The thing I can't get over is the violence of the whole thing.
He was a big man, with the dimensions of an offensive guard, or maybe an undersized defensive tackle, even though those comparisons imply much more athleticism and health than dad ever really had. He was six-two, and on that day was up to around 300 pounds. His face had gotten rounder with age and weight gain over the years. He could certainly be an intimidating presence. And his temper and mood could also fill a room when stretched to the limit. He lost his temper many, many times with me, even recently. But violence was never part of the equation.
Mostly that was due to two influences in his life. The first was his father, an alcoholic whose wake often left damage my dad had to clean. He told me that at one of my Uncle's weddings, papa limped around on account of broken ribs dad gave him in a fight the two of them got into. I got the feeling there were more incidents like that, and dad was so afraid of alcohol it was a big story amongst our family if dad cracked open a beer.
He was a big man, with the dimensions of an offensive guard, or maybe an undersized defensive tackle, even though those comparisons imply much more athleticism and health than dad ever really had. He was six-two, and on that day was up to around 300 pounds. His face had gotten rounder with age and weight gain over the years. He could certainly be an intimidating presence. And his temper and mood could also fill a room when stretched to the limit. He lost his temper many, many times with me, even recently. But violence was never part of the equation.
Mostly that was due to two influences in his life. The first was his father, an alcoholic whose wake often left damage my dad had to clean. He told me that at one of my Uncle's weddings, papa limped around on account of broken ribs dad gave him in a fight the two of them got into. I got the feeling there were more incidents like that, and dad was so afraid of alcohol it was a big story amongst our family if dad cracked open a beer.
The second influence was my mother, who was, I think, an early adopter of the anti-corporal punishment parents in the late seventies. Her calm discipline, and insistence that dad adhere to that, sapped any leftover violent tendencies dad may have had.
There were a couple of instances, but the violence was never the point. I remember him once cracking the stick of a toy broom across his knee because he was tired of Beth and me arguing over it. I remember being spanked once or twice, but it never hurt - he was only trying to get my attention.
He didn't like sports until we all went to OU. I remember him speaking poorly of boxing at times. This was a man with a body and temperment that could fool someone into thinking a brawler lay underneath, but I don't think he would have had any idea how to hurt someone physically if he tried.
Which makes the violence of that final moment that much harder to wrap my mind around. Or maybe that much harder to accept. It seems like that final moment is all I can think about, and it plays on an unending loop in my mind.
There are several camera angles, the images even seem edited. I know the place where he did it, and had been there many times. I know the truck he did it in - I drove it a lot. I want to know what he was thinking about as he drove from the front of the plant, where the offices are, to the isolated back, near the dumpster, where he did it. It would be like you driving halfway around the block. To someone who could drive 12 hours without stopping, it must have seemed like the longest drive he ever made.
He bought the gun two weeks earlier. He envisioned this drive for at least that long. Back in his desk drawer were two letters, one to his brother with instructions on what to do with the business, and one addressed to my mother. This happened on a wednesday, and the letters were finished sunday. Typed out, printed in his office, he even made sure to CC my mom on the letter to my Uncle.
The police told us there was a note in the truck, but we have yet to see that, and I don't know that I want to. The chaplain told us what she understood to be its contents, and it was just despair. Sounded hand written, also. For some reason, I keep seeing it on a flourescent green Post-It note. The well reasoned, clearly written letter to my mom (and he knew that Beth, Sarah and I would read it also) is a much better way to remember.
I don't think he had ever even fired a gun before. The detective told me it was a Smith and Wesson .38 special, short nosed revolver. They found a box of bullets, with three missing. Those three were loaded into the gun, and the one...the one had discharged. I spoke to the detective because I wanted to find out what kind of trauma there was. I needed to make sure that my mom and sisters weren't walking into a horror show if they decided to attend the viewing at the funeral home the next day. I don't know anything about firearms, but I know enough to be relieved about it being a .38. I asked if there had been an exit wound, and the detective told me "No, only a contact wound and some blood on the gun."
A Google search for "contact wound" later led me to a more graphic image than the simple wikipedia article I was looking for, but it did the trick. A star-shaped entrance wound, here just above the right ear.
Again we see dad's deliberation and calculation in performing this final deed. Most suicides, or at least most suicides with a pistol, you would think are done with a shot to the temple, but dad did it above the ear. The day after the death, I went to his office and poked around in his internet history to see what he had been looking at - he forfeited his privacy in this case.
Among some other interesting sites, one that he went to was a Cliff's Notes of the human vascular system, showing all the major arteries and veins. Looking at this chart, in the head the main blood supply comes up the neck and up through the center of the brain (perhaps that is where it leaves rather than enters, point is there is a big fucking blood vessel right there). It looks like it lines up with the ear.
It would also be easy to deliver a non-lethal gunshot wound to the temple, which could be a fate worse than death. In the letter to mom, dad talked about trying to make his death look like an accident by jumping from the roof at his manufacturing plant, but ultimately deciding that the risk of survival was too great. Amongst the other sites dad looked at in the two weeks leading up to his death was .pdf's of Do Not Ressucitate forms. He never filled those out.
So the ear shot was to increase to likelihood of death.
One of the strange things about the way dad looked at the funeral home took me a while to figure out: he wasn't wearing his glasses. I don't know where those are, I don't know if he took them off before or not.
Part of why I think I keep running these images, this movie, through my head is that I have seen people shoot themselves in the head before. The politician in the late 80's who did it on TV and inspired that filter song, but he put the gun in his mouth. There was a really bizarre case a couple of years ago where a man was arrested, taken to an interrogation room, and when the cops left for a second to get a pad of paper or something, the guy pulled out a nine millimeter a shot himself in the head. In the interrogation room! Somehow they never frisked his sweatpants and he had a gun in there and shot himself. The video of that leaked out on the internet and I watched it. I don't know why, I wish now I hadn't. You can't unring a bell.
So I am trying to imagine, but at the same time wishing I could choose to forget, what an observer would have seen when dad pulled the trigger. I don't know why, except that I guess it may give me a clue into what he was thinking when it happened. Maybe it won't look as violent as the guy in the interrogation room. And if so, maybe it will seem more like dad.
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