Crossing 13: Memoir of a Father's Suicide

by Carrie Stark Hugus
(Denver, CO)

“Good night,” Mom says with a kiss, weepy eyes, and an attempt at a reassuring smile. As she shuts the door to my room, a feeling of guilt-ridden nausea flutters about in my stomach. I lie alone in the dark, struggling to absorb the lingering images of the day. Shock has overtaken sorrow, keeping the tears corked tightly inside. “I’m still the same person,” I reassure myself. Up until several hours ago, I had lived a fairly sheltered life and I thought my family was just like any other family. We are — or were — a family of five including a mother, three daughters and a father. These things only happen in crazy families, not normal families like ours. What will people think of us now? How could I be so blind-sided? Am I dreaming or did the events of today really happen? I hear the coyotes howling outside as I lie in the darkness of my bedroom. This familiar sound takes me back to what I thought was my reality, my life as I knew it before today. I struggle for answers and clues leading up to this morning’s tragedy, trying to find meaning in my father’s acts. I will just take it one step at a time, I reassure myself. Then, as if it is I who is walking though the doorway of death, instead of my father, my life begins to flash before my eyes.

My sister, Tracie, just started first grade and will turn seven next week. She ties her straight, dirty-blond hair in two pigtails and her crooked front teeth sit perfectly between pudgy cheeks when she smiles. She is a pretty cute kid, even though she likes playing in the dirt with Jonathan, the little boy next door. Mom once found Tracie and Jonathan sitting in a giant ant pile, building sand castles. Those crazy little kids didn’t even feel the army ants crawling all over them, let alone the bites, until the welts started rising an hour later. Tracie has a stuffed toy Big Bird that she clutches tightly by its bright orange foot. That gives her the leverage she needs to swing it over her head so she can gouge people with its sharp plastic beak when she’s angry with them. Tracie loves cats, especially our barn cat Brandy. Brandy is a feisty cat who would scratch your eyes out for no reason. My little sister is the only one who can get close to that darn cat. Tracie’s favorite game is to dress Brandy in doll clothes and push her around for hours in a shoe box. It is amazing to watch that mean old cat sit calmly in the box with her ears turned down while this little kid pushes her all around the house as if she’s racing in the Indy 500. Tracie has done this for as long as I can remember and has yet to get bitten or scratched.

I’m afraid of my big sister, Tammy. She is a skinny, freckled, redhead with a mean streak. She thinks she’s cool because she’s 17. Tammy says we are opposites. She calls me her little jock sister because I play sports. She calls herself a freak. I’m not sure what freaks are exactly, except that they wear tight, torn blue jeans with peace signs on the rear-end. I’m pretty sure my sister smokes cigarettes and I have seen her sneak out of the house, late at night, more than once. But that was before she left. A few months ago, Tammy ran away from home. She dropped out of school to live with her boyfriend, Jim. I don’t understand why she left school because she only had two months to go until graduation. I know this made Mom and Dad mad, but I’m happy she’s gone. When Tammy was still at home, she and Mom argued a lot. Sometimes during dinner, Tammy made her so mad that Mom would get up from the table and chase after her. Tracie and I just sat quietly, afraid to move an inch. I wasn’t sure what Mom would have done if she had ever caught Tammy; I only hoped I wasn’t going to be around to see it.

Mom recently graduated from beauty school. During her nine months of study, Mom turned our basement laundry room into a salon. In her makeshift salon, she kept manikin heads with long hair to practice cutting hair, rolling permanents and applying color. Once she had mastered manikin heads, she moved on to practicing on my sister and me. As I sat in front of the clothes dryer, staring at the cement walls, Mom attempted to cut my hair so it would flip out and feather back on the sides, which was exactly how I wanted it to look. She then moved on to my eyebrows, using hot wax to separate my thick uni-brow into two smaller shapelier brows. It was fun playing beauty shop with Mom, even though it was sometimes difficult to sit still on the hard stool for what seemed like hours. Once Mom graduated, she immediately went to work full-time at a salon about thirty minutes from our house. I am still getting used to the fact that she is working. She isn’t there to meet me when I come home from school and she isn’t around on Saturday anymore.

