Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
Before I left LA, there was one last conversation I had to have with my dead son…
In the early days after my son’s suicide I had to interact with people — strangers — who had seen his dead body (well before I was allowed to see him) and commented on how much “he looks like you.” Such comments were like a red hot poker being applied to my psyche.
But in the direct aftermath of these comments I noticed something odd began to happen: I found myself pausing longer and longer in front the mirror, examining my face… looking for my son’s visage.
Then I added a prop.
One of the first things I grabbed from his apartment when I went to settle his affairs were his glasses; he died without them on. They were probably one of the last things he touched before he brutalized his body. The connection to him, through those glasses, would still be strong I told myself, as if repeating it would turn my fancy to fact.
And then I would stand in front of the mirror with his glasses on, straining for his image to appear. And it did. So often that I ginned up a regular pantomime of this routine. And I felt no shame in it. Perhaps I am tilting toward what Freud talks about in Mourning and Melancholia as “a clinging to the object through the medium of a hallucinatory wishful psychosis.”
While staying in the LA to deal with the aftermath of my son’s suicide, I ensconced myself in the same fraying Motel 6 where he and I had last stayed together during another arduous trip I’d made from the east coast. At that time it was to get him out of jail after he’d gone into a manic state and gotten into trouble.
Before I left LA, there was one last conversation I had to have with my dead son…
Sylmar, CA, Motel 6, Rm 210 — This is the exact room where Torrey and I last stayed together. I’ve bribed the front desk clerk to let me in, the room is empty, quiet for the night.
Over the course of the last two days four total strangers who have seen my son have commented to me, “he looks exactly like you.” Each time I’ve mumbled a “thank you” and swallowed yet more pain. Right now I’m here to connect with him, my final act before I leave.
The glasses in the picture here are his, I snatched them from the night stand where he left them that terrible night. I put them on and stand in front of the mirror. They are just a tad blurry. I squint just a bit for more blur and my knees nearly buckle. My son is staring back at me with that “What’s up, Pops?” gleam in his eyes.
“I just needed to talk to you one last time. To see you and tell you I love you and want you back here.”
There is no answer. I can’t even coax a wry smile from his face. I beg him to answer me and the vision in the mirror goes all watery as the tears well up and further blur my vision.
“I won’t ask you why. I know the answer now. But there is no satisfaction in knowing as I thought there would be. You’ve broken my heart, irreparably. And I am afraid to leave this place, leave you behind forever.”
Still no answer, but I can now see him crying, as if he is sorry for the pain and suffering he’s wrought. I remember him sobbing uncontrollably like this one other time, when after an earlier suicide attempt he said, “Dad, I am just so, so lonely. To my bones. I can’t stand it any more.” I talked, perhaps preached, to him about all the people in his life that loved him and cared about him. I don’t think he ever bought it.
His eyes blink back the tears.
“I have to go now, too. I have to start down my own long road back from this nightmare. You will always, always be with me.”
He nods.
I take off the glasses and what I have managed to conjure through a sheer force of will for about 97 seconds is lost.
I walk out and close the door. I will never return to this spot again. My journey starts now.
