Chapter Eight- A Borrowed Revolver, dark spirits, a brain tumour and Disneyworld

That June day. My mother sat with the newspaper clipping in her helpless hands. I didn't believe he was dead. And then all of a sudden, the world slammed me down and I knew it was true. My mother reached out to touch me, but I was already gone. I ran upstairs to my room with something following me like a shadow. I felt afraid, but all I could think about was my father. I couldn't feel him anywhere, anymore. I would sometimes close my eyes and send him messages like, come home soon, or I miss you, or things are bad. And I felt like maybe he heard me, because sometimes he would come.

I felt a movement behind me and turned. Right there in my room, an endless wall appeared, black and winding away forever.  I gasped. Then I felt an urge to move towards it. As I did, I was drawn to a particular spot and suddenly I saw it. Smooth and hard as the surface of water glinting in darkness. My father's name was chiseled there like an eternal ripple. Sobbing, I reached out, with hands that disappeared into a thick gloom surrounding me. I read his name on the cool marble with my finger tips.

Then the shadow that had followed me, called my name. I turned in the strange grey of the misty air. I was terrified to face whatever this was that knew me. It was a form of darkness I had never seen before. It moved in fluid transience but was some estimation of the human form- if man and a jellyfish were mated, than this would have been their son, in ink black. He was not human, but I could only classify him as a "spirit", which is not very specific. He had a vaporous quality but also a density- at once air and stone. He possessed eyes that came forward out of the oblivion of his featureless face and then receded back to invisibility, where he watched from the cave of his ancient aural hood.

In terror I looked into his eyes and saw him raise his hands together. In them, he held the shape of my grief. I knew it was mine, without asking or being told. It was the only part of me he owned, and could reflect back and so he did, but in the enormous black ocean of his hands, my grief looked small, like a battered boat only big enough for two. I watched it tossing in the waves of his deep palms and cried out, as if some part of me were in danger. Then I realised it was all an illusion he'd created to draw from me the fear and distress he fed on. He couldn't really know what was inside me, he couldn't even imagine what I truly felt, because he had no feelings. I knew my sorrow wasn't small and lost. It was big and right there filling me up where it found me, ‘til I thought it would tear me apart. It was the biggest, worst feeling I had ever felt and I wanted to cut myself open and let it out somehow, but I couldn't. I could only cry. A flood leaking out in little drops.

I turned away from the black thing and sat in the corner rocking. Some part of me was still running to all the places I had ever seen him and calling his name. Some part of me was just asking, why? Over and over again. Why did he want to die? Why did he want to die and leave me forever? I needed him. I wanted him to come back. I was crying so hard I didn't care if black thing watched me. He just stared intently as if my sadness fascinated him. Finally, I yelled at him. "Go away!" But he still stayed. I looked at him closely. "Why are you here?" But again he was silent. I got the feeling he enjoyed disturbing me. He reminded me of a vulture, hovering over me, feeding on the intensity of my grief. He stayed all afternoon. Eventually I fell asleep, exhausted. When I woke up, he was gone.

My father was 26 when he died. I don't know how old the gun was. It was new to him because he borrowed it from a friend. He was staying in his cabin, by himself in Maine. I've always wanted to go to Maine and see the place he last was. The day he died, he sat on a tree stump outside alone with his head down in his hands. I know because a neighbor saw him and told the police. He sat there a long time. Maybe four hours. Then the neighbor thought he'd go over and cheer my father up. Perhaps be some company, offer him a cigarette at least. He started over but noticed my father had gone inside. By the time the neighbor reached my father's front door, a shot rang out. It scared the neighbor half to death. His hand was on the door, just knocking the first knock- so, it was as if the two noises went off at the same time. He pulled his hand back as if he'd touched a flame and ran for help.

Death knew all this before he came to see me, of course. But it's not his job to give you the gory details. But I know now that Death waited with my father's body until the police came. They had to investigate, though it was pretty apparent they had a suicide on their hands. The chalk outline of the body, the fingerprints, the crumpled note in his bloody blue jean pocket- they were thorough. But Death didn't hang around. None of those people cared. They were just doing their jobs.

Each kill births a new burst of sensations in the living; the blood of stopped hearts shining like mirrors Death gazed into, seeing proof of his own existence. I became well acquainted with Death at an early age, which had its benefits and its drawbacks. Being young, I had few biases and was honest in sense and sensibility. I met Death on naked terms and saw him for what he was. The cost was, that I had little faith in this reality holding much stability or security. I realised what Death did wasn't personal. Even his prurient voyeurism was understandable given his limitations. He wasn't evil as many might have concluded he was. He, in fact was a necessary ending of one energy cycle of conscious habitation, the "self's" physical embodiment on this plane. I came to understand that later. No one would want his job. So, I don't hate Death. He must be really lonely.

