Brittany Watson
Creative Non-fiction
D. McGlynn
Death of A Harley Rider
Sometime before 9:00pm on May 15th, 2008 my cousin Daryl went to the cracked white garage behind his house to find my uncle Mike hanging, dead. My Harley riding, eagle collecting, tough guy uncle is hanging from his garage ceiling, dead. I am sitting on my laptop, still shocked from the season finale of The Office and my uncle is hanging in his garage, dead. My mom is probably sleeping and my brother probably making a drug run while my uncle is hanging from his garage ceiling, dead.
My mom gets the call sometime the morning of May 16th, 2008. She is cooking away diligently in the big kitchen at Columbia hospital when the call comes in. My brother Jason hears from someone outside of the family about my uncle. All my mom remembers is collapsing on the ground in front of everyone and crying. Crying out of shock. Crying out of pain. Crying out of guilt. Everyone in the kitchen surrounds her, cradles her, telling her that she can’t drive. She is then picked up by her boyfriend Mike and taken over to the house where the suicide of my uncle had been carefully planned.
I get the call at 12:00pm while sitting at my computer facebooking as usual. My mind is on the fact that I am going to be eating lunch in twenty minutes with Amy, then I have to get ready for my welcome week leader interview, and then I have to work at shitty forever 21 5:00-10:00 tonight. My phone rings and I automatically know it’s my mom calling because I set her ringtone as some generic one called "Euro ringer", whatever the fuck that means. I quickly answer, knowing that something is wrong because it’s 12:00pm and my mom is calling me. She doesn’t know what classes I have and she never calls me at this time.
"Mom?"
"Brittany?"
"Mom, what’s wrong?"
"Brittany?"
"Mom, WHAT’S WRONG?"
"Brittany. Brittany, uncle hung himself in his garage last night."
I almost drop the phone but instead I freak. My hands start to shake as if I just drank twenty cups of coffee. My breathing gets more heavy and thick tears are waiting to fall behind my pupils. She gives me the details slowly, choking back tears of her own. I can’t comprehend it all. I shake more. I tell her right away that I’m on the next bus ride to Milwaukee. It doesn’t matter that I hate the two hour long bus ride on the greyhound bus whose speed is slower then what its name promises, because this is my uncle. It doesn’t matter because my home needs me now. I hang up the phone once mom knows my plans and walk over to Downer to try and swallow a grilled cheese sandwich with a side of french fries and honey mustard sauce. I spill the details to Amy, my only confident on this sort of stuff, and keep eating, my stomach feeling like it’s going to eat itself from hunger and the uneasiness of suicide. After lunch 4:30 rolls around so I grab my tony hawk book bag and slowly walk to the greyhound bus depot to get that ticket home. All I can think about is how I’m not supposed to be coming home this weekend. Memorial weekend is supposed to be my weekend home. This weekend is supposed to be relaxing.
The two hour bus ride that has now turned into a three hour one lets my mind run over the details of my uncle’s death again. Daryl, my uncle Mike’s son, found his father at 9:00pm Thursday night hanging from the ceiling of his garage. Earlier in the night Daryl could hear uncle moving around downstairs because he lived above him. Soon it grew quiet so he came down to visit him only to find a suicide note. His instinct told him to go to the garage where uncle spent much of his time, finding the mixed German Shepard dog of his by the door, waiting to be let in. Uncle locked the door from the inside so Daryl somehow got it open to find him hanging from the ceiling of the garage, a black leather rope around his neck. Another letter in the garage leads him to one in the ceiling and eventually all over the house. Apparently he was being treated for depression and decided to keep it to himself. Apparently he could’ve had cancer and decided to keep this to himself as well. Apparently his ex-girlfriend was black mailing him to the point where he directly pointed her out as the reason for all this mess. He lays out his funeral clothes on his bed and tells Daryl in one of the many letters that this is what he wants to be cremated in. The letters are dated for May 11th, 2008, meaning this whole ordeal has been in the works for weeks now.
