Fathers

Bob’s father was in his early 70s when he shot his brains out in the basement of their Great American Dream home -- the Fairhaven, Massachusetts house that they'd, Bob's mother and father both, scrimped and saved years for.

Just prior to this, his father, a lifelong, pro level alky, had been in the hospital awaiting artery reaming type surgery. Before the docs could operate they needed to detox him. This turned out to be the larger shock to his system.

At some point, while freshly, shockingly sober, he remarked to Bob, in all seriousness, ‘I’ve been depressed all my life. Who knew?’

When he came home from hospital he began a three day bender. During that drunken, sodden time he went out and bought gun.....while stunningly soused. Some dimwitted, fucktarded, shitheeled, greedheaded, tiny brained, motherfucker sold him a gun while the man was clearly, roilingly, word slurringly drunk!

He came home, went down to the cellar, and coated the walls with his brain-matter.

Bob’s brothers were both home at the time. Kenny, the younger, went down to investigate the loud pop from below -- he never fully emerged.

Dead in a Basement -- Bob Grant

He died in his basement, surrounded by shitkicker tapes and rusted tools. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; if the liquor don’t get you, then the pistol must. His laugh atrophied with disuse, his soul squeezed with abuse by the silence he carried like a black hole which sucked the sound from around him and froze it. His was the silence at the bottom of the bottle; silence which shattered in explosive red splatter. He had never learned to trust. He slammed the final door and I wandered around like a man with a broken flashlight in the heart of disaster.

-- Nov 1985 Boston