Life! Life is great or was until August 12, 2007, when my daddy tried to commit suicide.
I was about to be a sophomore in high school and was staying with a close friend on the Saturday night before. My friend and I were going to six flags that following Sunday. We woke up, was pumped up, and ready to go when this shocking call, that you would never think you would get, came through on her cell phone. It was my nana; she told me that my papaw had shot himself. We usually did not call my daddy that, so in my mind I was thinking of my grandpa. I was totally confused about the whole thing. I asked, “Who shot themselves?” She told me again but this time she called him my dad! My heart sank to the pit of my stomach like the Titanic. My stomach was in knots. I ran home and called my grandma, which was my daddy’s mom, and she had told me the whole story.
He had wrecked one of his friend’s car a couple of weekends before that and was truly upset about the whole thing. Then the following weekend, August 12, he was in the shower and his girlfriend, Jane, had heard a shot from in the living room, and she ran to the bathroom and told my daddy to let her in or else. My daddy said, “No! I’m fine!” She said that she was going to break in the door if he would not let her in. Therefore, she did. She saw the gun in the toilet and she looked at him and saw blood running from his chest on his left side just below his heart. The bullet had hit his lung and barely missed his heart and is now lodged in his shoulder.
I barely get to talk to or see him now, but sometimes when I go to Arkansas, my grandma and I go to see him. He is located in Jonesboro, Arkansas, but that was the last time I heard or saw anything about him.