***
I get off the bus and speed walk over to my mom’s boyfriend’s truck to find my boyfriend in the backseat, waiting to hug me. I grab my mom and embrace her, being the tough daughter I know I need to be for her. After long embraces I push myself into the back seat behind my mom and her boyfriend, my boyfriend taking me in his arms and hugging me, not knowing what else to say. I sit blank faced the entire ride to my house. Still wondering why I am really here. This news doesn’t sit well in the pit of my stomach but my face puts on denial well. It’s been about a year since I’ve seen uncle Mike’s face so my thoughts can’t begin to grab an image of him being so depressed that he’d walk to the garage and kill himself with a rope. Once the car stops in our driveway I snap out of these thoughts and get out of the car. Mom goes by Mike’s (her boyfriend) for the night while DJ and I stay at my house. This sleeping arrangement works because my mom needs the love of her boyfriend now. We can’t form the right words to say to each other because this news is full of shock. We hug each other one last time that night and DJ and I make it into our house. The rest of the night is spent kissing my boyfriend and letting him hold me because I need anything possible to hide the tears still wanting to surface behind my eyes. As a result of my lack of water works my eyes begin to get heavy. Sleeping through the night isn’t an easy feat. I often open my eyes to my thoughts asking questions about this whole thing. Why Thursday? Why now? How could he do this with Daryl upstairs? Did anyone at all know? How does one kill themselves in such a way without a second thought? Questions that my thoughts would never get answers to because of the secrets he decided to keep bottled away on a shelf somewhere. My thoughts also reach into the depths of my head and drift into the garage it all happened in.
***
Mom had been having problems with our blue station wagon with wooden side-paneling and the only person who could fix it was uncle Mike. The mechanic of the family, he could always come to her rescue when a car needed fixing. Jason, my brother, and I had spent the whole day over at Uncle’s on account of the fact that mom worked first shift at George Webb’s so we needed a place to play all day long. Uncle was also a life-savor when it came to babysitting us as well. That two story house with it’s amazing hiding spots for hide-and-go-seek became our second home through the years when I was getting taller and Jason’s voice was cracking.
Mom came over with the car, as previously planned, and the garage was open for all of us to sit inside it while he checked every inch of the car for problems. Mom always went to uncle because he was the one who found every car she’d ever own up until now. He knew everything about cars. For most of my prime years he was fixing up a Camarillo and rode around on his Harley Davidson. He was a typical biker mechanic with leather vests with eagles on it to prove it. He towered over me my whole life, especially then because I was so young. To me, he was a giant whose bad side I never wanted to be introduced to. His garage only made him appear to be as manly as he wanted to be seen with boxes of tools all over the place. On the wall there was a playboy calendar that I wasn’t supposed to notice but still did. The garage always smelled of gas and dirt, very manly in uncle’s eyes I’m sure.
Once uncle Mike was done inspecting the car he asked us if we all wanted to each take a ride around the block on his Harley Davidson. Both Jason and I jumped at the opportunity and eventually my mom reluctantly accepted. The ride had been amazing even though I’d only been 5 or 6 years old. I could feel the wind blowing in my hair as uncle kept telling me to hold on tight to his waist. When riding on the back of a Harley you can feel free, almost like nothing could ever move as fast as you are because the bike’s speed can beat any supreme car. Once we’d all had a spin on the motorcycle we stood in the garage talking about how exciting our rides were, Jason begging for another ride. Soon we drove off to the view of uncle cleaning off his Harley, making it shine like it had just been taken out of the bike shop.
***
Saturday morning, May 17th, 2008, I awake to the sound of my cats meowing for food. Mom normally feeds them at 3am because she works so when I get up at 8:30am they attack my legs as if they’ve been starving for days on end. Once the food is in the bowl, I am startled by the sound of the phone ringing. I dash back into the room where DJ is slowly opening his eyes and answer the phone. Jason is calling to tell me that he’s around the corner from our house so he figured he’d take a shower.
I can sense the sadness in his voice but I can’t find the words to tell him that I understand what he’s feeling. Uncle was the closest thing my brother ever had to a father figure since his dad was too much of an alcoholic to stay in the picture. My uncle was even the person who’d given my brother and his girlfriend their first apartment while she was pregnant with their first child. I had always been close to my uncle but not to extent that Jason is. He’s got a male bonding thing going on there that my words can’t try and comfort in this moment. He doesn’t cry or tell me how he’s feeling because Uncle’s tough-guy act rubbed off on him, only leaving me to sit in my room and feel the sadness through the phone.
