It's been ten years
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Ten years ago today my father shot himself in the head. Shannon and I had been living with my parents for quite a while. I came home from work that night and Jim told me what had happened. I remember my overwhelming feeling was anger. I was so angry that he had done something so utterly selfish. My feeling today is still anger.
My father and I had always had a complicated relationship. He left my mom and me when I was four. We moved from Dallas to Marble Falls and into the hotel my grandparents owned. For the next 15 years I saw him very infrequently. I was quite close to his parents so I was at their house all the time. He would say he was going to come visit me there. I would stay up as late as I could, sometimes falling asleep on the floor waiting for him and he wouldn't show up. Years later I found out he would come visit friends just a few miles away but not come see me. I thought it was my fault. I thought I wasn't worth him visiting.
My main memories of him are how much fun he was. He was the life of every party. He played guitar and sang songs like Hello Walls and Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog. He was charismatic and people were drawn to him. He had a big booming voice and an infectious laugh. He was great until he got too much alcohol. Once he hit a certain point, he wasn't fun anymore. He became an asshole. He would yell and throw things and have temper tantrums. The next day he was always contrite, ready with an apology. He'd say he wouldn't do it again but he always did.
When I was around 10 or 11, he married a woman named Lee. She was an even worse alcoholic than he was. My only memory of her was going camping with the two of them and my uncle. At some point, she became angry and belligerent and my father decided it was time to take her home. He loaded us all up in his van and off we went back to Austin. During the trip, Lee became enraged at me and tried to throw me out of the van as it hurtled down the interstate at 70 mph. Luckily my uncle caught me before she could do that. Lee was like a wild animal so Bruce handcuffed her to something inside the van. Once we arrived at my grandparents house, he left her out there all night long. They divorced soon afterwards.
His third marriage was to a woman named Julie who had three kids. He adopted those kids and gave them my name. I hated that. They weren't real Boatmans! After being married for several years, one day he just walked out and never went back. It was more than three months before Julie knew that he wasn't dead and had run away. I have no idea what happened to them after that.
When I was 18, I rode on an Amtrak train halfway across Texas from Austin to Alpine to visit him for the summer. We had a great time at first. We watched old movies he had recorded off the TV. Soylent Green was a particular favorite. He would invite friends over and there'd be parties. One time he ran out of toilet paper so he attached a blow dryer to the roll holder. He was a hoot. He drank beer for most of the day and then at night he'd switch to mixed drinks. He would get me to mix his drinks for him and I would fill the glass up with coke then splash a little bit of whiskey on the top so it would taste much stronger than it actually was. I knew that the fun-loving Bruce would soon disappear once he got enough whiskey in his system. I don't remember exactly how it all fell out but fall out we did. I left and didn't speak to him again for another 15 years.
I got into recovery the first time in 2002. I knew that I could no longer carry this anger and resentment I felt towards him. It was wearing me out and causing me pain so I decided to forgive him. He was still drinking at this point. He was always drinking. I stayed with him for about five days and we had a really good time. I was in a place of forgiveness and he had mellowed with age. At the end of the visit we parted as friends. Perhaps not father and daughter but friends.
I spoke to him sporadically until 2006 when my grandparents died. After my grandpa died, he sat up all night in their dining room drinking and brooding. I'm sure he felt he had unfinished business. When my father was a small boy my grandpa accidentally set him on fire. He went through months of painful debridement treatments. His grandfather gave him a silver dollar after each one. At some point, my grandfather stole all those silver dollars and bought booze with it. Bruce carried that around his whole life. During the night a few days after grandpa died, Bruce broke the dining room table which was made from glass. He said it had just broken but I'm pretty sure he got angry and broke it. Four days after Grandpa died, Bruce stole his van and drove it back to Alpine. I tried to get Granny to press charges but she wouldn't. Bruce was always her golden child even though my uncle was the one who straightened out his life, not Bruce.
Just a few months later my granny died. Bruce was insufferable the whole time he was there. He was drinking in the house which was one thing that was NOT done. He left in a huff and I never spoke to him again.
When Jim called to say he was dead he told me this tale. He said that Bruce and Maere had gotten into a big fight. Bruce had gotten really drunk, as usual. He also became very angry, as usual. This time, however, he was going to show Maere that he did NOT have a problem. So he went out into the culvert next to their street and shot himself in the head. Blew out half his brain. Maere had to be the one to find him like that. Can you imagine? I know most suicides don't even consider the person who will find them or the people they leave behind. What an asshole, though, that he let Maere be the one to see that.
So here we are, ten years later. He had just bought some property that I inherited. I still haven't gotten put into my name so I can sell it. I've keep paying the taxes because I'll be damned if I let anyone insert themselves in that. He burned through so much money in his life that this bit of property is the least he could have left. He got about $80K from the sell of my grandparents house and within six months it was all gone.
I'm just so fucking angry at him for doing that. What a cowards way out! Rather than do the tough work to get into recovery and make a better person of yourself, you just blow your head off. What a coward! It's late now and I'm sleepy so I'll have to postpone the rest of this diatribe to later.