Didn't Know it Then

I needn't explain how soul-crushing the search for a decent job is- we all know that already- but I will say that its easier now that I have a spiffy new fax/printer/scanner courtesy of the Twin and my grannie- thank you for my miracle box!

I scanned some old baby photos that I found in my mom's boxes and emailed them to my dad, who showed them to my grannie on his new laptop.
We blogger-types take things like photosharing for granted, but my grannie and my dad had never seen such a thing- it's great that my dad is sober and can open email and stuff.

I'm proud of my father for being sober but I'm worried because he still looks terrible. At 61 he looks 80.
He is lucky that the men in our family have a longevity gene, except for the ones who have killed themselves with alcohol or handguns . No one is sure how long they would have lived.

For years, I've been terrified that dad would deliberately kill himself whilst under a spell of alcoholic despair but now I think he's away from that. I just don't think he's ever going to be 'alright' again. He's ...off.
But not suicidal.
A few months ago he told his mother he wanted to die. She's 86 and wants to live and hearing her oldest son declare his desire to die is not good for her health.
This fall we thought she was dying, but it was a false alarm. I talked with her a great deal when we were making plans...during our talks, she revealed what dad had told her about wanting to die.
I had to drive up and do an intervention of sorts after hearing that, a task that was no picnic but it seems to holding so far.

I joke about suicide, but it is something that troubles me -although I don't think it would be my choice- the idea is not unfamiliar to me.
My mother's older brother shot himself last year and my mother made several serious attempts before cancer settled the issue.
Usually a car accident was her thing, but she tried the pistol too-she almost shot me when I took the gun away.

I was 18 and living in Summit Park, Utah. I'd just graduated High School that summer and decided to move from Virginia to Utah, stay with my mom and her new husband until I got a place- I already had a job lined up at the restaurant I had washed dishes at the previous summer...ski resort here I come!

Stepdad was an oilfield worker and was gone four, six, seven weeks at a time which was great, because he was an asshole; but it left my mom alone in a big house in the middle of nowhere and this was killing her.
I didn't know that then, how the years of isolation,abuse and neglect had robbed her of her ability to feel anything but desolation, pain and the utter lack of hope, save for the hope that it would all just end forever, and end soon.
I was still a dumb child in some ways and thought she was just sad and drunk, not sick. I wasn't paying attention and I was all she had, and it wasn't enough.
Things were not at all well with my mother, but I didn't know any of that then.
Suspected, feared, dreaded the worst, but I didn't know.
I wouldn't have admitted it even if I did know, which I did and still won't admit now.

One evening I was playing guitar in my room when I heard a POW! from the kitchen, a heavy jar breaking maybe?, then a second report, unmistakably a gunshot.

As I ran into the kitchen my hearing went white- a close proximity gunshot is louder than the movies would lead you to believe- the bullethole at my feet added a further 100 decibels of panic volume.
Mom was beyond mere drunkenness, she was spinning on a bar stool and trying to shoot herself.
She was so wasted she kept missing, almost hitting me again as I took the weapon away from her- I walked onto the back porch and chucked the gun down the mountainside and deep into the snow-covered forest below.
Not the smartest thing in hindsight, kids maybe finding it and all, but I was overwhelmed. I didn't know what else to do. I just wanted the gun as far away from us as it could get.

I had knocked mom off her perch during our brief tussle for the gun and she couldn't stand on her own.She could talk though.
Her words will be repeated in my nightmares, not here.

Anyway, I carried her into her bedroom, put her on the bed, she couldn't get up ...I walked back to the kitchen and examined the damage.
Four shots, two in the walls, one in the floor and one in the ceiling.

Then the phone rings . It's the Sheriff.
(We lived in what was at that time a very remote and sparsely populated mountain community but the Sheriif lived only a mile or so away- why call?)

"Who's this?"
I introduced myself. I didn't know it then, but the Sheriff had been called to our house before I moved in. Several times.
He didn't seem interested in returning.

"Your mother says you beat her up and stole her gun. Is this true?"

"I stole the gun. I didn't hurt her."
I explained what happened.

"Do I need to come out there? She sounds heavily intoxicated, do you need rescue? "

"No", I said, "I won't be needing rescue".

It was a lie then and it's a lie now, but I didn't know it then.