Before I figured a lot of that out though, I was pretty screwed up. I was afraid of loving and being loved because that meant pain. I had developed certain theories based upon my tragic loss and other disturbing childhood experiences and made a map that always led to being miserably alone and trusting no one. As fearful and emotionally disturbed as I was, you would have thought I'd shut down, go silent and shrivel up, but I was perversely defiant in my own "cover it up with freckles and a smile" way. I had a hearty "fuck you" spring loaded by eleven when I decided it was time to drop the childhood gig and become a woman. Wearing a push-up bra, high heels and make-up, I could pass for fifteen and my mother got the bartenders to serve me. I spent my teens doing whatever I wanted, wherever I wanted, and kicked the shins of every conventional authority figure that got in my way. I didn't know I was a cliché. I thought I was a rebel.

My mother eventually stopped dealing drugs and living her wild pseudo-bohemian disco brothel lifestyle. She went back to college and became an expert in a little known field at the time; Thanatology: Death and Dying. She worked with Jampolski and Kubler-Ross in facilitating hospice in the Washington, D.C. area. Looking back, she says she believes she entered the field to expunge guilt over my father's death. Whatever it was, she had a very interesting job that brought us into close relationship with people who, without fail, always died. It was a depressing and enlightening element in my adolescence. There were odd things about it. After death, there would sometimes be clothing or other personal affects no one claimed, and so, my mother brought them home for me and my sister. We wore a lot of dead people's clothing. It was interesting talking to people who knew they weren't going to be around for much longer. They'd always done a great deal of thinking about things I completely took for granted, and they'd made their peace with life, even though it wasn't giving them what they wanted. They knew all kinds of things I didn't, like, how to live with truths that could kill you outright. Or at the very least, make you wish you were dead. Only, no matter what, they wished for the opposite. When faced with really dying, it didn't matter how hard or painful life was, they just wanted one more day, one more hour. Most did anyway.

I remember one patient, especially. His name was John, and he might not be too happy if he could see me right now. Or maybe he wouldn't give a fig newton. I don't know, but he'd asked me to quit smoking before he died. I was only fifteen and I did quit for fifteen years. But then I started up again. Sorry, John. Anyways, John was young, only twenty eight and he had a terminal brain tumour. We spent a good deal of time with him. He seemed like a quiet person but once you became close to him, you could tell how he laughed all the time in his own private way about things. He was quirky without any outward appearance of quirkiness. He was slim and fair, slightly, very slightly fey. I say that because by fifteen, I was dating men (animals, really) of his age, and I remember finding John distinctly unappealing. But he was very sweet and I liked him. We took him to see the fireworks down on the Mall in the city. He'd never seen them and we really wanted to show him how amazing the fireworks were. He was going blind because of his tumour. That July fourth, we stood together in the humid night air and waited for it to be dark enough. I asked John how he could still laugh and smile even though he knew he was going to die soon. I asked him a lot of questions and some of my questions made him laugh. He told me feelings were one of the most powerful things in the world but it was better if you had them by the tail, instead of the other way around. That made me envision feelings like a bull or some other ornery animal that might need to be tamed or put on a leash. He said I had the right idea. Otherwise, he told me, those feelings might get too full of themselves and start causing trouble. Like, what kind of trouble? He almost whispered the answer, as if he didn't want other people hearing this classified information. I could barely hear him over all the people talking. He told me feelings could steal my joy. My joy? I didn't know I had any. But John had never lied to me, so I believed him. If he said I had joy, then I must have some hidden away somewhere.

Then the fireworks started. I looked over at my mom and sister and they were looking at John. John's face was radiant. Every firework that went up was like a flower exploding from heaven and I watched the tiny reflection of each twin bursting on the surface of his eyeglasses. Then I saw tears rolling down his smiling cheeks. The wonderment of  intensely bright colours and streaking flames of red, blue, green- a feast of visual beauty so vibrant, even his failing eyes could see it. A feeling of tremendous happiness welled up in me. I had never cared about fireworks before, but seeing them through John's eyes made them seem like  magic. Maybe that feeling was joy.

The day he died I remember it felt as if a small brown bird had dropped from the sky and landed like a miracle in the palm of my hand. The weight of its sleeping body, little legs curled stiffly into itself and its sweet head, motionless with closed eyes. I stroked the soft silent chest of it with one finger, crying. Then, suddenly, it flew away into the heavens. He was gone. But he was telling me to pay attention to everything, even little brown birds.

Going back to my father's death, life took a downward turn after he left us once and for all. My mother went crazy. She was broken down, my grandparents said, so they took us away for a little while. And as if it would make everything better, make everything disappear, they rented an RV and planned a big trip to Disney World. I knew going to Disney World wasn't going to fix anything, but it sounded like fun and a change of scenery, too. So, with Popo at the wheel, Nana, Cindy and I, sang songs, read license plates and played games, heading south away from the tragedy of  a father's suicide and a mother's mental instability, toward the artificial amusements of Walt Disney's theme park. It was a strange trip. But I'll save that for the next chapter.