Blame

The summer my father unalived himself in my old high school parking lot was treacherously hot. It was debilitating. I heard the news from my mother's neighbor in a phone call from across the continent. Mother was crying in the background, the first sounds I'd heard from her in a long time. I'd been angry with them for years before father's death. Soon after, a flame was ignited, and I felt forced to carry it for too long. It was relentless.

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"Honey, please look on your social media. Your mother commented on the post about your father," my husband, Grant, stated seriously, three days after the death. "She's blaming you."

With a heavy sigh, I dropped my fork, still full of scrambled eggs and searched my page until I found her comment. Reading out loud, my voice grew more shallow with each word, "How dare you post about his death! You hadn’t spoken with him in years and he felt that every day! You must live with his blood on your heart, start talking to God about it now, because you will answer to him! Accept your blame now, daughter, because he would still be alive if you'd never been born!" Her words stung worse than the hate-filled emails I'd received from both parents over the last ten years after we'd moved our family across the country.

"How are you feeling, babe?" Grant put his hand gently on my shoulder and nuzzled his lips into my neck.

"I don't want to feel anything right now. But I can’t sleep. I haven't slept for more than an hour at a time since the phone call. My brain won't let me rest," I spoke quietly, looking at my eggs, which were beginning to harden around the edges.

"You know...you understand it wasn't your fault in the slightest, right?" Grant whispered into my ear as he gripped my shoulder a little tighter. "It's not his fault either, he was mentally ill, we've known this for a long time. It's not your mother's fault, or my fault for convincing you to move their only grandchildren. We were drowning there, hon. We invited them, but they never wanted to see us happy. They wanted to keep pulling you under with their horrible words. In their sick way, they wanted to see you drown without them right there to somehow save you. It's sometimes a curse to be an only child, you know this. You grew up experiencing it," Grant leaned in to kiss my forehead. "This isn't on you."

I had no words I could express out loud in that moment, but inside, my mind was overwhelming me as it had since I was a child. I knew my husband’s words were accurate. But I still dropped my head and cried quietly as my shoulders shook violently. Outwardly, I felt mother's opinions still damaging my core, which was already weak. I'd read the news reports from father's death. Strangers had opinions about the location and person who took a gun for one last ride in his beloved truck, likely with his own homemade bullets, and pointed it to his head, pulling the trigger. The strangers focused on him, one calling him courageous for leaving this awful world before it got even worse. He was dead, and I felt more for the jogger who found him, literally shattered in the cab of his pickup. He felt nothing anymore, but the jogger, I imagine, who had actively chosen to try to help someone, had become an unwilling victim in an instant.

Trying hard not to think about what happened, I found myself focusing on it instead. I imagined varying scenarios about how long he planned it, if at all. I wondered if he woke up the morning of the last day of his life after spending a restless night working out the details of his death in his unrelenting mind. Maybe he'd had a restful sleep, comfortable with his decision. He'd told mother he was going to run errands. Their marriage was strained at the time, officially they were separated but living in the same home. Did he kiss her then pet their dog on the way out of his house?

Was he sending me a final message by choosing the parking lot of my former high school? Of course he was, no interpretation was necessary for that conclusion. He'd been so angry for years. Viewing old pictures, his jaw clenched more tightly as he aged. His shoulders, once open, began to fold inwardly. I wondered what his expression was when he pulled the trigger. Where did he hold the gun when it happened? On his chin? Forehead? Did he bring more than one gun with him, with the intention of choosing when the time came? Why did my brain want to force my soul to think about this, to somehow feel how he felt? What difference did it make? Did he cry and take his glasses off? Was he angry, sad or indifferent? He'd been a stoic man with a dry sense of humor. Was he attempting to prove a point, running from his anger or giving up on hope? When was the last time he'd felt hope?

Soon after, I asked on two separate occasions if mother wanted to talk on the phone before I stopped asking, it was honestly an empty offer, but I would have spoken with her if necessary. Later, I heard she had been telling people I never reached out to her. Her grief hadn’t affected her skills of manipulation. She expected truth from everyone except herself, often saying her version of events was close enough.

One year later, I still hadn’t heard my mother's voice. A few tense, angry emails had been exchanged. I hadn't forgotten the pain of being blamed for my father's death, and I let her know how I felt. She answered, "You're such an angry person! Why would you hold onto that for so long? I don't owe you an apology, but I'm sorry you continue to feel that way! What you did was much worse. You only put something on social media about your father's death when you're looking for attention! YOU DIDN'T TALK TO HIM FOR YEARS! YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO GRIEVE!"

A piece of me broke off as I read her words. I felt it leave my body and float away. That was the last time I would care enough to communicate with my mother. Instead, I put my phone down, went to my bed, laid down, pulled my blankets up close to my face and closed my eyes for a much needed rest.