Six Months

Today it’s been six months. Six crazy, insane, hard, life changing months. Six months ago today, I hadn’t had an affair, I was living in the same house as Duckie and the kids, I thought I was relatively “happy,” my family was functioning, and six months ago more than anything else my Dad was still alive.


I haven’t revealed it here but I think it’s probably time. And today has been a hard, contemplative day anyway and I’ve admitted I’m an emotional cutter (don’t freak – simple figure of speech that means I like to pick at emotions – no actual cutting is involved).

Six months ago on November 2, my dad committed suicide. We’d known something wasn’t quite right with him for a while but chalked it up to him getting “old” and just being a grumpy old man. Now my dad was this super strong retired police officer. He was the life of the party. Everyone knew his name and wanted to talk to him whenever they could. So we were concerned in his behavior change but not overly worried.

Then, the day before Halloween, he had a mini-breakdown out of the blue and we rushed him to the hospital to get him checked out. When I got there, he looked so broken and sad. Like all the life had been washed out of him. He revealed he’d been tremendously depressed for quite a long time and just didn’t know what to do. We hugged and loved on him and we did ask if he had thought of hurting himself. He swore he hadn’t and that he was ready for help. The hospital evaluated him and told him he could go home for the weekend and he would start an intensive 14 day outpatient therapy course the following week.

Being a retired police officer, he did have a gun in his home. And we actually discussed going and taking it just in case – oh how I wish we had now. Halloween day he actually came out to the house with my mom and watched the kids trick-or-treating. He seemed slightly better, almost relieved that his “secret” was out. Sunday they came to church with the family and again he looked tired but like he was hanging in there. That day they got a call from the hospital that said he would actually need to wait until Tuesday to start his therapy.

Monday morning, November 2 started bright and early. He convinced my mom to go to work for the day. We all checked on him and he seemed ok. The neighbors said he walked around the neighborhood speaking to everyone like normal, but they did note after the fact that he told them “bye” and he never said “bye,” he was always a see you later/take care kind of guy.

Approx. 3:15 he called my sister and started chatting like normal. The conversation was easy and light. Then it changed. He started apologizing for being a horrible father (which is so far from the truth I don’t even have words to describe it), being an awful husband (again not true), and how we’d all be better off when he was gone. (There were letters he had written as early as a month before for us, saying the same crazy, untrue things.)  As my sister realized what he was saying and what he intended she started begging him not to hurt himself. He hung up the phone on her. She called her husband who was the physically closest to him and then she called me. I literally ran to my car and I had to call Duckie, my mom, and brother to let them know what was going on. As the family rushed to get to his house, about 10 minutes away from all of us, my dad called the police, told them who he was, and that he was getting ready to kill himself requesting that they go ahead and send officers to take care of the “mess” before his wife got home.

He then walked out behind their townhouse, sat down a blue trap he had so thoughtfully spread out to keep the mess controlled, and put a gun to his head. The police responded so swiftly they actually got there before he did anything. They tried to talk him out of it. They even hit him with a taser not once, but twice. But it didn’t even phase him. He sat there on this beautiful fall day on his stupid blue tarp and put the gun to his head and shot himself. My brother in law arrived just as the gun went off. I got there about 2 minutes later and when he told me he’d heard the shot, I fell to the ground. I couldn’t breath. I kept screaming over and over – noooooo, noooooo, not my daddy, oh God noooooo. My mom got there a few minutes later and we had to physically restrain her to keep her from going back there.

The police tried to save him. They got him in an ambulance and took him to the hospital but he died on the way. There were literally 20 police cars in his neighborhood. He was so well known that officers responded from all over the city. We had to go to the hospital and along the way I had to make calls and send text messages explaining what had happened. We were trapped in this little family grieving room for hours while the police came and went, asking questions, expressing condolences, and the doctors did what they could to take care of us. It was horrifying, awful, and absolutely heart breaking.

That night we gathered at my sister’s house to tell the kids. Telling Leo was the most awful thing I could imagine having to do. Ladybug was really too little to fully comprehend what had happened. The days that passed were a blur. Disbelieving, maddening, sad, and unreal. Six months later, I still expect to see his name on the caller id, I still expect to hear his voice when I call their house, and I still expect to walk into their house and hear him shout out the nickname he’s called me for as long as I can possibly remember.

So here I sit, six months later, my life has completely changed and all I can think about today is wishing I could lean on my dad’s shoulder and get one more of his big bear hugs. Wishing he was hear to listen to my problems and give me his best advice along with a healthy dose of teasing. Wishing he was just…..here.

Miranda
PS – God must have a sense of humor because on this awful 6 month anniversary there was some hilarious Sawyer interaction which I will blog about later. But right now, all I can think about is my dad.