What is the date you began writing this memoir and the date when you completed the memoir? I began about a year ago and am 20,000 words in, not yet completed.
Where did you do most of your writing for this memoir? And please describe in detail. I did my writing in my Lazyboy chair, on my laptop, with MSNBC on in the background.
What were your writing habits while writing this memoir- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I had no specific writing habits. I write only when the notion hits me, an idea hits me. I do not subscribe to the idea that you must write every day, or a specific time of day.
Out of all the specific memories you write about in this memoir, which ONE MEMORY was the most emotional for you to write about? And can you share that specific excerpt with us here. The excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer, and please provide page numbers as reference.
Bang!
Trigger Warning – Suicide
Bang!
In that moment…in the darkest and most painful of moments a human can experience, he was gone. His unbearable pain was at last gone.
The roof of the white Ford F250 pickup was sprayed with teeth, hair, brains, and skull fragments. His face and the top of his head blown off, but Mickey was at peace for the first time in his life. The shotgun lay in his lap leaning against the door, blood running down its barrel. The gun was a Christmas gift from his employees. His sister, Vivian, had done the same thing, the same way, a dozen years before in her bedroom, not a pickup truck.
Mickey had spent the night before drinking Jack Daniels straight from the bottle. This night the drinking started with taking the bottle cap off and throwing it across the room, a sign the bottle was to be finished. The night was spent joking with the guys who were at Mickey’s farm for a deer hunt. It was a gathering of friends who never spoke of anything but the superficial. They laughed, joked, told stories, but never revealed anything of themselves, never anything of meaning. Just a bunch of redneck shipyard workers with a few days off away from their wives with whom they never shared anything of meaning either. They were all lonely souls in their own way.
The one notable character was Hoagie. He was a 30-something tall, lean country boy from Beckley, WV. He had left West Virginia with virtually no money and a few clothes in his rust-bucket of a car in search of a better life. He, like Mickey, and so many other young men of the mountains, had made his way to Newport News Shipbuilding. There were no jobs for them in the mountains. The mill towns were dead. Farming was not an option as they had no land and no money to buy any. For some the only other choice was to descend into the coal mines and die a slow death of 40 or more years.
When Hoagie arrived at the shipyard Mickey right away recognized himself in Hoagie. He was hard-working, took direction, friendly, and a great sense of humor. Mickey would shortly take Hoagie under his wing, teaching him blacksmithing and how to succeed in the Newport News Shipbuilding culture. Hoagie had a room in a rooming house near the shipyard. It was one of those run-down places you would imagine, full of similar young men, too many sharing a bathroom, constant noise. Within a few weeks Mickey invited Hoagie to move in with his family. Hoagie jumped at the chance to live with a family. His family in West Virginia had been close and he missed that feeling.
Mickey had made the offer without speaking to Pat, his wife, nothing new. Mickey did what he wanted, when he wanted, and Pat always acquiesced. Having a boarder was nothing new. It seemed like they always had someone outside the family living with them free of charge. A niece who was off the rails, sent to them by a sister in hopes Mickey and Pat could straighten her out. A foreign exchange student. A teenage friend of Randy’s, at odds with their parents. Randy, an only child, liked having others live with them. He got the benefit of having an older brother or sister and learning new things from a revolving door of new people.
As Mickey got up to leave, Hoagie implored him to stay, to spend the night, to not risk driving. Mickey was hammered as he often was. But his years of drinking had made him a functional alcoholic. He ran his own business, drinking throughout the day, always able to manage things. He had by some miracle never gotten a DUI though he would have failed a breathalyzer if ever stopped no matter the time of day or night.
Mickey was adamant he had to get back home. He told them he had to be back at work in the morning to open the shop. He was always at work, seven days a week, waking at about 5am every morning, at his metal fabrication and machine shop by 6am. He had a morning ritual, taking no thought on his part to achieve. He would put coffee on for himself, then make Café Vienna, one of those international coffees advertised in women’s magazines for Pat. He would take her coffee in bed. It was a sweet gesture, one of the few sweet gestures left in their marriage.
