Juneuary

Many things happened in the month of June this year.  Most of them fall into the category of "bag of dicks."  The two things at the top of this column include my getting a head injury and my father attempting suicide.

It's July now.  Do we talk about these things or do we simply move on?  I have come to believe, in the course of this last month, that humans count time so meticulously in order to maintain the sense of progress, or at least progression.  Mondays are miserable and horrible but expire suddenly at midnight, when we can  become optimistic for the future, until humpday when we must mourn until Thursday, which is nearly the weekend.  Almost a month ago, I awoke on the cement floor in the kitchen in a puddle of blood. Not only am I fine now, but that was almost a month ago.

There are, of course, those things that happen that stick with you in an "always" kind of way.  There are those things that happen that will always be immediately present to you, hinting in an ethereal Einsteinian way that, were it not for "time," all things would happen now.  All things might, in fact, be happening now, but we merely regard them as vignettes, a slide-show of pictures already taken and laid out for perusal.  

When I was three years old, my father found me playing with a gun in our living room.  It was an antique, unloaded but potentially operational, sitting next to the family photographs gathering dust.  He became incensed, very concerned suddenly that his habit of leaving guns lying around the house might be at odds with being the father of a small child.  His response was to load the weapon with a plug of toilet paper and a charge of gunpowder and have me, little three year old me, discharge the weapon into the bathroom (in laymen's terms: BANG!).  Therefore, technically, the first time I fired a gun I was three years old.  I remember this moment vividly.  I could draw you a picture of the bathroom in the intensity of my dilated eyes.  I remember being a small child, scared and crying, knowing what guns are for with a sudden intensity that was vividly effective, like knowing what knives are for, or hot stoves, or fists.

The cop called me the day after my head injury.  I was lying on the couch reading a book, having a little trouble concentrating, on some mild painkillers.  She wasn't very clear about what had just happened.  It occurs to me now that I should write the police and tell them they should outsource the breaking of bad news to people who don't suck at it, or potentially practice it a little amongst themselves.  It would be preferable, perhaps, not to use terms like "chickened out."  It might be best to open with "everyone is okay now."  

My dad fired a hole through two walls and a door with a single shot.  The first round was intended to verify that the weapon was operational, the second was intended for his head.  He only fired the first round and then went to get help.  My dad has had six strokes over the course of the last four years and is now scarcely capable of speech.  He forms a few complete sentences a day, and is otherwise largely incomprehensible.  Given a moment to reflect, it's not difficult to comprehend why the man might want to top himself.  Nonetheless I have irrational emotional responses.

I saw him last week and heard myself ask if he was mad at me.  Why would he be?  Do I delude myself into believing I am an entirely rational person?  He said no, clearly surprised.  Why would he be mad at me?

My partner went to collect the gun after my father was hauled off to the VA mental ward in the ambulance.  It sat in a locked box within a locked box in the basement for a couple weeks.  I saw my dad.  I cried irrationally.  Everything was fine.  Nobody was hurt.  A day more passed and I got properly drunk and opened the cases.  It's a five-shooter, a smith and wesson .357 magnum.  Pro series.  With a new grip, the kind with a laser sight in it.  Obvious questions cascade through my mind.  Why would he buy such a nice gun?  Who sold a gun to a man that can't talk?  Why would you need a laser sight if your intent was to put the barrel in your mouth?

I did not ask these questions of my father today.  It was our first time hanging out since his "attempt."  I drove him out to the Evergreen Aviation Museum and we looked at airplanes and spacecraft.  He used to be an aircraft electrician before he retired.  He worked for over twenty years on military planes as a civil servant.  He pointed out one of the aircraft he used to rewire, the F4-C.  He asked me if I remembered sitting in the cockpit as a wee kid.  I don't.  We toured the gun museum.

My partner later asked my dad what he thought of the gun museum and he said his fascination with guns had dissipated recently.  He stated it simply and clearly, one of his articulate sentences for the day.

It's July fourth now.  My throat feels raw and swollen.  My lymph glands feel like they're incubating eggs.  I still hope to see fireworks, but it may be from the back lawn.  I was going to write my blog more regularly, like weekly, since I had emerged from the depths of relative despair and felt like writing.  Perhaps I should write weekly anyway, regardless of the despair.  If this is my life, this is my life.  Waiting for the storm to clear is getting boring.