Your essay helped me. My prayers are with you as you continue to heal.

I wanted to talk about the bookshelves near his desk, how I noticed two books in particular that night - A Death in the Afternoon, by Ernest Hemingway, and Wisconsin Death Trip - and how I couldn’t quite process the symbiosis.

Ditto when, later that night, I came inside from the star lit winter to find the TV in the family room blaring with no one in the room. A black and white movie was playing (Rio Grande perhaps?), and a young boy asked Ingrid Bergman, “What kind of man is he mother?”

Ingrid: “He’s a lonely man. He’s a very lonely man.”

Boy: “They say he’s a great soldier.”

And I thought, this is very strange.

I also wrote his obituary, a daunting feat. The obituary noted that he was Bronze Star Corporal, but did not include what I considered to be the most pertinent questions. What did he eat for breakfast that morning? Why did he put six rounds in the revolver knowing he’d only use one? Had he planned this day in advance or was it a more sudden inspiration? Was he drunk when he pulled the trigger? (Blood alcohol at .256, according the coroner’s report.)

I didn’t get a change to comment on the funeral, which was a novel length experience in itself. Dad was buried with full military honors, in his Marine dress blues, and we followed the casket out of the church into the parking lot, into the bright freezing February sun. I held my mother’s arm and wore a thin cotton suit, and by the time they draped the flag on the coffin I was shivering so hard I threw my back out.

There was a 21 gun salute provided by the local chapter of the V.F.W. My sister Kerry had been imagining the gunshot ringing in her ears all week, the last thing she needed was this. I was stoic while the shots fired, but I lost it when they played taps. I broke down and sobbed in front of roughly three hundred people, former students and fellow teachers, gathered in the 8 degree afternoon. I shook and cried and thought of my own eventual funeral: “I will trade this entire crowd for a handful that truly know and love me.”

Additionally, while writing this story I struggled with the unnerving sensation that, in spite of my anonymity, I was parading private family grief on the internet for all to see. My own motives were suspect. Was this supposed to be cathartic? Did I merely crave attention? More than once I stopped to wonder how, exactly, this would benefit anyone.

Another question in my mind was whether my dad ever saw the original story I wrote about him, and whether this contributed in any way to his demise. For what it’s worth, I don’t think he ever saw it. I went through the browser history on his computer the night he died, and found many things but no visits to this website.

The largest omission, I felt, was my father himself, his life, and the countless incidents that shaped my perception of him. That could go on forever…

And on and on . . .

Our loved ones quickly accumulate a mountain of words, don’t they? So a deeply felt extension of gratitude to Common Ties, for giving space to the private depth of common lives.