Soon my mom calls me back and tells me that she’s been trying to contact Jason for a while now. I don’t know what corner of our block he’s around because soon it’s an hour after he calls me. Jason has always been the person in my family to stop someone’s heart so my mom’s natural reaction is that he’d doing something he shouldn’t be. A drug dealer for three years, he’s prone to get into some shit just because he’s known for what he does. All my mom tells me over the phone is how she doesn’t need this shit right now. My uncle is dead and Jason is selling drugs on a street corner to hide from the inflicting pain of this death.
A half hour or so after talking to mom last, I get a call from her saying that Jason is okay. Apparently he crashed on the couch at his apartment so his cell phone went unanswered. I feel us both sigh at the same time. Sighing relief that he is laying on a couch sleeping. Sighing relief that we don’t have to prepare for two funerals this week. Mom tells me that she’s going to take a shower and make her way over to our house. On this day we are heading over to Uncle’s house to talk to Daryl about things.
Minutes after the phone is hung up, still warm from my breath blowing into its mouthpiece, my cousin from prison, Michael (I know there are a lot of Michaels) calls me. I immediately freak. Mom tells me earlier on that we can’t tell Mikey. He hasn’t seen Uncle Mike in five years. They’ve only written each other once or twice within that five years. Uncle Mike has been talking about going to see Mikey but has never gotten around to it at this point. Once I accept the call my heart pounds because the morose tone in Mikey’s voice leads me to believe that someone has spilled the beans to him. My thoughts are a mistake though because he’s simply depressed about being in prison.
My cousin Mikey robbed someone five years ago while on any drug you can imagine. This mistake is his first and only offense but yet thirteen years is the time he gets. The first year he spends time in Oklahoma but is then moved to the correctional facility in New Lisbon, Wisconsin. Four years have passed and he’s improved greatly. He has his G.E.D, his reading scores are at college level, and his mind is on life after prison. New Lisbon has caused Mikey to get more depressed because his goal is learn a trade and at least try to become something more then a prison statistic.
He tells me that he’s sick and tired of being in prison. He hasn’t written anyone in a month because he’s too down about everything. My heart is breaking as those words reach my ears, almost wanting to blurt out what has just happened to uncle. I shake. My eyes are twice as heavy as they were the day before now. I hide the truth behind stories about college and how much I am enjoying it. I ask Mikey what books he’s been reading and he talks about Angels and Demons for a few minutes. He talks about how he’s waiting for September because he’s hoping he can get moved to somewhere closer to us. I try to make him feel better by telling him that next weekend we are going to drive up and see him for memorial day. His tone of voice changes, even perks up a bit at the thought of us coming. He says, "maybe that will make me feel better." My eyes are growing more heavy as each word is spoken to me.
All I can think about is what I am hiding from him in this moment. When we make the long three hour drive to New Lisbon next Monday my heart will race so fast that I’ll have to talk myself into remaining calm. Once the words leave my mom’s mouth Mikey could go into an enraged depression, causing us to leave with the wonder of whether or not he’ll be okay once the metal doors close behind us. Like my brother, Mikey’s only father figure is my uncle. His mother left him to raise himself so all he really has is my mom and my uncle. My brother makes a comment about how Mikey might screw around and kill himself. My eyes grow heavy when Jason says this nonchalantly.
I tell Mikey I love him and hang up the phone. I turn to DJ, still sleepy eyed but peering at me from my room and I yell, "Why does my family have to be so fucked up?". I jump back into bed with him and bury my head in my pillow, screaming into it to keep from letting these tears fall out of my eyes. DJ takes me in my arms and holds me, still not knowing what to say. What can he say? Maybe if this were a grandparent whose death was sort of expected because of their old age then he’d find the words to tell me that everything is going to be okay. But the fact of this matter is that my uncle hung himself from his garage ceiling voluntarily, leaving this family to wonder why.