Dad is a traveling salesman. When I was younger, I liked it when he went out of town because I could sleep with Mom while he was gone and when Dad returned, he would give me a gift from his travels. Dad likes playing practical jokes. During my first trip to California, I noticed there were white bumps on the roads as lane dividers instead of white lines. I asked Dad why traffic lanes had bumps and he said with a grin, “That way blind people can drive.” I had to ponder that one for a while. He also tried to convince me that chocolate milk came from brown cows, but I did not buy that one. One time, during a sleepover with my friends, he listened in while we played “light as a feather, stiff as a board.” In that game, one person lies down on the ground while the others put two fingers under their body. As we conjure up the spirits, asking for help to lift the person magically into the air, we repeat in unison, “Light as a feather, stiff as a board.” During the ceremony that particular night, we asked for a sign from the spirits to let us know when it was time to lift the body. At that moment, Dad turned off the house lights from the breaker box. As screams penetrated the house, I heard dad’s faint laughter coming from the back yard. My favorite place in the whole wide world is Dad’s lap. I feel so calm and safe when I curl up next to him and place my head on his lap. His hand automatically rests on my scalp as his fingers play with my hair. I cherish this intimate time and take advantage of it whenever I can, whether it’s driving in the car or watching television.

I often play in the dry creek bed behind our house, climb trees, and catch salamanders. I also like to ride my silvery-gray mare, Angel, through the alfalfa fields that surround our house, accompanied by my dogs, Oliver and Daisy. At night I hear the harmony of the crickets competing with the howling of the coyotes. Although our dogs are free to roam during the day, they come in at night. Sometimes I hear Oliver howling at the coyotes, as if talking to them. As I listen, I secretly wish I could understand their conversation. Each morning, I walk to the barn to feed Tammy’s copper horse, Bars, a flake of hay and a scoop of grain. Then I feed Angel the exact same meal. Middle school is a lot different from elementary school. Boys are now shorter than me and I worry that I’m not as well liked as I was last year. Sixth grade was much easier. I had one class of twenty kids to get along with. Now I have five different classes with twenty kids in each class to get along with. The principal at my new school doesn’t like me. My first day, she called me into her office and sternly said that she knew I was Tammy’s sister and that she would not put up with any misbehavior. As I sat in the chair in front of her enormous desk, I felt my chest and face turning red and felt resentment towards my freaky sister. I learned quickly that to survive in middle school, I must blend in with the crowd and be exactly like the other kids.

As I continue to think about my life, I know that things will never be the same. Yesterday, I was a normal girl who loved adventure and looked forward to exploring life as a teenager. And now, less than twelve hours later, I am the daughter of a widow.

My father left no note explaining why he did what he did, leaving me consumed with questions and regrets. What could I have done to prevent this? Why didn’t I see this coming? Why didn’t I have the courage to enter the garage and try to stop him sooner? How could everything I grew up thinking and believing about my father be a lie? I don’t know this man who killed himself. I am afraid that people will think he was crazy, weird and weak, which doesn’t describe my dad. My dad was a large, strong man who loved to make us laugh. He was not crazy and wouldn’t leave me. My dad didn’t drink, beat us, or do mean things. I want to defend my father and shout to the world that he was not crazy, that he took good care of us, and that he loved us and would never hurt us. Suddenly the stark reality of the day creeps over me like a harsh, cold frost: Dad was a stranger. This morning he became a crazy person who didn’t love us and left us forever. He hurt us and inflicted a wound on me that may never heal. As I lie in my bed listening to the sounds of Mom’s tears echoing through the heating ducts above, I am terrified to let my weary body drift off to sleep. What if I keep reliving the events of this awful day over and over again in my dreams? The horror of what I was exposed to replay in my mind. I ask myself, “Will these images haunt me for the rest of my life?” “No,” I fiercely promise myself. I make a vow to myself that this will not break me. “I will grow up to live a normal life,” I whisper confidently to comfort myself. As the fatigue of the day takes over, I begin to fall asleep repeating these words over and over: “I will not become a crazy person, I will not become a crazy person, I will not become a crazy person, I will not become . . . my father.

(First chapter of Crossing 13: Memoir of a Father's Suicide a personal account of my life, written from my memories after the suicide death of my father.)