More than one thousand people in America commit suicide each year by intentionally inhaling carbon monoxide fumes secreted from a car’s exhaust. My mom was one of them. She suffered from depression and schizophrenia for much of her life. Twelve years before she took her life she was at the wheel when the two of us were involved in a horrific automobile accident. Out of respect for her and the mental illness that slowly cleaved away and finally hollowed out the person who gave birth to me, I cling to the belief that what happened that night was just an accident, nothing more. But there are moments when I lose that grip and link the accident to her later suicide, resulting in a debilitating sense of fear and guilt. 

She rebelliously thumbed her nose at her strict Mormon upbringing where she was pre-ordained a stay-at-home mom. She earned a degree in education from the University of Utah and took a job teaching grade school in the small, rural eastern Oregon town where I was born years later. Hot in the summer, frigid in winter, my hometown marks a boundary between the rugged high desert and the bountiful agricultural land that produces an abundance of potatoes and sugar beets. Not long after I was born she quit teaching to care for me. The stress of being new parents, compounded by the angst of our poverty, was all it took to push their fractured relationship over the edge. My parents divorced not long after I was born. 

I simultaneously hated and missed my dad after he left us. I didn’t understand why he left or why for years refused to drive the eight hours to see me. I became very attached to mom during this time and still hold tightly to many deeply cherished memories of her. The two of us were regulars at the local Easter egg hunt and Christmas parade. In summer we would crowd into the old, wooden grandstands at the oval racetrack just outside of town to watch the weekly demolition derby races, cheering on Earl Inman and his rusted-out Chevy, “The Gray Ghost.”  The valley where we lived was regularly the target of violent and loud thunderstorms, but she always knew precisely when to rescue me from my secret hiding spot beneath the bed.

When dad deserted us he left behind his two hunting dogs. I was very fond and protective of these dogs. One day I overheard the man next door tell her that the next time our dogs went into his yard he would have them picked up and put in the dog pound.  Later that afternoon, while she was napping, I slipped out, went next door, and jerked out every one of the neighbor’s blooming tulips from his yard.  When he came to our door to accuse me of the damage she just laughed in his face, telling him that I was too sweet and innocent to do such a thing. I never knew if she believed what she was saying or not.

One afternoon her boyfriend Larry came by to take us out to dinner at her favorite restaurant.  I was seven at the time and going out to eat was a rare treat. I was busy devouring a plate of fried chicken when suddenly the two of them erupted, yelling at one another. She and I left the restaurant alone and walked home. Later that night she shook me from a sound sleep, telling me to get in the car right that instant. Her glazed, darting eyes and jerky movements were anxious and erratic. I was barefoot, bleary-eyed, and still in my pajamas when I climbed into the passenger seat of our 1959, brown and white Oldsmobile Dynamic 88. The car had sharp lines and tail fins that today remind me of the original Batmobile. 

I had no idea of where we were going in the middle of the night. I was too afraid to ask. I assumed that we were headed across the border to Idaho where Larry lived. I didn’t care much for Larry and Larry didn’t care much for me. The two of them would argue, slam doors, and yell at one another, at me, and at my dogs. She was always sad after seeing him. I was much happier when it was just the two of us.

Climbing into the Oldsmobile I was greeted by the cold, stiff beige, and gray vinyl interior. The cavernous, icy metal dashboard was punctuated with analog gauges, radio dials and a glove compartment knob that radiated a sharp and unforgiving voice with its’ knife-like design. The front seat was so wide I could easily stretch out my four-foot frame lengthwise. In 1959 seat belts were a costly and optional accessory, one that we couldn’t afford. The absence of seat belts on such a wide seat should have made for a comfortable, uninterrupted spot for a small passenger to stretch out and sleep. Tonight, there would be no sleep. 

She was driving faster than usual, struggling to keep the car on our side of the two-lane highway. It was a pitch-black dark night. The thin crescent moon was heavily obscured by clouds. The highway’s black asphalt hungrily devoured what little light illuminated from the car’s headlights. Once or twice the driver’s side tires slipped off the pavement, gravel pelting the underside of the car as we dropped onto the narrow strip separating the pavement from the irrigation ditch that ran parallel to the highway. 

