Jack

​“It was right here that I got the call,” he said as he pulled the truck over toward the fence. “I stopped, jumped out and screamed.” He was recalling the moments immediately following the phone call informing him that his twenty-two year old namesake had blown his brains out. He went into detail about rushing home, going into his son’s bedroom and seeing his child like that, not being able to grasp what had happened. He picked up a tiny piece of blood-soaked quilt from the floor. He doesn’t know why he did this but now wears it around his neck in a locket that his daughter had made for him. He is a shell of the man he used to be. Too thin, too jumpy, painfully sober, a chain smoker. His perfect suburban life blown to bits in less than a second.

​I never asked for details. I didn’t know a thing about Jack’s life until several days into working with him. Yet, when he mentioned he had lost his son recently, I almost cried. I felt that this was a good man. Good people. Ryan’s death was still fresh and painful for me and it was something I could relate to in some way. I never spoke much on my end about Ryan and never asked any questions about Jack’s son, but every couple of days he would just talk. I thought it must have been therapeutic in some way for him. He told me that he and his wife had tried to talk to someone but that didn’t last long. He argued with the therapist. I could relate to that too. The detailed description of his son’s death came on my last day working with him for the season. I guess he wanted me to know for some reason. Maybe he never talked about it before, maybe he did all the time. I don’t know, but I felt like there was a reason he confided in me.