My father died 2018. He had just turned 89. His service was Father's Day, very poetic.
I do believe I have a mother still alive, now 88 if so.
Christ, I hope I don't live that long. I'm not too wild about living THIS long. I spend a lot of idle time thinking about my perfect suicide. I have a lot of idle time.
My perfect suicide would be one that leaves no thing behind, no shred of existence, no token breath, and most importantly, no body. It is not so much a suicide as a disappearance. I don't think I can do the drowning option, as far as no body left behind goes. With rocks in my pockets. I was recently talking to my gallery guy and he said he'd chain a suitcase full of rocks onto his body to prevent both last minute change of plans and a resurfacing body. I don't know that I am that dedicated to dying in that very way. I go through all the scenarios - and drowning isn't entirely out - but I am passively based, either way.
There is a prevailing plan but it has mechanical sticking points and the idle time I devote to it is about how to resolve the kinks in the plan.
I am frantically trying to empty my head of paintings, it is the final loose end I need to FINISH before moving on to my next chapter, "Disappearance." And it is a chapter, not a single sentence. It involves getting a pick-up truck, driving around, looking at things. getting lost, ending up somewhere else, and finally disappearing altogether.
I own little, I live in an apartment that has no furniture, so to say I first need to dispose of everything is an overstatement. Still, it will all be thrown away. The art supplies and the fork and spoon and plate and glass. There is little of value worth giving to anyone, the dumpster is a better match. There is the matter of two small boxes I am unsure about and may take with me. The first box is all my journals and sketchbooks. I've been journaling since my mid-teens. I threw the first two away about 25 years ago. I assured myself then I wouldn't regret doing this and of course I do. I threw the first one out because during that era was an episode where I ran away from home, except I ran away from home in the most responsible way possible. I left a note, stated where I'd be, and I called daily to check in while staying at a friend's house. But running away from home lamely wasn't the rub; it was the note I left behind, copied into this journal.
The note was written to my mother. In it I wrote how sorry I was to cause this trouble, to be so selfish, I knew she loved me and only ever meant the best for me. I was wrong; my mother was a psychopathic narcissist incapable of love who daily chipped away at me to a state of chronic suicide. There was physical and verbal abuse, a dismantling of my psyche. Running away in that moment was an effort to save myself from self-destruction, the by-product of her constant effort. I was so broken, and so spineless, I would write a note APOLOGIZING for inconveniencing her. I was asking from my torturer to forgive me for this effort to survive. I could not bear the proof that I'd become that. That I'd done that. I threw that journal out.
I threw the second journal away, it was the one that followed the first journal, it would begin within the year or so of it. During this time period my mother became a born-again Christian and we were now required to attend non-denominational services with her weekly. The born-again services horrified me, all of it, the theater of it, the overwrought emotion of it, the absolute fraudulence. At school, (I was in High School) I had a friend who went to the sedate-by-comparison Catholic church and eventually bargained that as an acceptable alternative. I got involved with the youth group which would itself attend additional born-again services at neighboring churches. There would be no escaping the born-again trend of that era. Thus followed the journal that was all about Jesus, how Jesus was healing my heart, Praise Jesus, and a lot of bible quotes. I would come to refer to this entire era of life as jumping from the born-again frying pan into the born-again fire, an era that claimed me far too many years, and from which I'm not sure I've ever forgiven myself. So, a box of journals minus the two I didn't want as proof - that I was this. (Though we all know I AM.)
PS, I don't happen to believe in god.
The second small box is just miscellaneous debris from over the years. It includes a marble I managed to save since I was seven. It's small, a beautiful clear blue. I also still have my Frito's WC Fields pencil-top eraser, circa 1971. It means nothing to me, really, maybe only as a token of continuance: that I have in my possession two small items that I've managed to hold onto for 50 years.
So maybe take with me these two small boxes, we can all disappear together.
Plan A being to wander around for awhile before driving out to the desert to dig my grave and find a way to both die in it and be buried in it simultaneously. The hitch being how to get into the hole AND be entirely buried minus any sign of disturbed ground. I mean obviously it has to be deep enough to keep animals from getting curious. Maybe the trick is to burrow a smaller entrance to it like a gopher hole. Go underground, enough space for me and my two small boxes, a massive bottle of vodka and enough OTC pillage to kill a huge gopher.
Right, I was thinking, how do I lie in the open hole and bury myself while in it, trying to figure out all these mechanical ways to get the dirt over me once lying down inside. But I can dig the grave from the top, deep, with a tunnel leading off to a small copse or covered by a rock. Cover the grave with a sheet of plywood at like the 3-ft. deep mark, and just before a rain cover the plywood with earth. The rain would blend the hole location back in with its surroundings, and then I can access it via the tunnel. I can leave the area a while to be sure I've not drawn attention to it, return when it is time. I will never be found. Until way past post-climate related disasters that wipe out a good chunk of earth's population, via weather or disease, and/or they bulldoze for a planned community.
Good plan! Finally, something to look forward to.