Suddenly the car left the pavement and crashed into a concrete overpass, impacting a support pillar where the drivers’ side headlight was located. The force of the crash threw me forward, my small frame slamming first into the metal dash and then crumpling onto the floor of the car. I then was bounced between the underside of the hard metal dashboard and the uncarpeted floorboard. When the car finally stopped moving the dashboard shed just enough light for me to see mom awake but bleeding badly from a cut on her head. I was trapped between the collapsed dash and the floor of the car as the engine continued to run. I don’t know how long we might have been trapped or how we eventually got out of the car. Fortunately, neither of us had any serious injury from the accident. I never saw the car again after that night.

The next year my parents reconciled and remarried. We moved to Portland where dad had just taken a new job. To the outside observer we appeared to be a normal suburban family in the 60’s. But from the inside looking out, the stresses and fracturing of the family were loudly and violently evident.

A few years later, after dropping out of high school and running away from home with the girl next door, I joined the US Navy. One Friday morning I was sitting at a gray, government-issue, metal desk in a small, drab office crammed into an upstairs corner of a cavernous aircraft hangar at Naval Air Station North Island when I heard the only phone in the office ring. With that one brief call I learned that my mom had died earlier that day. 

Arriving home several hours later I found my dad in a darkened bedroom towards the rear of the house. 

“What happened, dad”?

"Garage" was the only answer I got.

I stood up, walked down the dark hallway, through the dark paneled and dated kitchen. The door to the garage seemed difficult, sticky to open. Pulling harder on the doorknob I can vividly recall the sound it made, the sound of packaging tape being peeled off a box. A sound that can, even today, send me into a freefall of despair. With the door to the garage now open I reluctantly turned on the bright, incandescent light. The garage had a foul odor to it, one that I couldn't identify. Looking around I noticed that all the doors and windows of the garage had been meticulously taped shut with silver duct tape. It was then that I realized that my mom had committed suicide by parking the car in the garage, carefully taping any gap, or opening where fumes could escape, turned on the car, and flooded the two-car garage with deadly carbon monoxide. And there it was. The old, blue 1969 Buick wagon she used to shuttle her Camp Fire girl troop from place to place and that this morning she used to end her life. 

Over the next few days more details came to light that still haunt me all these years later. When dad found mom in the car that morning the engine was not running. The gas gauge still read half-full. Did she had a change of heart and tried unsuccessfully to unwind what she had started?  The Police gave me an envelope they found taped to the Buick’s interior rearview mirror. Addressed to me, and in my mother's handwriting, she wrote that she was sorry (I guess for taking her life) but after two pages of writing, the blue ink from her felt pen became increasingly unreadable, until it just dribbled off the bottom of the page. No ending, no closure, no goodbye. What else had she intended to say? I read that letter just one time and disposed of it.

How her suicide ties to the automobile accident when I was seven years old remains dark and disturbing. Was that accident a desperate plea for help or something more sinister? Maybe it is better that I don’t know. In that seam that exists between knowing and not knowing lies an ache, a dull, continuous pain that never goes away. Since the day she took her life my world exists in two dimensions of time. Memories are earmarked, cataloged, and stored as having occurred either before or after her death. I curate a separate collection of faces, words, images, sounds, and smells that are vivid, clear, fresh, and painfully raw. I suppose this is how my brain has learned to cope with her death. 

Losing a parent is hard enough. In the years since my mom took her life I am still unable to answer any of these questions. I try to remember her shiny, vibrant, and brilliant moments. I manage through her death by packing it away into some secret, locked away, and dark space deep in my memory. I will never know what it was that convinced her that dying was better than living. There is a guilt that those touched by a suicide share of  "why didn't I see this coming?”  

David Mills is an aspiring author from Seattle, Washington. He has a BS in Economics from Portland State University and a Post Graduate Certificate in Writing from UC Berkeley. He is  also a proud US Navy veteran and served as a helicopter aircrewman and rescue swimmer from 1975 to 1979.
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Published 31st March 2024.