I came in from an errand one Mother’s Day. My two grade-school children sat on a couch looking at me, and then my partner came into the room and said, “You need to call your mother. It is urgent.”
As I began to make the call, I heard myself thinking, “I hope it is my father, I hope it is my father…”
You had gone to a favorite place by waters the night before and, with a shotgun no one knew you owned, you placed the gun in your mouth and ended a beautiful life.
Within two years, Dad was gone, and I was caring for Mom ’till she died. The day you left us, something exploded in her head, and she never came back.
I miss you more as time goes on. I will never hear your voice again. I am sure you would have survived, had you not been in possession of a gun. Your friends were there to support you; you were loved to the last … It did not have to be.