May sucks.  It's going to suck for the rest of my life, and those of quite a few people I love.  May 29th especially sucks.  It's the day my new granddaughter Kathy decided to learn if she could fly.

My daughter Tammy waited until she was 38 to get married for the first time, to a guy she'd known since she was sixteen.  My girls, about 2-1/2 years apart, ran with the same crowd in their teens -- most of whom at one time or another spent time living on our sofa.  They were a troubled bunch, and we lost a few of them in later years to their attempts to become happier through chemistry.  Most of them were basically good kids, though, and the girls are still friends with a lot of them today.  Her sister Donna, members of the old gang and her new stepdaughter, comprised Tammy's wedding party.  (Her sister, an accomplished baker, made the cake, and Dad took the pictures.  She wanted it cheap and simple.  That's my girl.)

My sons-in-law are great guys.   They make me happy, because they love my girls unreservedly and treat them the way they deserve to be treated.  Dave, Tammy's husband, actually came to me and asked my permission to marry my daughter.  How many dads get to have that experience these days?    Previously married, he came to us with a gorgeous 16-year-old daughter, and they both captured our hearts almost instantly. 

Kathy had her problems, including depression and a tendency to try too hard to be perfect.  Without going into the details of a childhood that included maternal abandonment and caring for a younger sister when she should have been experiencing kidhood,  let's just say that she came by her difficulties unsurprisingly.  Not too long after she came into our lives and hearts,  she got involved in a relationship.

Sam is a nice kid, and I think he really loved her.  But neither of them had any idea of what a healthy relationship looked like, and they fumbled around even more than most as a result.  Kathy experimented with alcohol and, as a result of that and not handling her medications properly, ended up in acute care a couple of times for suicidal thoughts and one major threat.  When she returned from treatment, on meds, things looked about as good as they could have.  Depression is a tricky foe, however, and she was perhaps not as vigilant as she should have been.  Who knows?

We're pretty sure she was off her meds for a few weeks.  We do know that, one night, she had a fight with Sam after some drinking.  Then she turned off her cell phone, got in her new Hyundai, drove to the top of the tallest bridge in Florida, placed her wallet and driver's license neatly on the seat, and climbed over the railing.  We've spent a lot of time trying to convince ourselves that she felt as though she was free at last, and that she never knew when she got to the water, 200 feet below.

I feel ripped off.  So does my wife.  We'd just started loving her.  Her dad and everyone else who loved her were -- and still are -- devastated.  Being a dad, though, I feel worst for Tammy, who so loved being a Mom at last, and having both a daughter and a friend.  I cried on Mother's Day, and I'm crying now.  We'll all be wrecks the last week of the month.

Mother's Day sucks.  May sucks.  Bridges suck.  I'm still incredibly angry at Kathy, the circumstances of her life, the inability of professionals to just FIX her, my helplessness, the god I don't believe in, and the world in general.

But I save my most intense anger -- hate -- for the asshole who stalked her after her death.  There is some sick bastard who keeps track of suicides, and writes nasty stuff on his website about the victims and their families.  I loathe that sociopath with all the disgust at my disposal.  I will not tell you his site, just as I have not used real names in this post.  I don't want anyone to inadvertently lead him here, and I certainly don't want anyone to flatter him by visiting his shithole of a website.  I've personally gone quite out of my way to avoid finding out who he is, although I could easily do so, because I've got a lot of anger to discharge here.  It's probably not a good thing for me to know.

As a person who has studied such things, I can understand his pathology -- but I can't excuse it.  Evil is evil, and...  Well, enough of that.  Enough of this.

Enough of fucking May.