My Days

Scott, today, that gut-splitting nausea when I think about you has returned. I feel so damned guilty about what happened. Last July, you needed me more than ever in your life. Why wasn't I paying attention?

After the fact, I can see there were signs. When I called, you seemed distracted. I thought maybe I was interrupting something. There was less communication from you. Same thinking on my part. You WERE pulling away, but for reasons I never guessed. Whatever the reason, you were not in your right mind. The Scott who left Springfield two years ago just would not have done that. He was happy and looking forward to his new job and living on his own in another town. But that Scott got lost. Where? Why?

What happened, Scott? I still need to know.

Yesterday I talked on the phone with your brothers about distributing your things. And I looked in your files for the title and other papers for the Kawasaki for C. Going through those papers was like looking at a record of your life. And there was your handwriting......Oh!

You killed yourself in the midst of a heatwave. Today the earth is covered with snow and it's cold. But the sun finally shines, after days of gray. Usually the sun lifts my spirits, but today it seems only to make the weight of your memory heavier.

It's a slow, tear filled day, dear heart....

I'm alone and don't know what to do with myself. Your dad is at the doctor's. It's splitting-bone cold today and snowing very lightly. I turn up the furnace and the space heater in the sunroom but I can't get the house warm.

This is the kind of day that invites a fire in the fireplace. But the sorrow in having such pleasure while you can't enjoy it keeps me from suggesting it to your dad.

A little too early to start the noon meal but I make a mushroom sauce for dad's steak anyway. It keeps me busy. And I get ready to cook my salmon fillet. I get out a pan and all the ingredients. Wash the pan that is soaking in the sink. I walk through the house and turn on all the lights. I check my email, search on-line for lamb and rice sticks for the dogs, go from site to site. Lonliness and emptiness. I need to get away from this foreign life. I go back to the family room, the kitchen. The dogs lie on the back of the couch, like cats, watching me, following me with their eyes. The quiet is deafening.

I am waiting for your dad to come home. Wanting something to happen. Any distraction that will cover the thoughts in my mind. I walk through the rooms again, feel the floor underneath the soles of my houseslippers, the air going through my lungs, my eyes burning. Blood flows through my veins.

I am alive. And I wonder how it feels to be dying. To be dying from a gunshot wound. From a bullet you aimed at yourself.

You thought you were ready to die, Scott.I wish you had given yourself a chance to live
I'm not ready to die.
But I don't have a life. I'm lost in the aftermath of a hasty decision. I wander through the haze of days, weeks, months. Wondering. Thinking. Feeling. Turning back the clock. Talking to you, Scott. Trying to convince you there are reasons to live - as if it isn't too late, as if I had the power to bring you back. Or trying to convince myself that life can be good even though you are gone.

But it's a lie! It's a game I play trying to chase away the grief. Everywhere I go, you haunt me. From the kitchen and sunporch windows, I view the patio with the picnic tables and chairs where you sat and held Sandy that last summer you were here. You were quiet then. I thought you were listening to the conversation. Now I believe you were thinking your own private thoughts. Were they dark and painful and hopeless? Oh, Scott....

I can't hold it in any longer. I pace and cry. Cry and pace. The dogs, like statues except for their eyes, follow me, confused.
From the living-room, my workroom, the bedroom, I see the street where your Ford Escort drove by before you turned into the drive when you arrived from KC. In the yard, there's the gate you entered from the driveway. Inside, you are everywhere! You, as you were then.

Where can I go to get away from the memories? How much pain is it possible to endure? I try to push the thoughts back. But there is no escape. When you pulled that trigger, Scott, you sentenced others to a lifetime of sorrow. A large piece of me is gone now. The pain is like a phantom limb. There is no retrieving what is lost. And I don't know how to live in this void.

On the news tonight, I heard about a man who shot himself in the head and is in a local hospital. I can't help but think, Scott, that you lived for awhile after you shot yourself. Why else would the receiver be underneath your shoulder when they found you while the cradle remained on the table?

Everyone keeps telling me you died instantly. How do they know? They weren't there. No one even knows exactly what day you did it. Your dad says he knows because of how you looked. I tell him I don't know what that means. He won't explain. Just says I can believe whatever I want to.

I don't want to believe it, Scott. I don't want to believe that you shot yourself and remained conscious and tried to call someone but didn't succeed, that you were in pain and terrified, maybe even wished you hadn't done it and knew you were going to die. No, I don't want to think that. But I am afraid it could have happened that way.

I wish you had left a note or some sign that pointed to why you felt this was the only solution to your problem, whatever it was. I need to know. I need to know, Scott!

Before we picked up your "personal property" at the police station in KC, I was told on the phone that there was a piece of paper. When we got home with your things, there was no paper. I was in too much pain and too tired at the time to pursue it. Now I keep wondering if the paper could have been a note with, perhaps, the answers to my questions.

I don't know. Maybe that's magical thinking. I've been doing a lot of that. I want to know the truth and gaurd against it. Maybe that's a reason I have difficulty feeling your presence or your energy. Maybe that's why I can't believe in angels or a god who puts us in the world and lets us kill ourselves and one another.

Yes, there is beauty in the world. And remarkable human beings. But there is too mmuch wickedness and tragedy and destruction.

And again I ask. What is the point? Why? What does it all mean? We are born. We grow. We plan. We triumph. We fail. We experience joy and pain. One day we die. As Peggy Lee said, Is that all there is?"

Life is short enough, Scott. Why did you do it!?

If you can, please come to me in a dream and give me some answers.

Scott, today is your birthday. You would have been thirty-seven. It's a beautiful day. Baby-blue skies, warm sunshine, a soft breeze. Light jacket weather. I wonder how it would be for you if you were here to experience this perfect day for a celebration.

I have to admit, Scott, I don't feel like celebrating. Your birth has ended in the most horrific emotional pain I have ever experienced. God forgive me, I don't know what purpose your being here served. Evidently you didn't either, being you decided to end your life on your own. What good are memories if they can't be shared with the one we are remembering? It's as if you never happened.

Still, I bought some flowers this morning, arranged them in a vase and put them on the mantle next to your box. And I lit four candles. Later, dad and I will do the same ceremony we did Christmas day with the wreath and six candles. I need to acknowledge you. To honor you.

I know I am contradicting myself. But so be it. I am confused, don't know what my true feelings are.

Your dad and I have been continuing to light the blue spruce outside and the tree in the living-room ever since Christmas. We agreed to do it until after your birthday. So tonight will be the last night. I will miss the lights. I can't explain what they do for me, just warm me a little.

So, anyway, Scott, I'm back not being able to do much of anything again. I hope, now that the important dates of this season are over, I will be able to deal with all of this better. If you are aware and can help me, I really need it. I would so love to talk to you today.

I rode in the car with your dad this morning and waited while he went into Pets Mart to get some sweaters for Nikki and Jeti. As I sat and listened to music on public radio, someone your age , with your looks, walked across the parking lot. It could have been you! It was a shock! I couldn't keep my eyes off him. It was a beautiful present for me on your birthday.

So, now, rest, my son, and peace to you!

Well, Scott, the year you left us has ended. I don't want to let it go. It's like losing you all over again.

Last night I watched the world celebrate and wished I could feel the joy, the expectancy of starting anew. I know it's sick, but I want to stay back there with you in that other world where you were alive, where your thoughts and feelings and actions were a part of the world.

Now my world is closing in. My only frame of reference is that day in August. Before and after. That's how I measure my life.

Where are you, Scott? Where are you?