WHEN YOU KILL YOURSELF

May 25, 1994
Part 1

"We have all been in rooms we cannot die in, and they are places and sad."
                                                             James Dickey   -   Adultery

One of the odd aspects of this place is that they give you homework. Every afternoon Doctor Kerr leaves small blank notebooks on my bed along with a list of questions he wants answered. The notebooks are the same type of blue books that I had in college for essay exams. Today's assignment is to write everything I can about my grandfather and Anne Bennett. He left  me six notebooks but I am not using them. Instead I'm using my journal and when I finish I'll have a nurse Xerox a copy for Doctor Kerr.

During the course of my life, death has not been a stranger. I have lost many friends, relatives and co-workers. Some died suddenly, others after prolonged suffering, a few after a brief illness.  But no deaths have affected me or haunted me as much as the deaths of George Frawley and Anne Riley Bennett - both by suicide. For decades their deaths have haunted me.

George was my grandfather. No man have I ever loved more and no man has ever loved me as he did. There is something special, even magical and mystical, about the bond of love between a grandfather and his first grandson. And he and I shared that bond and its sacred secrets for almost twelve years. Since only a few hundred feet separated his house from mine, I saw him everyday.

He took me to Red Sox games and he attended all my Little League games. He took me to barrooms and boxing matches. He would read me stories and the poetry of Yeats - and he would challenge me to learn and spell new words. Being a bookie he showed me how to gamble and to read odds, when to bet and when to leave the money in my pocket. He taught me how to be a gracious winner. He tried to teach me to be a good loser but failed - probably because he wasn't very good at losing and I just followed along in his footsteps. The only time he succeeded in losing was when he lost hope and then his life.

Every Friday night I would have dinner with him and my grandmother and stay overnight. Around 9:00pm he and I would go to the Amvets for pizza. While we waited I would have a Coke and he would have a few beers. When the pizza was ready we would go back home and watch the Gillette Friday Night Fights on TV. On Saturday mornings he would either make me breakfast or we would go to a diner - or we would get Danish pastries or donuts at White's Bakery. This was our ritual  every weekend, year after year.

The impact of his influences are stampede all over me. We share many of the same characteristics in appearance, behavior, dress, actions and  mannerisms. I even look more like him than I do my parents - from the color of my eyes and hair to the shade and tone of my skin. Since I was a youngster my mother and Aunt Clare have always told me that I reminded them of their father.

Although decades have passed since his death, I still miss him. Whenever I visit his grave I cry, tears of sadness and tears of loneliness, tears of a young boy missing his grandpa - for there is within my heart a wound that has never healed and there is an emptiness in my soul that has never been filled.

My vision of heaven is to be with my grandfather, to hug him and say, "Oh grandpa, you don't know how much I love you and how much I've missed you."  And he'll pat me on the head and then put an arm my shoulder and  say, "Yes I do! And now we're together again! So, let's get a beer and watch the Red Sox."

                                                                 * * * * *

At 6:30am on a late September morning, I walked out of my house, put my hands around the handlebars of my bike, jumped on the seat and pedaled off to Saint Mary's Church a mile away. I was the altar boy for the 7:00am Mass. My grandfather was at Mass that morning as he was most mornings. He walked to church and after Mass I caught up to him on my way home. As I approached him I slowed down, reached out and patted him on the back as I yelled, "I'll see you later! Right after school!"  "See you soon," he replied.

I couldn't stop and walk home with him because I was in a rush. I had to get the MTA  bus for school. I was eleven years old and in the seventh grade at Saint Gregory's in Boston. As I pedaled off, I remember turning around and waving - not knowing that it would be the last time I would see my grandfather alive. He waved back to me that morning, and I've always wondered if he knew, at that moment, it was his final wave goodbye.

When I got home from school that September afternoon, I stopped by his house but no one was home. As I walked down the back porch steps, my grandfather was deep within the woods that were across the street. He was alone, sitting on a stonewall beneath a large oak tree. A rope was in his hands and as he worked the rope through his fingers, he made a noose and then tightened the knots.

When the noose was completed, he stood-up, tied one end of the rope securely around a thick branch above his head and the slipped the noose his neck - and tightened it.  As he stood there looking into the woods, he probably saw squirrels swing from branch to branch and running every which way as they gathered acorns. And I'm sure he heard birds chirping and singing autumn tunes.

Knowing my grandfather, he paused and said a prayer. For a moment he was still - and then he stepped silently off the stonewall. His feet never touched the ground, instead his body swayed back and forth like a pendulum counting down the final seconds of his life.

To this day I still wonder what thoughts went through his mind that September morning when I yelled to him, "I'll see you later!"

May he rest in peace.