Part IV

Cont...

In the past 11 months I’ve made a checklist. What are the common factors in those who commit suicide? Is it depression? Pressing financial matters? Severe or terminal health issues? Substance and alcohol abuse? Sure, it could be anyone of the above. If there is a list of ten possible reasons, I can probably choose fifty percent of those and relate them to my mother’s suicide. But who really cares at this point. She’s dead.

I don’t know at what stage of grieving paranoia sets in, but at some point I considered that my mother faked her own death. (Frankly she was never that clever.) I believed that perhaps this was a forced suicide. (This is not the Middle East.) Perhaps she was murdered? (The medical examiner ruled out homicide.)

This is not an episode of CSI. This is my life here. I know my mother, and I know she took the handgun that was purchased to protect my family against robbers and Charles Manson-types and decided she had enough. It was time to rest. It was her time.

Since she died, I have not had any rest. All she does is badger me: in my sleep, when I’m cooking dinner or watching Desperate Housewives. Frankly, she’s a big pain in the ass. I hear a song in the car like Joe Cocker’s You Are So Beautiful to Me, and I openly weep. For months I was taking up to three baths a day just so I could place some boundaries on my emoting. If I limited myself to one place, at least I wouldn’t feel like such a basket case. No such like. I’m so sick of this.

I found great comfort in water during the first six months after her death—obviously with all of those silly baths. Living in Ithaca, I obviously couldn’t swim during the cold months, but I had the sound of water flowing, of lapping from the various waterfalls that make this little city so alive. I suppose it quite Civilization and Its Discontents, but I’m not referring to any basis of religion here. I am referring to the oceanic feeling as the symbol of life, death and the unknown. I am referring to the idea of being unrestrained. When I’m near or in water, I can feel my skin move. I like my skin in the water. I like myself around water. I’m recognizable again.

So you understand better, this suicide has brought about so many restrictions for me. For a brief time last winter I was unable to drive. After a few missed stop signs, an ignored red light and tires that regularly shrieked, I surrendered my car keys. It felt good. I didn’t want to feel responsible for something else.

A few weeks after she died, I wore her sweaters every day—mostly three cardigans, one pink, grey and black. My father said that was not good. I think I told him to go fuck himself. I still wear those sweaters, but for much different reasons. Her smell no longer accompanies them.

Then there were those prized times when I felt socially awkward around my closest friends. To me, when I was with them, I felt as if there was always a pink elephant in the room. I felt nervous and overwhelmed. I had to fight the urge to run out the door and bury myself in a pile of snow. God, I hated me. The thing is I was so desperate for them. I wanted so badly to make them laugh and see their smiles. What I really wanted was for them to make me feel like me again. For so many years when any of us had a crisis, heartbreak, a “God please tell me I did that” moment, we could find a way to cheer each other up with a $10 bottle of wine, a dirty joke and some slanderous gossip about some waif Hollywood actress. None of the above would help in this situation. They—the heartiest, funniest, savviest creatures on the planet—couldn’t even help.