Questions And What Ifs

The days after Alex's death went in haze.I was crying all the time and was waiting for the night to come that I could go to sleep and escape the reality. The nights were my savior. The mornings were my enemy.

There were so many questions and what ifs left.

Was it really a suicide or was it an accident? Like I told in my previous post Alex had told his "girlfriend" that the gun was not loaded. Did he lie to her or did he forget that he had loaded the gun? According to the police's investigation it was a suicide. They found out in Alex's postmortem that he had been drunk, but not under any drugs. They also found out that there was something wrong with his lungs, maybe early stages of lung cancer.

Would Alex still be alive if his friends would not have called him and asked him to come back to the party? Or was he planning to do it anyway, maybe at home? Or what would have happened, if those friends he had tried to call would have been at home?

If Alex was suicidal why he had wanted to stop smoking? Why did he have a haircut? Why was he so excited about his summer job? If he had wanted to die, would he really had energy and interest to all those things?

Did Alex get his idea about a suicide from me? I was the one who was talking with him about suicide and telling him that he should not ever do anything to himself. Did I plant these thoughts to his mind as some kind of option for escaping his troubles? I've also been questioning if I had been even closer with him, maybe he had opened up more with me about things that were bothering him. Maybe I could have helped him to deal with his feelings. Additionally, I blamed myself that I did not protect him better from my father's negative behavior.

Did Alex really have an intention to kill his friend(s)? Or did he take his gun just to show off and threaten them? Alex had never been violent person, the opposite. Did he panic when he heard that the police were coming and due that the only way out was to kill himself? Did he realize that in what kind of trouble he had been if the police caught him?

Was Alex in some kind of psychosis? His friends had told the police that he sounded different and did not even look like himself? Had he lost his mind that night?

The hardest question for me however was that would Alex still be alive if he had a more understanding and supporting father? And I must admit, that for years and years I was convinced that this was the case. I blamed my father for everything that happened. I never said it to him face to face, because I knew it would kill him to hear that. But in a way I think he knew what I thought. And I think he blamed himself as well. There was one incident which actually proves that. Couple of years after Alex's death my father was insisting that I should start to drive a car again (I had had a minor accident and after that I was afraid to drive). I told him, that I won't drive, because I'm scared that something will happen. I also added that how would he feel that I start to drive because he asked me and then I would got in a serious accident? His answer was breathtaking: "Are you saying that ALSO your death would be my fault?". I was speechless and we never talked about it anymore.

All these questions, what ifs and blames where haunting me for years and years. The last matter about my father was haunting me over 10 years. All my family was however sure about one thing. If somebody had to die in that night, it had to be Alex. It's an awful thing to say, but still it's better that he took his own life than no-one's else's.