An April Fool’s Day That Haunts Me Still

My father committed suicide when I was eight, but that reality was not known to me until a few years later because it was such a taboo subject. Silence was golden.

People today take everything in stride, ask impertinent questions about deaths by suicide, but help is available in terms of counseling for families. However, the world was quite different in the mid-1950”s when my father out-of-of-the-blue took his life one morning while my mother was washing her hair. I was sitting in my second grade seat at school which was located down the hill from our house. I felt strange because I had never seen an ambulance and police car with sirens—heading up our hill.

Time passed. We continued schoolwork until a couple of hours later, my principal came in and started whispering to my teacher. I was told to get my belongings go with them. The whole class tried to look at the windows.

This had never happened. No one left school in the old days because people made appointment after school. I also knew something was very wrong by the teacher’s look. I don’t remember them saying anything until we reached my uncle’s car. The principal opened the back door, and I took a quick look around.

In the car’s front seats were my uncle and my grandmother who usually went by car to the grocery. That was it. They looked not themselves as I looked for my mother in the backseat. Something was wrong. As I got in beside her for a hug, I noticed that her long brown hair, which was always up in braids, was down and wet in a loose towel. I got scared.

No one said a thing, but my mother held me as she cried quietly all the way to my grandmother’s house. I was distraught but clueless. The day had started off with April Fool’s Day jokes by my teacher in our second grade classroom, and we all looked forward to lunch and pulling our own corny jokes. That never happened.

I had planned to write about the rest of that day here, but I need a break from reliving that morning.

My father Carl was a Navy man in WWII as you can see. It’s one of the few photos I have of that time period. I wish I had known him as an older child to ask him about his experiences growing up, going to fight, and building our tiny home.

Thanks for reading this story. It doesn’t end here as you may surmise. Peace and love to you & your loved ones.