a plastic food wrapper. A musty, slightly decomposed miasma permeated the house.
I walked through the living room, which too was littered with newspapers and scraps of paper with things written on them such as “Remember this 7" and “This 10 knows God”. The smell in the house intensified, despite the opened windows and the autumn air flowing in. Toward the back of the hallway, past the pink and yellow bathroom and my old room, now blue. I reached my father’s room and was repulsed by the mess of it. The stained bed clothes were strewn about haphazardly, almost as if the bed was about to be stripped and remade. The closest door was ajar and since I had come to look for a fire-safe, I picked my way through the room toward it.
What I had not expected was how long my father had lain there on the floor next to the closet before being found. There was a visible man-sized stain on the hardwood floor and at the top of it, a piece of scalp with blonde hair that had adhered to the flooring next to the closet door. I took a closer look at the sheets on the bed, only to find that they too, held pieces of Dad. There was piss and shit and blood, and it looked as if Dad had sustained a rectal bleed in his last moments. I pulled my bandanna over my mouth and nose to block some of the smell and gingerly opened the closet door, careful to not nudge the bit of scalp on the floor loose.
There was no fire-safe to be found there or anywhere else within the house. I wandered to the office next to the bedroom in a daze. My mother had found two large paper shredders, bulging with what was used to be bills and other documents of matter. My father had shredded everything that connected him to life, as if to do that would erase his very existence. In the basement we found stacks of empty photograph frames piled on a shelf and empty cans of sauce put back in the pantry. There was nothing here but dust. I could only assume the photographs had been destroyed.
I bolted back up the stairs to the living room, and stood in front of the bookshelf, searching for the volume that surely must still be here. No matter how hard I looked, I could not find the family photo album. That and the rest of the pictures that Dad had held so dear had gone the way of the paper shredder. By this time my aunt had taken to rampaging through the house, searching for documents and clues and money that were never there. Dad had never liked her much and I could see why. She had no respect for the dead.
This was the same house that I had spent half my formative years in. We had celebrated Christmas’s past in this very room that I stood, staring blankly at the walls which used to hold framed family photos. It was in this house that I had learned to fight and cook and stand up for myself. This was no longer a home. I knew that Dad had finally succumbed to the ravages of a mental illness that had haunted him for most of his life. As I looked around that room, it was depersonalized, a model home built for show. There was no life left in the house, which used to smell of cinnamon, and now just smelled of despair and fear.
I'm still really pissed that Cory didn't bother to show up to the funeral/wake/side show. Oh well. I'll just stay friends with him til one of his parents kicks the bucket and not show up, claiming I'm "too tired from getting tattooed".
Here's the essay.
The other shoe dropped with one phone call from a doctor in Philadelphia. There are some instances in life when you are completely aware of something gone horribly awry, or rather, peculiarly resolved, before returning a call to an unknown number. I knew for certain that my father had finally killed himself. He had been in the middle of a sex change, an attempt to quiet the voices he heard. I hadn’t spoken to him in years, having cut off contact to save my sanity. In the intervening minutes, I spoke with my mother, my aunt, my grandmother, and finally the coroner’s office who told me that they had identified the body, but had difficulty tracking down next of kin due to lack of identifying paperwork found on site.
When I spoke to the coroner, I was told there wasn’t much of a body to autopsy, and that Dad had been dead for at least a few weeks before discovery. The police had to break in through a window and had found there to be no food in the house. My family and I made the call to visit Dad’s house that night to search for a will. The officers had found nothing when they had searched the office. I was bewildered because Dad had always kept a fire-safe with all of his important documents.
We pulled into up the side street to the house, and the car caught the overgrown lawn in the glare of the headlights. The silver truck he drove was nowhere to be seen. Later, we would find that, it too, was repossessed. Lights shown from inside the house in the bathroom, front office, living room and basement. My aunt and grandmother pulled up behind us in two separate cars, along with my cousin and my father’s cousin. I had not expected them to be there and it just added to the feeling of circus that I was starting to develop.
I trudged past the overgrown lawn and over the cracks that had split the driveway into chunks of asphalt. Up the stairs of the deck I had helped layout and build, to the glass french door at the back of the house. I noted that the siding hadn’t weathered the years well. I stepped into the house after unlocking the backdoor with the bronze key I had since childhood. The kitchen counter was littered with empty spice containers and used tea bags. There were dishes in the sink and the refrigerator was empty except for an half used container of water. On the kitchen table stood Dad’s purse and cellphone, surrounded by newspapers and part of a plastic food wrapper. A musty, slightly decomposed miasma permeated the house.
I walked through the living room, which too was littered with newspapers and scraps of paper with things written on them such as “Remember this 7" and “This 10 knows God”. The smell in the house intensified, despite the opened windows and the autumn air flowing in. Toward the back of the hallway, past the pink and yellow bathroom and my old room, now blue. I reached my father’s room and was repulsed by the mess of it. The stained bed clothes were strewn about haphazardly, almost as if the bed was about to be stripped and remade. The closest door was ajar and since I had come to look for a fire-safe, I picked my way through the room toward it.
What I had not expected was how long my father had lain there on the floor next to the closet before being found. There was a visible man-sized stain on the hardwood floor and at the top of it, a piece of scalp with blonde hair that had adhered to the flooring next to the closet door. I took a closer look at the sheets on the bed, only to find that they too, held pieces of Dad. There was piss and shit and blood, and it looked as if Dad had sustained a rectal bleed in his last moments. I pulled my bandanna over my mouth and nose to block some of the smell and gingerly opened the closet door, careful to not nudge the bit of scalp on the floor loose.
There was no fire-safe to be found there or anywhere else within the house. I wandered to the office next to the bedroom in a daze. My mother had found two large paper shredders, bulging with what was used to be bills and other documents of matter. My father had shredded everything that connected him to life, as if to do that would erase his very existence. In the basement we found stacks of empty photograph frames piled on a shelf and empty cans of sauce put back in the pantry. There was nothing here but dust. I could only assume the photographs had been destroyed.
I bolted back up the stairs to the living room, and stood in front of the bookshelf, searching for the volume that surely must still be here. No matter how hard I looked, I could not find the family photo album. That and the rest of the pictures that Dad had held so dear had gone the way of the paper shredder. By this time my aunt had taken to rampaging through the house, searching for documents and clues and money that were never there. Dad had never liked her much and I could see why. She had no respect for the dead.
This was the same house that I had spent half my formative years in. We had celebrated Christmas’s past in this very room that I stood, staring blankly at the walls which used to hold framed family photos. It was in this house that I had learned to fight and cook and stand up for myself. This was no longer a home. I knew that Dad had finally succumbed to the ravages of a mental illness that had haunted him for most of his life. As I looked around that room, it was depersonalized, a model home built for show. There was no life left in the house, which used to smell of cinnamon, and now just smelled of despair and fear.
I'm still really pissed that Cory didn't bother to show up to the funeral/wake/side show. Oh well. I'll just stay friends with him til one of his parents kicks the bucket and not show up, claiming I'm "too tired from getting tattooed".