Suicide Piece

I've never written about my father's suicide. Well, I did write one piece. It's below:

ON ICE CREAM, SUICIDE and MEDIUMS


My father loved ice cream. Or I should say, "frozen custard." In the summer, after swimming at the lake, we’d drive to Stoddard’s, where my father would devour a vanilla cone. This pleased him. Very few things pleased him. He committed suicide when he was 52. Granted, he had been depressed, but he never really liked life. Very few things made him happy. Stoddard’s frozen custard was one of the things that made him smile.
He also liked to go on fishing trips with a bunch of men from work.
Once, I remember strangers buried him in the sand at Virginia Beach. The Edgar Casey people got a hold of him and tried to relax him. I think they actually succeeded.
I think he was a summer person.
He would bite frozen custard. He would bite into it and swallow it whole. He liked iced tea. Once my mother threw a whole pitcher of iced tea on him. They had a tumultuous marriage.
My father just didn’t know how to enjoy himself.
He liked to sit on the front porch and read the paper. He liked to take hot baths. He liked gravy. He liked to sit late at night in the dark and talk to Larry Beam, his friend from work.
He liked our dog, Trixie.
He just had a sour disposition. But he loved frozen custard. Vanilla.
I wish he were here now. If he were here, I’d make him pork chops, gravy and mashed potatoes. I’d let him live with me in our basement.
My husband often asks if certain people could live with us in our basement. It’s his litmus test to see how much I like a person. He asked about the weather man, various people we meet, the tollbooth man. "Would you let him live in our basement?"
If I say yes, my husband knows that I thoroughly like a person. If I say no, he knows that the person gets on my nerves a little.
But my father, he could live in our basement. I would tuck him in at night. I’d buy an ice cream maker and make him vanilla frozen custard. I’d supply his habit.
If he were only here.
I want to have a seance. I want to talk to my dead father, and I want him to answer me. I want to bridge the gap between life and death. I want to be the first woman to take ice cream to the other side.
It’s all a pipe dream. Where would I find a medium, a legitimate medium in Akron, Ohio?
I guess I’m just little girl enough to want to talk to the dead.
I hope I never grow up.
I would like to see his hands just once more. His big, beefy hands.
To smell him. To have him kick me out of the best spot on the couch. I would freely give it to him, no complaints.
They say a lot of factors go into a suicide. The one I understand is fatigue. Plain exhaustion with living.
I don’t love ice cream. I have a healthy respect for it. But I don’t crave it. It’s a shame, really. Most people love ice cream.
If I’m going to eat ice cream, I favor chocolate chip cookie dough or raspberry sherbert.
What are the factors that go into a suicide?
Depression is a big one. He was clinically depressed. He’d lost his job. He was just so sad. Too sad to live.
I’m not going to pretend that I’ve never been there. I have. I’ve been suicidal. But it’s fleeting.
It runs in families.
We should really wipe out suicide.
Maybe if we eat more ice cream.
We have a little cup of ice cream in the refrigerator. It’s Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Chunk. Pardon me now, while I go get some. I’ll eat a little ice cream in honor of my father. Just a spoonful. In honor of Dad. Only he favored frozen custard. There is a difference. Vanilla. Big gulps of it. On a hot mosquito night after a dip in the lake that smelled of mold. The lake water was good for your hair, so the mothers said. And in the morning, our hair would be so soft.
Dad used soap to wash his hair.
Dad, where are you now?