- So I stopped at a café on the way here, and the waitress said, “Heya! Are you having an awesome day?”, instead of, “How are you today?” No. “Are you having an awesome day?” Which is pretty… shitty because it puts the onus on me to disagree with her, like if I’m not having an “awesome day”, I’m suddenly the negative one.
Usually when people ask me how I’m doing, the real answer is, “I’m doing shitty”, but I can’t say that because I don’t even have a good reason to be doing shitty. So if I’d say, “I’m doing shitty”, then they’d react like “Why? What’s wrong?”, and I’d have to be like “I don’t know”. So instead, when people ask me how I’m doing, I say, “I’m doing so great!”
But when this girl at the café asked me if I was having an “awesome day” I thought, “Today I actually have a good reason to feel shitty”, so I said to her, “My mom just killed herself”, and she immediately burst into tears. So now I have to comfort her, which is annoying, and meanwhile, everybody around me is giving me these real judgy looks because I made the poor girl cry.
She’s bawling and saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”, and I’m like “It’s fine, it’s fine”. I mean, it’s not fine but, you know, I had to comfort her and all of that. And I would like to order a café latte, and I’ve had kinda somewhere to be, so maybe more with the café and less with the late, huh?
Finally the girl apologizes, again, and she offers me the café latte for free. As I was leaving, I thought, “I just got some free coffee because my mom died.” No one ever tells you that when your mom dies you get free coffee.
Ehem, I’m sorry. That’s not part of the… Anyways, thanks everybody for coming to the funeral. I’m starving so let’s do this quickly. I know you came here because of my mom but, otherwise, you’ll have to stay because of me!
- Cough, cough...
- Hey! Audience guy! Where’s that welcome?
- I don’t think we should…
- What the hell are you talking about!? Do the thing we talked!
- Sigh… ¡Wooooooo!
- It wasn’t so hard, wasn’t it? Let’s see, what can I tell about my mother.
She was a woman. She was blonde. She was born in 1970. I’d lie if I say that she lived a good life. Her father abused her, so she left home when she was 15. She spent some time homeless but found a job, went to college, felt in love and raised me. A pretty nice story… with a really sad ending.
Did you like how I synthesized your story mom? Anything? Are you a mute? Maybe she’s short of breath. Mom, knock twice if you want me to open the casket. No? Suite yourself.
She wanted to be cremated, but she never respected me, so, why the heck would I respect her?
My dad died when I was 17. He committed suicide as well. The previous night he and my mom argued really hard. The next day I went to his house to talk. I knocked the door but I got no response, so I sneaked through a window. The first thing I saw was a bloodstain into the hallway. I called him but, again, no response. I followed the trail to the kitchen, where I found him. Hung and with slit veins. He just left a note. There he just wrote: “This is what you wanted? You got it”
That night I asked my dad to apologize to my mom, not because I supported her, but because it hurts me a lot to see her so sad! I always thought that the note my father left was meant for me.
She always was beating herself up. Everyday she mourned, “Why he left me that fucking note!?”
I tried to comfort her by saying it wasn’t for her… but she never listened to me. At the end, I quit. Sometimes I ask myself if she took her life due that slow forsaking.
Hey, mom, knock twice if I made feel you abandoned and unimportant.
Sigh. To be honest, I didn’t expect it. Not that day, at least. I was coming back from class in a good mood, which is very rare. I didn’t expect in a million years that, after I open the door, I would find another bloodstain into the floor. This time the difference were some broken glasses on the floor. I followed the trail through the hallway, again. And there she was, hung in the bathroom with slit veins. A picture that will never go.
And I can’t stop rewinding the previous night, you know? What did I do? Have I done something wrong? Was something I said? Lately we argued all the time, but that night nothing happened! In fact, we shared such a nice time watching a show.
I’m pretty sure you know which one I’m talking about, it’s name is Evil.
- Cough, cough…
- Anyways, it’s about a priest, a psychologist and a scientist who try to solve alleged paranormal incidents, like possessions, haunted houses and all sort of things. The interesting thing of that was, although they solved the cases, the show always left little unsolved leads that made you doubt if it was a supernatural situations or not. Moreover, there were other plots, like a powerful sexual attraction between the priest and the psychologist or the fact that her daughter was a demon capable of completely destroy the civilization.
We spent three years watching that show and we were so excited because that night was the finale. However, and sorry, spoiler alert in case you’re watching… the show, the ending was a real piece of crap.