***
Mom makes her way over to the house and we pile into her car to make the ten minute drive over to Uncle Mike’s. My heart is pumping faster and faster as we approach the house, my mind running through all the memories that were ever made in there. I’ve never walked into that house without being greeted with a hug or a "hello" from my uncle. Not to mention the fact that I haven’t been in this house for over a year due to a lack of communication among my family. I look out the window, feeling nostalgic as we are taking the way we’d always taken when Jason and I would spend weekends at Uncle’s while mom was trying her hardest to put food on the table. The memory of driving this way flows back into my head so distinctly because nothing on this route has changed. The abandoned factories that line the dirty Milwaukee river still look as creepy as they did when I had been just a youngin’. Garbage in the streets build up as we are getting closer to Mitchell street where Uncle lives, which was and still is an indication that we’re not downtown anymore.
We get to the house and pull up two places behind my Uncle’s green pick up truck. It looks as if he’d just been driving it and we are going to come inside for some long awaited catching up. The house feels empty and cold once we are inside though, no sign that this tragedy is just some horrible joke that’s being played on us all. Daryl’s obnoxious mother is in the process of looking through old receipts uncle Mike has left behind, maybe trying to find out his complete wealth. Daryl is on the phone with a friend, trying to take his mind off what is going on. My uncle’s old friends are sitting on the couch looking through old pictures when they all were much younger, laughing about old times to keep thoughts from this time.
My mind drifts to memories that were created right here in this very room. All the nights when we were forced to sit around the television and watch uncle Mike’s old western movies. If one of us made so much as a noise he’d yell at us and tell us to go outside and play for a while. We’d sit and watch him eat his special steak dinner that my aunt made just for him, wishing that just one time our mouths could taste something more then macaroni n’ cheese and hot dogs at the back of our throats. Uncle would park his behind in front of his television and wait anxiously for the packer game to start because the team was his personal religion. All the insignificant times spent in the living room with uncle Mike are now the ones in which I am trying to take and put close to my heart.
Mom takes Daryl out on the porch to have a one on one conversation while Jason pulls up and comes into the house, not knowing what to say. He gives me a piece of a kabob that somehow manages to taste good even though my stomach is going around in circles. I still can’t find those golden words to make everything magically at least a little bit better so I decided to thumb through old pictures of my uncle. Jason gets up and walks outside to get into the conversation between my cousin and my mom. I watch, hoping there isn’t going to be a blow out between anyone of them.
Mom suddenly yells, "Brittany come on, we’re leaving," seconds later so I jump up and pull DJ out the door. I brush past Daryl, my mom, and Jason to the car. Once we reach the car I can hear my mom telling my brother that money isn’t going to get him anywhere. All he seems to care about is dealing drugs until he can get $10,000 and start his own cleaning business. He told us this same story a year ago when he was heavy on the pills and buying a flashy truck painted lime green and sky blue. She tells him that uncle had all the money he wanted and look where he ended up. Money isn’t everything. People think that once you have all the materialistic shit all the sentimental shit will follow. That’s bullshit.
Mom then takes big strides towards the car, gets in, then goes back to fix things with Jason three times. It’s an uphill battle with my mom and brother and I keep wondering if they’ll ever get to the top. He sells drugs, takes drugs, and stays out all night. He can’t put it all down for even five days so we can figure out this mess together, as a family should. Jason is good at taking his problems and shuffling them into going to this place and selling these drugs so he can make the money he thinks is going to make the world bow at his feet.
Once the fighting calms down for the day we drive over to my mom’s boyfriend’s house for dinner. His son is being an annoying 14 year old so I spend most of my time there sitting on a picnic table talking to DJ about anything but what’s going on. I stuff ham and a baked potato into my mouth even though I am not hungry, the kabob still resting in the middle of my throat. DJ leaves shortly after dinner and I am left with my mom and her boyfriend watching cops on television. As mom drifts off to sleep Mike decides to take me back to my house because I’ve expressed that I need to be by myself for a while.
Once at home I toss and turn all night, making frequent phone calls to DJ. I ask him why people have to die and why in this way. I express my wonders about why my uncle did what he did. I want to know what could possess my tough uncle to let himself get so weak that he could physically tie a rope around his neck and let himself hang from the ceiling, seeing his whole life flash before him. I wanted to know so I ask DJ, not really wanting answers, just another person to wonder with me.
