My Father...

My father blew his brains out, my memory of him is tainted by the image of brain mass and blood splatter stuck to on a wall behind him. Shall I bring death up again? I remember the sounds I avoided to hear sitting under the table while my brother was my father's punching bag. The door was locked always but nothing could ever muffle the screams, pleas of mercy.

I've often wondered if he was in control of himself. Did he hear voices? Did he have a tumor sitting on his medulla oblongata making him evil or think evil thoughts. I'm wondering though if the act of suicide in his past was a way to silence or was it an act of vanity. To stop ill thoughts and die a hero of some sort.

Which ever the way it lies, I do know that I bask in silence now. There are no cries of mercy, or helplessness sitting in the pit of my stomach fearing the next victim. Fourteen years later, I still but speculate and what could have pushed him over the ledge.

Death is apparently dark and evil. I wonder though, seemingly we look forward to after life, to heaven and yet we can barely speak of the corridor that takes us to that place. I wonder with watching my mother die, did she make make peace with what it was. Does she float in silence enjoying the space of nothingness?

 Its a pity I'd never know.