My biological grandmother hung herself in the basement when my mother was quite young (3 or 4, I think?) I don't know all the details, but apparently my grandmother was quite mentally unstable and would have extreme, violent mood shifts, which would sometimes lead her to inflicting direct physical abuse on others, including my mother. As an example, I seem to recall hearing about an incident where my grandmother broke my mom's collarbone over something trivial. A broken glass, or something like that. My grandmother seemed to be quite sorry about it afterwards, at least. She could very well have been suffering from a severe bipolar disorder I suppose (which might explain the wild shifts in mood), but again, I'm not entirely sure. The thing that sticks out the most in my mind about the whole thing is a story my mother once told me about how, on one occasion in the middle of winter, my grandmother dressed up both my mother and her brother (my uncle Daryl) as if they were about to go on a long trip, in a rather impulsive attempt by her to leave my (to this day) unbelievably caustic grandfather with the children, but it only took until the end of the driveway before she collapsed in the snow, sobbing uncontrollably, perhaps realizing that there was nowhere else she could go except back to the hell she was trying to escape. As far as I know, that's the most vivid memory my mother has of my grandmother and, to a certain extent, mine too, in a way. Regardless, eventually things reached a boiling point for her and not long afterwards my grandfather found her swinging next to the washer/dryer. I don't know if my grandfather drove her to it, or if there were yet other things at play. Doesn't really matter now though, as cold as it may sound. As for the fallout, well, as you might imagine, it certainly fucked my mother up pretty fiercely. By and large however, my mom's had a pretty shitty life. To give just a brief rundown. Crazy mom killed herself, entire neighborhood gossiped about it for years afterwards ostracizing her in the process, asshole grandfather remarried to someone who would give the evil stepmother from Cinderella a run for her money, had an even worse stepsister who tortured her constantly, had a brother who became an angry, drunk, deadbeat piece of shit who roughed up his own grandparents to demand shelter at their home & beer money, had swastikas spray painted over her house after my grandfather gave a crazy speech at her high school about running as a communist in some election at the time, got slipped a roofie at a party once and got raped by some sleazy fucking animal (this was over a decade before either me or my brother were born, just thought I'd quickly mention that), managed to get a decent career in nuclear medicine despite having zero support from my grandfather but gave it all up when she met my equally shitty father and because she genuinely wanted to be a "stay at home mom", my father never loved her and was just looking for someone to screw, got fucked himself when me & my brother were born and despised being chained to my mother as a result, would regularly hit her plus me & my brother across the head as we were growing up (one of the few, if only, traumatic moments from my childhood fortunately), me & my brother despite both hating/disliking our father resemble him in more ways than we'd both like to admit and have each of us in our own way made our mother's life a living hell, my mother is now morbidly obese with no friends (been this way for the last 15 years) and is as much of a secluded shut-in as I am.
I just don't understand how anyone could look at all what's usually in so many lives (anguish, regret, abuse, forms of suffering that are legion irregardless of "size" etc.) and say it's worth it. The sadness in my mother's anti-fairytale life alone, unhappy ending and all, is truly overwhelming when you try to take it all in. It's just that, why do so many people, including her, feel the need to perpetuate
this? This waking nightmare? Where's there's so,
so much pain, with so little happiness, so little of anything good to justify the constant misery. What I've listed doesn't even cover half of the shit that's happened around here, but whatever. I suppose, I've said enough already. Besides it's all rhetorical questions anyway, since it's the DNA daemon in all of us pulling the strings. Source of all evil and woe rendering all living things organic wind-up toys, making most of us go round & round in senseless, useless circles before we proceed to then turn the crank on another mindless wind-up toy so they can do the exact same thing. Asking why would people perpetuate the life trap is like asking why the wind-up toy goes in a circle. That just what it does. It's a machine enslaved by its sadistic design. Oh well, though. All been said before.
Anyway, my great-grand-uncle (on my mother's side, once again) drank himself to death with the intent of ending his own life (Leaving Las Vegas style), so I guess that's another suicide in my family's past that bears mentioning.
Our former next door neighbor's son also shot himself in their basement about 25 years ago when I was just a toddler. It used to really creep me out as a kid, but nowadays, as you might guess, I feel nothing, but envy and admiration. As far as I know, he was in his thirties and living with them (his parents) at the time when he checked out. Eerily similar circumstances to me. I can only hope I'll follow suit, but I won't hold my breath. It does remind me of a little anecdote of mine though. I can still remember the day (a number of years after it had happened) when the neighbor's wife came storming over here after she saw one of our cats shitting in her flowerbed. I watched from the nearby window, as she started giving my mother hell while calling her all sorts of nasty things. In one of her responses back, my mother made a rather cutting remark about this woman's former parenting skills which, admittedly, was quite uncalled for (especially given what she had been through herself). Afterwards the neighbor just stood there speechless before abruptly slapping my mother clean across the face just about knocking her over. Funny now that the shoe's on the other foot, as they say. It'd certainly be extra fitting/ironic if I were to finally kill myself, having just said all that, but I really don't think my mother deserves it. Not that I really care at the end of the day, since I'd gladly die right this second assuming I could be magically granted the constitution necessary to do so. Again though, the meat grinder just keeps churning away. It's profoundly depressing enough as it is knowing, from what I've heard recently, that my brother is well on his way to continuing this maddening cycle, that started all the way back with what I've described with my grandmother, is just going to keep rolling along creating more victims, more trauma, more suffering, more general awfulness (etc. etc.) Just another reiterative motion of the pain train. Philip Larkin summed up the predicament quite well, for what it's worth.
This Be The Verse:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.