***
Sunday is spent in a blur, laying around my house til’ mom comes home. We then go over to my brother’s apartment and sit for three hours trying to get him to let out his pain and play with his two children. The children lighten my mood a bit because the little girl’s smile lights up the room and the little boy’s all-knowingness makes me laugh a bit. Yet while they play with me all I can think about is the fact that they will never know their uncle Mike. Sure it may seem weird because this is an uncle but my family consists of me, my mom, my brother, his girlfriend, my mom’s boyfriend, my brother’s two kids, my two cousins, and my uncle. When you cut out my cousin Michael because he’s in prison and my now dead uncle you really don’t have much left to look at. These kids will never get to know a huge part of our family. The part that held enormous holiday dinners every year, could always be there to fix a car, and would give awesome gifts would never light up their lives. I let them play with me though, not wanting that moment to be the one I let break me down.
Mom then takes me through the drive thru at KFC and we surprise her boyfriend with dinner. This is the first time the whole weekend that my mind is on food. I dig into the food and fill in tear drops with drumsticks and mashed potatoes. Mom makes jokes about how much we’ve all eaten and for a minute I feel as if what has happened is just a big misunderstanding. I am home this weekend because I felt like I needed a break from school, not because my uncle decided to hang himself from the ceiling of his garage.
***
Today, May 19th, 2008 I decide that I need to head back to school. My bus will leave at 7:25pm. I wake up at 8:30am again to the sound of my mom cleaning the kitchen. When bad things happen in my family the only thing my mother knows how to do is get up early and clean. I come to the kitchen and immediately ask her what she’s been up to. She’s uncovered old photographs that we have of uncle. There aren’t many in the pile because he’s never been one to take a lot of pictures.
One of the pictures is from my seventh or eighth birthday. We are sitting at a table in Chucky Cheese, smiling. I remember the day and the moment distinctly because he’d went out and bought me my very own walkman. Jason loved to take my stuff and make it his own because he thought as the older brother it was his right to do so. Uncle comes to the birthday party to deliver the birthday present and tells Jason that he’s not to touch my walkman and if he hears that he has he’ll have to answer to him. I feel safe in that moment, like now I can finally have my own something because uncle would make sure of it.
Other pictures display uncle as an 18 year old, sticking out his tongue in various pictures. My mom reminiscences about all the good times they’ve had together and I simply smile. All the while I am thinking that this isn’t supposed to be happening. Uncle is supposed to stop by Mike’s house for a cook out on memorial day. He’ll pull up on his Harley and tell us all about the new car he’s looking at or the new Harley he wants. I shouldn’t be here looking at pictures of him because he’s only 47. He’s supposed to live to see me graduate from college, get married, and have children. I fake a smile though, wanting to keep my mother from feeling anymore pain then she already feels now.
She gets a call later in the day from Daryl letting her known the details of the autopsy report. Apparently he had heart disease. It wasn’t life threatening and he surly had a full life to lead. They speak of going to the funeral home tomorrow and all I can think about is how I am leaving to come back to Appleton in a few hours. I know I can’t really do anything laying around my house thinking about what has happened but Appleton feels so far away now. The rest of this school year will be a blur because I will feel like my mom and brother need me. I will feel like my home is calling to me and I can’t answer the call because this town is tying me down a month longer then it should be.
Once off the phone we realize that we need dresses for the funeral so we dash to Grand Ave. mall downtown to Old Navy. I end up picking out a plain black dress that could be nice for a summer day but only spelled out funeral. I’d never thought I’d be shopping in Old Navy for funeral clothes but here I am trying on a black dress that I really like but don’t feel right saying to myself or to my mom. We quickly leave and I pack to come back to Appleton.
I sit on the bus next to a calm attractive guy whose glasses resemble mine except they lack the cool red tint that mine possess. I flip on my ipod and get lost in the words of songs I shuffle through. The music tries to block out my thoughts but it becomes hard. My eyes grow too heavy to handle and little tears fall like rain water running down a sewer after a thunderstorm, slow and steady.
-I've been trying to edit this piece for a year but I kind of like the way it sounds-
