The Man from Cell Block C

That summer Coldness engulfed me, eager to swallow me whole. I wanted to let it. I wanted to disappear- to never be seen or heard from again.  Most of all, I just wanted peace. I was ready to give up. But he wouldn’t let me.  Though we were only briefly acquainted, he rescued me from my worst enemy: myself.   

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I was suffering through the dense climax of Professor Lash’s lecture on symbolic violence one fall semester when I learned my uncle accidentally shot himself in the head. 

The thing that struck me more than anything was how little I actually felt upon reading my mother’s text in class.  I vividly recall flipping my battered phone closed and gathering my books, neatly tucking everything in its place inside my leather satchel.  Exiting the room, I sprinted down the dark wooden hallway to the nearest restroom and called my mom.  Wildly sobbing and wailing, I managed to convince her to hand the phone to my brother who I could depend on to remain stoic in the toughest of times.  I remember the circumstances of his death seemed suspicious to me at the time.  But, then again, maybe they didn’t.  I forget.

I drove nine hours roundtrip several days later, on what would have been my uncle’s birthday, to help my family bury him. My grandmother’s friends cooed at me for being the loving daughter to drive all the way down from Austin to be there with her family, like I should have been awarded a trophy or something.  Truthfully, I knew I would have never lived it down if I hadn’t shown up.  It was a week before mid-terms and I really should have been at home studying.  Though, I never really studied anyway.  So it didn’t really make much difference to me. I was there. They were happy.

The following days blurred into weeks gone by.  I managed to get an extension on a couple of my papers for my uncle’s passing, so I felt happy about that. Well, not happy.  Happiness would have been inappropriate. But I was pleased. And then I wasn’t.

By the end of the semester, my grandmother revealed the truth behind the giant fucking elephant in the room that no one seemed to notice.  We were baking her famous sweet potato pie in the kitchen one Saturday afternoon on one of my visits when she cornered me.  Backed up in the corner between the oven and the flaking dated wallpaper, she peered through her grimed glasses at me. 

“You know your uncle’s death wasn’t an accident, don’t you,” her head characteristically rattling, exposing the fact that she had not taken her medicine that day. 

“I mean, it did seem a little weird to me. Yeah,” I dismissed.  The guy had a drinking problem, a trademark of the family tree.  But then again, he was an avid sportsman.  So fucking around with guns didn’t surprise me much either.

Inching closer towards me, her head rocking faster, she popped her lips a few times the way she often did as she searched for words which she no longer remembered.

“He killed himself.  My baby killed himself,” my grandmother cried.

Grabbing her in my arms, I tried to comfort her. It would be selfish of me to say I knew words wouldn’t be enough. Because I didn’t really know what would help someone in that situation, much less someone I loved.

I was scared. Not because of my uncle, or for my grandmother, or my mother or anyone else. I felt for them, sure. Watching them grieve was painful.  And it made me uncomfortable. I was scared because I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t mad. I wasn’t happy, and I definitely wasn’t glad.  I was scared for myself, more than anything. I was scared because in that moment that her heart broke, I felt nothing.

It was while floundering around amidst my own nothingness that we first met.