Day 332 - No News Is Good News

Today is the day of Good News.

A man died, for the whole world they say.

Crucified - typical in that day - it took him only three hours to die.
I say "only" because it was also typical that one didn't die from the actual crucifixion as much as the aphyxiation that followed when they tired of the public theatrics and they broke the legs. But when they came around to break this man's legs along with the other criminals, they realized that he had already conveniently "given up his spirit." Which they proved by piercing his side with a spear.

The man is buried in a tomb and everyone who has loved this man is grief-stricken.
For three days.

Not three weeks.
Or three months.
Or three years.
Just three days.

That seems like a really easy way to save the whole world, if you ask me.

Except that nothing has changed.
Nothing.

No, we all live with our grief and our forsaken questions and our misery and our suffocation for so much longer. And when one of us dies, it's forever. No one is coming back. And life does not change. Life didn't change in the 2000 years before this man of "Good News" and it hasn't changed in the 2000+ years since.

Our family got news this week as well.

It's been 112 days since my brother died.

And evidently, 111 days ago, the death certificate was done...when they ruled his death a suicide.

Mom only finally found this out because she called OMI (Office of the Medical Investigator) this week. Despite the fact that in the past 100 days, we've received several emails from the county police stating:

"Nothing new to report...

Nothing new to report...

Nothing new to report..."

Also my dad called my mom.

In the 17 years since they've been divorced, I would bet that you could count on one hand the number of times that Delbert has called Mom. Don't forget that they still had eight years of raising Clayton after the divorce. When things went so horribly wrong in Kansas with rescuing my brother after Amber's death, I called my dad several times and asked for his help. Except he just got angry and said we were creating drama.

If Mom called him for anything, even just to ask a question about an old fix-it trick at a house they used to live in as a family, he refused to answer the call or call her back. Even now, it doesn't matter who is calling, every call is screened by the answering machine. He will pick up if he's home...and he feels like talking to you, but you have to be screened first. 

So Delbert called Mom...to tell her about some of his suspicions regarding Clayton's death.

And together they dove deep into the one fantasy that always bonded them together:

"It's Us against the World."

Really, if you think about it, that is one of the core beliefs of being Mennonite. I don't think either of my parents have ever realized how entrenched they were in that perspective toward the rest of humanity.

Delbert tells Mom about a mild run-in that the Sheriff had with my brother in which my dad heard the sheriff say to my brother, "I'LL GET YOU"....five years ago.

Then they speculate together that maybe the house fire wasn't an accident, maybe someone else set the fire out of maliciousness...nine months before Clayton dies. 

Mom is grabbing a pen and writing things down, already making a new list of reasons why Clayton was murdered while Delbert is probably rambling about how all of this is connected to Reagan's trickle-down economics of the 1980s. Or he might have returned to his own murdered child theory, tying in how he was sure that the hospital killed Amber because it wasn't to their bottom line advantage to preserve the child of a nobody. 

The thing is, my brother was a pain in the ass 

to almost every law enforcement official 

who had the pleasure of knowing him. 

Maybe half of those officials were crooked, 

or on their very best day,

 simply had zero interest in my brother as a citizen.

Is that so hard to believe?

After all, we make human connections

because of what we have in common.

Also, a five year grudge because my brother flipped this cop the bird?

Then "someone" burns down his house?

And later decides to finish the job almost a year later by shooting him in the head??

What about all that time in between??

Why didn't my brother change his own life in those five years?

Why didn't he stop antagonizing the laws of his society?

Why didn't he try to stop his house from burning down instead of taking pictures?

Why didn't he work to rebuild it in the 9 months afterwards?

Why did he refuse a room from Delbert and instead live for free with a family who was dealing with cancer with their daughter?

Why did he get involved with the mom?

Why did he claim to be trapped even when he had two legs and a cell phone and family less than 30 minutes away?

Why was he so dead set on...

"It's Me against the World."

I don't know why Clayton could never see more than this. 

I don't know if his own genetics only doubled the angst within as his biological family is riddled with law aggression and suicide, drugs, depression, and despair. 

While our German programming never allowed for the indulgences of those outward behaviors, we gave him a spiritualism of such fatalistic despondency that it's almost hard to imagine how he even survived this long with both triggers cocked on a double-barreled shotgun.

Then Mom got more news from the pathologist as well.

He gave us his assurances that all of the proper protocol was followed if we decide to pursue an investigation into a possible homicide, but he changed the mental picture we had with some specific information. He said that the entrance wound and the exit wound were opposite of what we thought. And that information actually is the better explanation of the bullet trajectory....and for suicide, rather than murder.

With all of this news, I felt that familiar wave of intense nausea, like there isn't enough air to breathe or enough space to call my own. 

While I think the date of the death certificate is possibly suspect, especially to so quickly conclude that his death was actually a suicide, the very next day...

While I think that the local police are incredibly insensitive, even to the point of being intentionally cruel by only doing the very minimum required...

While I think that yes, my brother, did suffer from significant mental health issues stemming from the implosion of his innocence when Amber died...

...I also see my own bias.

...I see my own angry, defensive programming against the world.

...I see how clinging to the never-ending mystery entices us with hope for meaning.

...I see how the pain we can't help but feel blurs the truth that we refuse to hear.

And I see how very, very, very possible it is that Clayton pressed a gun behind his right ear and shot himself. Actually, for me it makes more sense that Clayton's death was a suicide and not a homicide....

But Mom will probably never believe it.

Just like Delbert probably still believes that the hospital killed Amber.

Just like some of the Mennonites from long ago prayed to God 

to do ANYTHING that might bring my parents back to the church

...and they hoped Jenson's death was His answer.

Only Jenson never rose again.

Neither did Amber.

And Clayton won't either.

What is more...our stories aren't unique.

Millions of people have suffered and suffered and suffered in stories worse than ours.

We have all died over and over again.

We become rooted in our griefs, searching for that space to breathe, that meaning for what all this was for....

Until the best we can come up with is one story of a man who briefly suffered that we might live, then disappeared 2000 years ago (with no apparent changes to our living conditions, material or otherwise) and we call that "Good News"??

Fuck that.

No news is good news.