But the ritual always started with a huge swig of Jack Daniels straight from the bottle he stored in a bottom kitchen cabinet. It wasn’t to hide it, just made it easily accessible. Pat knew it was there and knew he drank from it every morning, though she had never seen him do it. He took swig after swig until he felt the alcohol flowing through his blood until he felt “his normal.”. He had woken up in a sea of sweat-soaked sheets as he did every morning. His body had fought all night to detox from the day’s heavy drinking. The sheets stunk of his sweat. Pat would wash the sheets daily. She was fastidious about cleanliness.
The day’s routine continued. Started his truck, a loud diesel that would wake the neighbors who were light sleepers. He reached under the seat reaching for the pint of Jack Daniels he always kept there, taking another swig. He drove on to his usual first stop, 7-11, where he bought a 12-pack of Budweiser. He would put that in the shop refrigerator next to the homemade lunches his employees had brought to work. No one said anything about it, just another day.
He was, as always, the first to arrive. He turned on the shop lights then sat at his small, disheveled desk preparing the work plans for every job and every worker. He was always ready when the troops got there. He greeted everyone as they arrived. He had a nickname for each of them. He had a nickname for everyone, if he liked you. Those who really knew Mickey, that small handful who did, always knew how Mickey felt about someone. No nickname, he didn’t like them. In spite of being a crusty, hard-nosed boss, he loved his guys. He knew them all well. He knew their families, their interests, their dreams, who had marital problems, or problems with their kids. He knew everyone’s driver. All the guys had a NASCAR driver. Mondays were spent talking about the previous Sunday’s race during racing season. He knew which of the workers responded to encouragement and which needed a swift kick in the ass to perform well. He had even sat at the bedside in the hospital of a young worker who had attempted suicide.
His business partner Wally arrived a half hour or so after Mickey, as he always did. Wally was in charge of the shop floor. Mickey was in charge of everything else; finances, estimating, customer relations. Wally was a mountain boy like Mickey, had followed the same path as Mickey to the shipyard. He wasn’t very bright in much of anything, but he was a skilled tradesman.
So, the day was off to its usual start. Customers called needing estimates on a job. Mickey answered as he always did – “let me get my crayon” – before he took down the details of the job. He’d work up an estimate, call the customer back, get the job. He almost always got the job, in part because the business was good at what it did, in part because he too often underestimated what it would cost to do the job. He had no idea what his real cost of labor was, he just bid what he thought the customer would pay. The business was lucky to be marginally profitable.
He continued to drink throughout the day until he made the impulsive decision to drive to the North Forty, the family farm. He made up an excuse that he had to go to Charlottesville, near the North Forty, to look at a piece of equipment he claimed they needed. Did he know his real purpose? Was his suicide premeditated?
***
The call came at 6am. It was Charlie, the shop estimator. “Have you seen your dad?”
Rubbing his eyes Randy responded “No, why?”
“He hasn’t shown up for work.”
Randy knew in an that instant that Mickey was dead. Randy felt nothing. It was time for crisis management.
“No, I don’t know where he is. Let me check. I’ll call my mother.”
Randy didn’t call his mother. He didn’t know what he would say. She would know he was dead too. It would crush her. For all his many faults, she loved him. She adored him.
It was odd that Charlie would be the one to call. Charlie hated Mickey and Randy. He spent large portions of his day drawing gruesome pencil drawings of ways he would kill Mickey. He hated Randy because Randy would inherit the business. Charlie thought he ought to be given the business. Why not? Charlie believed he did all the important work, that the business would be lost without him.
Melissa, Randy’s wife, asked, “Who was that?” Randy told her that his father was missing. He didn’t say he missed work, but that he was missing.
She asked, “What are you going to do?”
Randy, being the adult child of an alcoholic, was skilled in handling crises. Ignoring Melissa, he started his calls. Charlie had told him that his father had left yesterday for Charlottesville. He called all the hospitals, police, and sheriff’s offices in a three-county area. Randy hoped he was in a hospital injured from an accident or in jail charged with DUI. But that’s not what he really thought was going on. His mind turned to the worst – suicide.