It felt very cut-off and a lot of problems and questions had no resolution. Priest and psychologist felt in love and had a happy ending together? Her little girl is definitely a demon but, does her mother know it? Will she destroy humankind?
Sometimes I ask myself if was that the reason why my mom killed herself. When people ask me, “How about the show? Do you recommend it?”, I can say, “Ask my mom. For her was so shitty that she killed herself”
Hey, David, what about that laugh track each time I say something funny?
- App is not working…
- Then laugh yourself, it’s not so hard!
- But…
- Just do it!
- Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
- Lame. I better continue by myself.
I am really angry for having to go through this shitty path one more time.
When someone you love commit suicide you get mad at that person. It’s not like a car accident or a death by disease, in which cases you can guilt a driver, the life or even God.
No. When a loved one commits suicide makes you feel left behind. It means that she screwed up every little effort you did, every time you told her “I love you”, every off day you stayed to comfort her, every night you spent awake thinking how to help her…
That’s a suicide. It makes you feel that she preferred to die before staying with you. I’m unable to articulate the deep feeling of abandonment and powerlessness. Pretty sure there’s some german word for this.
You see, this kind of grieving has something, and is that you’re constantly asking yourself why.
I knew she wanted to end her life but, why doing it that day? Is something I go over and over. She could have done it some days before, when we argued, but no. She decided to do it when apparently everything was right.
I can’t stop looking for signals! Maybe some lead I ignored. However, everything makes me feel that it was improvised.
We had a lot of knives in the kitchen! She could have slit the veins with them, but, instead, she smashed a wine bottle and cut herself with the shattered glasses. She also could have hung with her bathrobe belt. It was there! Instead she made her own rope with some towels.
Even her note didn’t look planned! “Don’t beat yourself up. Be happy. I can’t live like this anymore. Forgive me. I love you so much.”
[HAHAHAHAHAHAHA]
- It’s fixed. All I need to do was uninstall…
- Jesus Christ! Not now!
Mom, if you loved me so much, why you did this to me? You taught me “treat others as you want to be treated”. You forgot it when you hung yourself in our house!? I mean, you could have hung under a tree o thrown yourself to the highway, but no. You needed to do it just like dad, right?
You know what? Fuck you! David, let’s get ready to rock. We’re gonna do it.
- Making an ice bear farm?
- What!? No! I mean the jokes!
- Oh, that makes more sense.
- Ehem. What have in common my parents and a frog? They Kermit suicide!
[HAHAHAHAHAHAHA]
- One more. What’s the difference between Star Wars and my mom’s life? Star Wars hasn’t ended yet!
[HAHAHAHAHAHAHA]
- And one more. This is the last one. What’s the difference between a lifeguard and my mother? One keeps an eye on the beach… and the other one is a huge bitch!
Yeah, I might gone too far with that one. Maybe I crossed the line when I said “Mi mom was a bitch”. I’m sorry, mother. You’re not a huge bitch. You were a huge bitch.
And I know what you think, “How is he capable of talking that way about his own mother!?” You got no idea about all the pain that woman caused to me.
I’ve got million memories. A million times she told me I wasn’t as humorous or charismatic as my father was. A million times she apologized after she told me something awful and, just a few days later, she would do it again. A million times I got hit by heartbreaking words spat from her drunk mouth and million times she got mad when I told her that she drunk too much. And a million times she told me that my pain was meaningless compared with the pain of losing a husband...
Ooffffff. I’ll tell you a little story.
My mom didn’t like going out of home, so I used to run errands. Once, the errand was to get money from ATM machine. 100€.
I placed the card into the ATM and typed the money I wanted to extract, but the machine got apparently frozen, so I went to another one nearby. On my way I got a call from my mom, “Sweetie, I got a bank notification saying you got the money” I told her what happened, but she said “What the hell are you talking about!? Go back! Now! You can’t loose that money! Are you trying to ruin my whole life!?”
I arrived panting at the bank. When the banker saw me, she gave me the money, she was guarding it the whole time. It turned out that machine used to take longer to release the money, so it was usual what happened to me.
But it deeply hurt me that my own mother told me that “I was going to ruin her life”. How was she capable of telling me something like that after all the things we went through? However, the hardest thing happened the next day, when I told her how she made me feel, and, guess what was her answer?
“You should not feel like that”
Now visualize stories like this for 8 years. She deserve each one of the syllables I’m spitting here! Take it as some kind of punishment for all the pain she caused me.
