Family Tradition

My grandmother committed suicide with a 32 caliber revolver.

The police said she must have read up on it,

because she knew just where to put the bullet,

severing her spinal cord.

My mother took it hardest but the rest of us understood,

Grandma was in a lot of pain.

And whatever pills they gave her made her dizzy.

but that was before.

My grandmother committed suicide with a 32 caliber revolver,

And I sit here now in this chair because HIV attacked my spinal cord,

while I lay in the hospital comatose from pneumonia.

Months after my diagnosis I was told that I had 18 months to live,

because I didn't want to take the "cocktail" of horse pills like a puppet.

I take them now, 14 years later, because of my late mother.

But rendering me a cripple in a wheelchair was the icing on the cake.

The final straw that broke the camels back.

This had me asking, why? Why me? Wasn't I handling AIDS properly?

It's a lesson I didn't know I needed to learn, but I'm down.

AIDS has walled me in socially,

Shut me down emotionally,

and turned me off sexually,

I'm scared, angry.

alone.

But my grandmother committed suicide with a 32 caliber revolver.

and she had books like The Power of Positive Thinking and Dianetics

Her degenerated disks tossed those pages into the fire of contempt

But to make that decision to load the bullets into the Smith and Wesson,

one to make sure it worked and one for the job at hand,

then put that steel on the back of her neck and drop the hammer.

THAT TOOK GUTS.

Her suicide note simply read "I can't live like this anymore."

I have days when I think I can't go on.

When the morning pills make me vomit.

And the muscle spasms in my legs are like electric pulses from an overcharged battery

and that's when I think of Grandma,

but I'm not there quite yet,

I'm still addicted to tomorrow.

my grandmother committed suicide with a 32 caliber revolver

and my family understood that she was suffering,

and that's good because I don't intend to suffer either.