I haven’t been to my son’s grave in over a year.
Even as I have contemplated ending my own life, I have not been able to bring myself to go back there. Does this make me feel guilty? Yes. Do I feel like I’m less of a man? Less of a human being because I can’t endure the despair that his place in the cemetery brings? Yes, across the board.
But yet I don’t go and won’t go. I prefer to watch the old videos I have of us as a family, though I rarely even do that anymore. All these glimpses of my boy onscreen do is bring more pain. His smiling face, in mid-laugh at something his sister has said and done, is like sharp nails raking down the chalkboard of my heart.
I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take the anguish in my wife’s voice and face. I can’t take the fact that there is nothing I can do to ease her pain and despair. I can’t take the sense that I have no control over what has happened to me.
I can’t bring Graham back. I can’t pay his hospital bills. I can’t provide a future for Mary Alice or Davis.
All I can do is jump . . .
After slipping on a pair of khaki pants, golf shirt, and sweater, I headed out the door with my briefcase in hand. I paused in the doorway and said good-bye to my wife, and she yelled a “be careful” as the door closed behind me. For as long as I’ve known her, Mary Alice has told me to “be careful” every time I go anywhere. It’s one of those endearing motherly things that Davis rolls her eyes at, but that I know also brings her comfort. If Mary Alice Clark didn’t tell me to “be careful” before I walked out the door, I would think I was in some alternate universe.
As I walked to my car, I saw no sign of Davis’s Jeep. “Goose Pond,” I said out loud, feeling a flutter in my stomach. Davis and the Huntsville High women’s golf team were in Scottsboro playing in a regional invitational. It was the biggest event of the season so far.
And I forgot our ritual . . .
Before every tournament, Davis and I always went over her plan for the round. Each tee shot. The side of the fairway she wanted to be on. The type of greens and how they would putt. I had played Goose Pond numerous times and could have helped her. Usually, we had this discussion over dinner the night before the tourney. When she was younger, I would drive her to tournaments and caddy for her. In those days, our planning sessions were fun and exciting and would sometimes carry over to the course. But since her brother’s death, Davis and I both seemed to merely be going through the motions for the sake of tradition.
Sometimes if I had to work late the evening before an event, she would wake me up the next morning to review her plan.
But not today . . .
This was the first time we failed to even attempt the ritual. She left without a peep, and I wasn’t even able to wish her luck.
As I climbed into my car, a dagger of remorse cut through me. I’m failing her, I thought. Just like I’m failing her mother.
“Please God, let her play well,” I whispered, as I turned the key. I almost laughed at the absurdity of me praying for my daughter to shoot a good score on the golf course while I was still seriously considering ending my own life. For that matter, praying at all seemed a bit hypocritical given my lack of faith in the Almighty these days.
I sighed as I backed out of the driveway. I glanced at the briefcase that I had flung onto the floorboard, wondering if there was any point in going into the office. What the heck? I thought. Where else am I gonna go? I didn’t want to go to the club. The last two times I had been to a golf course, I’d suffered through hallucinations that had taken me to East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia, in the 1920s and Shady Oaks Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, circa 1960. For a second, I pondered whether to again try to drive to Decatur and finish things once and for all with a plunge off the Tennessee River Bridge. But after tossing and turning all night with the ghost of Ben Hogan in my ear, jumping to my doom didn’t sound right.
Was I having doubts? I guess I was.
“The office it is,” I said out loud.