Sigh. But, despite of all of that… I can’t stop feeling guilty. And it’s not for interrumpting her big sleep. I can’t stop thinking that I could have done something to prevent her suicide. I was humming a song while my mom bleed to death in the bathroom.
I know. I know this doesn’t make any sense. There was no way I could have figured it out. Moreover, I’m pretty sure she would have done it later. My rational part knows it! However, my emotional part feels that I could have done something more. What if I stayed? What if I have called her?
We argued days before, but we solved it! What if that was her reason? What if she appeared to be OK but she kept overthinking the issue? Is it possible that I told her something that make her took that decision?
Nah, I don’t buy it. She went through many sleepless nights, her sleep pills were not working anymore, she begun to drink more… Probably all these issues made her loose it at that day.
Heh. See? I’m still trying to figuring out why she killed herself. I can’t stop trying.
It took me seven years to escape this bottomless pit after my father died.
Along that time I met some people that tried to kill themselves. I asked them why they did it, but all I got were different answers: “I felt like an object”, “No one treated me like a human being”, “I just wanted to put an end to my pain”.
One day I was on a Tinder date and the girl told me she got suicide instincts. I asked her why and her answer just was: “I got bipolar disorder. It’s just something that comes to me” At that moment something clicked on my head. I just realized: I’ll never know why my father decided to comit suicide.
In some way my parent’s life is like Evil. A story abruptly ended and full of unsolved questions.
You see, the scary thing about your parents committing suicide is the fact that, maybe, in the future you get to consider doing the same thing.
These last days, while driving I’ve seen a truck passing nearby and, I don’t know why, something in my head made me release the wheel. It was just a few seconds but I don’t know how to explain it! It was like being hypnotized. I felt like a… total indifference. I thought “I wouldn’t care if a crash happened”. I don’t want to die but sometimes I feel like I wouldn’t care if a truck ran me over.
I mean, let’s make it clear: I don’t want to kill myself. But, what if someday, in 15 or 20 years, I’m so fucked up enough to consider it? Depression and anxiety are inherited. What if suicide too?
- Ooooooooh, come here. Let me hug you.
- Don’t even think about it! The last person that hugged me was that waitress and I don’t want to change that.
Alright, to be honest, I didn’t tell all the story.
When the waitress brought me the coffee, she told me that years ago she tried to kill herself. When she woke up at the hospital and saw the horror into her family’s faces she felt deeply embarrased of herself. “How was she capable of hurt the people she loved so much?”, she thought. From that moment, she spent everyday of her life trying to be better. She started going to therapy, go to the gym, hang out with her friends…
She said it’s not easy, of course. Sometimes she feel like it’s about to fall again but, at the same time, she got to a point of no return: now this isn’t about her family, it’s about herself.
Why my parents didn’t think like this!? I am your son! All I had was you.
Sigh. Few days ago I saw a Reddit post written by a boy whose girlfriend committed suicide. He mourned that she left no note. “Why she didn’t left me a note!? Didn’t I deserve a note? Was I so meaningless to her? I would take any word! Anything!”, he said.
As someone who has lived both sides, a despicable note and another one “lovely”, I can honestly tell that it doesn’t matter if your loved one leave a note or not, or what she said. You’re always going to get mad at her because of making you abandoned and insignificant.
- Sorry for interrupting but, for real, I think we should…
- Oh, my fucking god! Will you shut up!? I’m in the middle of my last chance to say goodbye to my mom! Are you trying to ruin my whole life!?
Jesus Christ…
All these years I haven’t stop hearing about forgiveness, that it’s the only way to get peace. I disagree. I think forgiveness is overrated.
After that Tinder date, everything changed for me.
I realized my father probably felt guilty for causing us so many problems due to his debts. And being unemployed probably made it worse, making feel useless. Also, the alcoholism didn’t help either, so he probably concluded that we were better off without him. There was nothing I could do.
From there, I started to live easier and less angry. That’s the key! It’s not about forgiving, it’s about understanding.
I don’t know I if someday I’ll be capable of forgiving my parents. All I know is that I don’t want to be like them. I want to be better than them. And we all need somewhere to start. Come on, mom. Let’s go cremate you.
- Finally I find you.
- Who are you?
- I’m the crematorium manager. You didn’t came in, so we started the cremation. Here you got. I put your mother into our finest urn.
- What the…? Here are only WWII veterans!
-That was what I was trying to tell you!
