TW: Completed Suicide, some graphic description of the event.

This is a Really Real Aging Parent post.

Although, I guess that’s not the right way to put it anymore.

I’m going to repeat this . .

TW: Completed Suicide, some graphic description of the event.

Gunshots are less of a bang, and more of a pop.

I’ve known this for most of my life, I have memories of shooting in the back of my dads yard back in Maryland. Gun safety being drilled into me from such a young age.

We knew he had a gun in his endtable, it’s been there for as long as I can remember. My first suicidal thoughts reminding me that if I died that way, I’d just become one more anti-gun statistic.

Back then I felt very strongly about gun rights. Even from a young age.

Not so much anymore.

But back to the beginning. Gun shots are less of a bang, and more of a pop.

I never realized how loud they would be indoors. The sound echoing off of the walls on all sides of me.

I knew immediately what that sound was, but I had to go look.

His sweet dog was standing there looking scared, and as I turned the corner I saw him slumped over in his wheelchair.

What looked like dark, thick, blood was hanging from his face.

I didn’t go any closer. I didn’t need to check if he was alive.

If he was, hopefully he would be gone before anyone got there.

I called my sister first, I don’t know why, I just needed to hear a voice other than 911.

I’d made that call to 911 before.

I’d been asked the questions and told to go try CPR.

I listened the first time, touching Parkers cold, dead skin. She was long gone by the time I found her.

But I knew my dad would still be warm, and when 911 told me to go check for a pulse I refused.

“But he might need CPR.”

He has a DNR, I’m not doing that.

Aimee got a neighbor to come over. By then I had locked myself in the bedroom where I was when this happened. Some irrational fear that he was going to come shoot me next.

I knocked on the window as the neighbor walked to the carport.

“He’s in the dining room,” I yelled. “Please remember he has a DNR.”

I wanted to make sure everyone knew, because no one deserved to live the way dad had been living for the past few days.

With his daughter wiping his ass after helping him from wheelchair, to bed to get his pants down and diaper off, and from bed to commode, and from commode back to bed to help him clean up and get him dressed again, and finally back into his wheelchair.

A routine we had mastered, even in just a few short days. A routine that wore us both out.

But that wheelchair was his final resting place.

He had been mostly quiet today, but we had fought over a tube of chips. He wanted to open them and I wanted him to wait until I had gotten him back to the table. I don’t want more mess to clean up.

I used dad’s voice on him. I yelled, furious that he wouldn’t just relax and work with me. Furious that things still had to be his way.

We had gotten very quiet and tense, and eventually I went to my room, setting my computer up at the little makeshift desk i had created from an end table.

I set up the monitor so I could easily hear if he yelled out for me.

The gun shot reverberated from the monitor and through my closed door.

Or was it open.

It’s a blur now. As happens after a traumatic event.

The neighbor came back to my room. “He’s gone. There’s no pulse.”

I’m so thankful that he didn’t suffer in those final moments.

I wonder what was going through his mind.

The house filled with EMS and the Sherrif’s office. So many questions that I’d been asked once before. I knew this routine.

“Please warn me before you take him out, I don’t want to see that.”

I remember going with my mom to Burger King when Parker died. I don’t think I ever ate what we bought, but I couldn’t be at the house when her body was taken out.

I closed the blinds in my room, it became my safe haven as I called and messaged more people than I can remember.

I remember making those calls after she died too.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have dropped that like that, I should have given you some warning.”

I remember saying the same thing after she died too.

Once all of the questions were asked, and my hands were swabbed for gun powder (“Just a formality,” she said.) I hastily packed my clothes. My sister rented a room for me, far out of that backwards ass middle of nowhere town.

I wonder if that gunshot silenced his voice in my head once and for all.

I wonder how long I’ll hear that gunshot, less of a bang, more of a pop.

I wonder how long I’ll see that dark red blob hanging from his face.

I wonder why my life is so filled with trauma.

But I’m okay.

I really am, okay.