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A BRIEF AUTOBIOGRAPHY By Charles Moon The first time I thought about suicide was at the age of 10. I was playing with wooden blocks in the dining room of our turn-of-the-century Victorian house in suburban Philadelphia while the adults mumbled strange words in the adjacent kitchen. I heard words like “hospital” and “recovery” and “observation” filter through the butler’s pantry like the whispers the wind leaves on your pillow when summer takes its last breath in September. My grandmother asked “why would he want to hurt himself?” with a raspy, cigarette-damaged voice dripping with indignation. No one responded. My hands balanced a yellow wooden rectangle between two smaller blocks, but my mind was fixated on the adult conversation. I didn’t understand the complexities of the mind beyond the common sense reactions of a child. Pain hurt. Getting caught doing wrong things felt awful. Being chased by bigger kids was scary. These were the things that I tried to avoid at ten. To intentionally seek out pain and injury was beyond my limited comprehension, so when it was suggested that someone actually did it, it created an irreconcilable confusion that lasted until supper time. Macaroni and cheese soothes a ten-year-old’s soul, almost as easily as a hug from mom. “Can I take your order?” I slid the half-empty glass of ice water across the table, leaving a trailing puddle of condensation. The clicking sound of a ball point pen impatiently being tapped against a small tray in the waitress’s left hand brought me back to the present. I don’t know why my father called and asked to meet me for lunch. It was almost four years since we had any contact at all. “Sir? Can I take your order now?” “I’m waiting for someone. I’ll order when he gets here.” The corner of her mouth pulled tightly and almost disappeared into the dimple on her right cheek and she bobbed her head in an indifferent affirmative. She turned and wove her way through the maze of tables, vanishing in the throngs of lunch-time patrons filling up the main dining room. Odd events began to make sense after that strange day so many years ago. I wondered if the motorcycle accident when I was five could have possibly been deliberate. I remembered the block and tackle hanging from the side porch of the small brick bungalow we lived in before the Victorian house. It was supposed to be good therapy to hook the cast to the end of the rope and slowly lift it up with the good arm. Everyone had signed it with their positive recovery wishes except my grandmother. Maybe she knew something even then. As a child, I looked at my father as if he were a risk-taker; an adventurer; a free spirit; happy-go-lucky; an “I’m-not-afraid-of-anything” kind of a guy. His injury was a badge of honor and I was proud of him for having it, even though mom made him sell the motorcycle immediately after he came back from the hospital. I am not exactly sure when that image of him was replaced with the pathetic coward who had now kept me waiting for forty minutes, alone at a table, under the increasingly irritated watch of a 22 year old waitress named “Tianna.” It didn’t matter. I knew he would show up eventually, even if I had to wait for two hours. He was like that – oblivious to everyone’s schedule, except for his own. I was willing to invest a little more of my time in the futile hope of reconnecting with this person whose only connection to me, at this moment, was sharing fifty percent of my genetic material. I was the only one willing to invest the time. Everyone else in the family had long since abandoned him to his self-destructive neuroses, which, I learned much later, was the thing that he wanted all along – to be without connection to anything or anyone. Tianna brushed past the back of my chair with a tray full of drinks for the family enjoying each other’s company two tables away. The children scribbled on their placemats. The father chatted quietly with the mother, and they all seemed happy. Twenty-five years ago that could have been my family sitting there, at least from my perspective at the time. I didn’t know the dark secrets my father carried around with him and my mother had to deal with alone until she had finally found the strength to divorce him. “Would you like more water?” “Yes, thank you.” Tianna lifted the glass from over my left shoulder. One of the last remaining drops of condensation released from the base of the glass as it passed over my head. The water was cold and sent a chill down my neck before it was absorbed into my scalp. “I’m sorry sir.” No she wasn’t, but that was okay. If she found amusement at my comfort’s expense, then I was willing to grant her that for occupying a table that might have already provided her with two large tips. Her expression remained unchanged as she went to refill my glass, but her undulating walk exposed the grin hidden behind her ketchup-stained apron. I rubbed my hair dry. Droplets of rain fell on my head two months ago, and I was rubbing the dampness from my hair when the hospital called me at work to tell me my father was in a coma. He had missed one of his self-made appointments and a friend who was familiar with his past – at least part of it – notified the police. The police found him in his bedroom, barely breathing, with an empty bottle of pills on the floor. His medication was supposed to be limited to only a few day’s supply at a time to prevent such a thing from happening. His doctor knew that. Who was the idiot who gave him a month’s worth of pills all in one bottle? I should have realized that he had recently changed doctors and his medical records were slow to transfer. He was crafty when he wanted something badly enough. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but it looks as though your father has tried to take his own life.” That’s what the emergency room physician told me. He was naturally expecting shock and disbelief. He got only a faint sigh. “Is he alive?” “He is in a coma now. We can only wait and hope for the best.” I wondered if “the best” meant he would recover or if he would die. I wasn’t sure of the answer myself. “Can he have visitors?” “Not now. We are required by law to place him in the psychiatric ward for 72 hours of observation after he regains consciousness … if he regains …” The doctor’s words trailed into an obvious silence. “The psychiatrist will make the determination when he can have visitors.” I took the hospital’s phone number and thanked him for the call. Every day I called to see how he was doing. When he came out of the coma six days later, they connected me to the psychiatrist. “Is he allowed to have visitors doctor?” “Right now he is very depressed and embarrassed. I wouldn’t recommend any visitors for a while.” Papers rustled in the background. “This isn’t the first time he’s done something like this.” “No, it’s not.” “Is this something that has been getting worse?” “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken with him in four years. It was after his last attempt. Poison, I think, or it might have been gasoline.” There was an expected pause on the other end of the phone. “I know of at least 10 attempts in the last thirty years. The one ten years ago put him in a wheelchair for years. When he was finally able to get around with a walker, that’s when he tried again. My mother tells me that there were more before I was born, so maybe fifteen or twenty attempts in his lifetime.” The phone remained silent. I am sure the doctor was also evaluating me. I wonder what the proper emotional state should be, according to the American Psychiatric Association, when you tell the doctor caring for your comatose father that this was the latest in a long history of bungled suicides? “Can I at least talk to him?” “I suppose that would be alright. Keep it brief.” I kept it very brief. I said hello and when he recognized my voice he said only one thing. “I almost made it this time.” There was pride of accomplishment in his words. It is the one thing he has said to me that I have never forgotten. My lunch hour was almost exhausted when I heard the clatter of aluminum against the tile foyer of the restaurant. He hobbled past Tianna with his walker and childishly smug expression, managing to disarm my unpleasant waitress with the wink of his drooping left eye. He never once took his lecherous right eye off her behind as she escorted him to the empty seat opposite me. I got up and extended my right hand to meet his. Tianna put his walker behind the buffet table and returned with her pen. My father smiled broadly as if he were rejoicing in the return of the prodigal son. “I think we’re ready to order now.” END
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