Seeing Jeff and Answered ???'s

I began to feel a strong alienation from the kids- especially Tierney. They weren't sharing. They weren't talking. Worst of all- they weren't letting me mother them. And I needed to mother them so much. I felt alienated from Tim too. He wasn't dealing with this at all. He was angry. And since I was guilty and totally sad, for the first time in 20 years of marriage we were strangers. It is very hard to have your best friend also be your dead child's father. Tim couldn't be my friend...he couldn't be anything...all he could be was in the kitchen cleaning and it was clean- every minute of every day. And so the lonliness and alienation continued. it continued through shopping at Target for clothes- it continued through the day...it continued until that night when Tim and I had to go visit Jeff at the funeral home and see him alone for the first time, since we saw him all bloody in the car.
We tried not to be nervous. But we were...
And so Tim grabbed my hand and we prayed....
Together, hand in hand, we went into the funeral home. It was quiet- so deathly quiet. Scott ushered us into his office and we began to talk about Jeff and his service the next day. I began to ask all kinds of questions. Did he get the autopsy back? Was it an accident? Was it quick? He didn't suffer, did he?  I watched Scott's face and he looked at me and then at Tim. "You though this could be an accident?" He looked totally puzzled. When we explained that we had been told that the shot was a chest wound- Scott then got an awful sorry look on his face. "No this was no accident. It was definately a purposeful, quick self inflicted head wound."
I felt like I was going to throw up. So all of my hopes that Jeff didn't mean to do this were gone. He had meant to do this and he had meant to do this intentionally. Scott explained that because there was so much blood, that possibly before the EMT's got into the car- they may have thought they were dealing with a chest wound. But it was not. It was most assuredly not. My son..my little boy, had shot himself inthe back of the throat- completely blowing a hole in the top of his head. In 99% of the cases of this kind of wound, their face is completely blown up. But Jeff was the 1%. his face was totaly intact. Thus this meant that they were able to get his eyes and now two people in Ohio could see. They got tissue and saved many other lives as well.
My mind was reeling.
I don't remember much after that ...I was in some kind of a morbid shock. All I could think of was that Jeff had meant to kill himself. My one shred of hope was gone. As far as I was concerned this finalized my guilt and I pronounced myself guilty.
"Are you ready to go in?" Tim asked as I realized that we were at the door to the visitation room. Ooh no- back to reality...and so I nodded numbly as we walked into face Jeff's body and my night of total insanity.