He convinced the Fluvanna County Sheriff’s to go out to the farm. Now only to wait, and to call his mother. Hoagie and the guys were already in the woods for their hunt, none the wiser.
He built up his courage to make the call to his mother, thinking about what he would say. He placed the call.
“Fred (he always called his mother Fred, a nickname Mickey had given her long ago that stuck), dad didn’t show up for work. Is he at home?”
“No, I guess he stayed at the North Forty last night. What’s wrong?”
“Charlie called to ask if I knew where he was. He didn’t show up at work. I called his cell phone, but he didn’t answer. Let’s wait a while and see if he shows up. He’s probably on the drive home.” Randy didn’t believe he was on the way home.
“Ok, let me know when you reach him.”
Randy wondered if his mother had already come to the same conclusion he had. Randy didn’t tell her he had been making desperate calls all morning searching for his father.
He continued his calls, calling back places he had already called, with no luck. Everyone he reached said there was no Michael Gilliland in the hospital or in the jail. He began to settle into what he believed when he got Charlie’s call – he had killed himself.
Randy took a shower knowing this was going to be a long day. He called the Fluvanna sheriff again, no news. He got coffee. Sat on the sofa sipping it, burning his tongue. At least he could feel pain as he felt an overwhelming sense of numbness. Melissa putzed around the house, of no use as always. Their marriage had faltered and fell into a tolerance of each other after the birth of their child, a boy named Palmer. Melissa got all the emotional and physical sustenance she needed from Palmer. She had no interest in Randy anymore, except for the generous way of life he provided. Melissa wanted for nothing. They lived in a beautiful historic home overlooking a five-mile vista of the Hampton Roads. She didn’t have to work, she drove a BMW 525, she had coffee every morning with similarly situated women. Randy called them “The Coven.” They got together about 10am over coffee, droned on about how unhappy they were, how shitty their husbands were, how difficult their lives were. All their marriages would end in divorce.
Randy and Melissa had not had sex in three years. They simply existed in the same house, Melissa not working, raising their child, and in theory keeping the house. She was a horrible housekeeper and cook, nothing like her mother Lucy. When she did do laundry, she would leave the clothes in the washer two or three day becoming musty. Somehow, she didn’t smell it and would put them in the dryer where, they would sit another couple days. The only time the house got cleaned was when they threw a party. Randy would hire a cleaning service so people would not see the daily squalor he endured. They threw a lot of parties as Randy was prominent in the community. They threw them to raise money for Democratic candidates and charities. Randy enjoyed them, one of the few things he enjoyed at his home.
He sat on the sofa, his numbness turning to anger at Melissa. In his time of need she was emotionally distant, not there to comfort him in any way. Hell, she hadn’t even made the coffee. She doted on Palmer, getting him dressed and fed. Randy had no one to turn to. As an only child he had never had anyone to turn to, no sibling to share the good or the bad. He was alone again, left to deal with life with the only tools he had in his emotional toolbox, and those were limited. He tried to shake off the anger and ignore his wife as he often did.
Then came the amazing sense of relief. It washed over him. The ever-present mental struggle of dealing with his father was gone. It always hung in the air over everything. His father’s words and actions seemed to dominate his and his mother’s life. Even when Mickey wasn’t present his aura was. It shaded all aspects of Randy’s and his mother’s life. They couldn’t let go of him. They had tried many times. In spite of his alcoholism and all the tragedy and stress that it brought to their lives, they couldn’t let go of him.
The phone rang. It was the sheriff.
“Mr. Gilliland?”
“Yes.”
“This is Sheriff Watson. I’m sorry but your father is dead. We found him in his truck off the CC road.”
“He killed himself, didn’t he.?”
“Yes sir he did, I’m sorry.”
At age 35 Randy had become the only child of a widowed mother with all the responsibilities that would entail.
Can you describe the emotional process of writing about this ONE MEMORY? It was painful and cathartic.