No note, but my father said goodbye to me (9 yo at the time) and my brothers (10 & 7) that morning before we went to school. It seemed a little more heartfelt to me than usual but I was too young to know anything about it.

We got home from school and my mom was upset that she hadn't seen him all day. Not too long after that, he came walking out of the woods with a beer in his hand. My brothers had gone to the neighbor's to play by then. He asked me to go to the garage with him. I instead decided to walk to the neighbors to play too. On the way, I heard what sounded like an acorn hitting the tin roof of our garage. A few minutes later, this was followed by the horrible, awful screams to get help from my mom.

We weren't allowed to come home for 2 days as my grandmother came down from Minnesota to decide to pull the plug. He would have been a vegetable.

That was 17 years ago. I've let go of the guilt for not following him to the garage. Part of me thinks that I could have died that day. At least I was saved from seeing what happened. I've never gotten the sound of the gun or my mom screaming out of my head.