It is amazing how despite how much death of those I loved I’ve seen in my lifetime, I still haven’t gotten used to it. That even after all the other funerals I’ve attended, this still affects me as much as that first one had.
Of course I heard the crying from downstairs. How could I not? The wails of pure agony that just ripped my beating heart from my chest seemed to echo in the house we live in. Perhaps it was wrong of me to know, but chose not to go downstairs to investigate. I knew you were probably clinging onto your boyfriend, needing desparetly a shoulder to cry on for a reason that I did not know at the time.
I waited for when you would come into my room and tell me the news. It didn’t happen until an hour later after you had first gotten home. I pretended I hadn’t heard you crying. I pretended I hadn’t known that something bad had happened. And then you tell me what it was that made you cry as such.
Your mother had died. My grandmother.
Did I say die? No, she had killed herself. Placed the gun right into her mouth and pulled the trigger.
Please don’t blame yourself, mother, it wasn’t your fault. How were you to know the phone call at two in the morning was that akin to a suicide note?
She took care of me when young, for years. The first half of my life I can remember her face in it. Back when innocence was still young and the world seemed bright. But in recent years— that innocence faded and I can see who she really was. She was crude, rude. Homophobic. She didn’t believe that there was any good in the world, that she was just simply living to take up space. Her mind was black without any light, and as she threatened you to move to Texas with her on the grounds that she would kill herself if you didn’t, I often thought that perhaps it was better if she was gone.
I loved her, do not doubt that for a minute.
But I’m a strong believer in that if one is weak enough to even contemplate that suicide is the better option, to show others the weapon they are planning on killing themselves with, to threaten others that unless their bidding was done they would kill themselves, well… perhaps they are better off dead.
It’s unfortunate, truly, that this had to happen. But I care more for you then the loss that we share.
Please stop crying. Please feel better. Please start smiling again.
