By Paige Melton
A single word, tattooed on the inside of my left wrist. It’s usually covered up by my watchband, and when it’s not, it gets lost amid the Dickinson and Steinbeck quotes that cover most of my left forearm.
It’s my smallest tattoo, but it weighs me down in a way the others don’t.
Shatterpoint is the name of a Star Wars novel. I’ve never read it, but I had it permanently imprinted on my skin because it was Brother Stover’s favorite Star Wars novel, and Brother Stover killed himself on November 14th, 2023.
There was no funeral. Brother Stover didn’t want a funeral. Brother Stover believed the world would be better without him in it, and didn’t want to inconvenience anybody, but now I’ve got a tattoo on the inside of my left wrist that itches every time water gets under my watchband, which is kind of inconvenient.
My mom wouldn’t tell me how he did it, no matter how much I begged. She didn’t understand that I needed closure, and if there was no funeral, then I at least needed to know how it happened so that when my mind ruminated on his final moments, I didn’t have to run through every possible scenario, didn’t have to picture him dying six different ways, picture all the different rooms in the house Sister Stover may have found him in. The bathroom? The bedroom? A closet? His office downstairs, just off their family room, that contained all his Star Wars and Book of Mormon figurines?
The problem with knowing a house as intimately as I knew the Stover’s house is that it’s not hard to close my eyes and see the shadow of Brother Stover hanging from the ceiling superimposed on the memory of the night he bought Ben and I a Naked brand smoothie and said “Just don’t tell your parents you came over to the Stover’s house and got Naked.” Classic dad joke.
My mom never told me how it happened, and my wife insists it wouldn’t make a difference, and maybe she’s right, because her sister’s boyfriend hung himself at the beginning of 2021, and my wife wishes she could forget how it happened. But I’ll never know if it’s better not to know. Maybe somebody else would be able to let it go and move on, but my mind is wired to run in endless circles, constantly replaying all the different ways Brother Stover may have killed himself, and there’s not a high enough dose of Prozac to erase those images from my mind. So now, I just don’t sleep. Pretty inconvenient.
I hadn’t spoken to Ben since 2018. Before I knew who I was, I thought I would marry Ben, and we’d live in the same neighborhood we grew up in, send our kids to the same schools we went to, and be buried next to each other in the Spanish Fork cemetery. The problem was that Ben wasn’t aware of these plans, and not even 15 years of friendship was enough to keep us in touch after he rejected me. Twice.
But the night Brother Stover died, none of that mattered anymore. Brother Stover may not have actually been my father-in-law, but I loved him like he was, and Ben may not have been the love of my life, but he was still the boy who had to get staples in his head after falling off the zipper on the elementary school playground, the boy who chugged a V8 in eight seconds flat, who taught me to cha-cha in the kitchen, and showed off at the back-to-school party by doing handstands, and danced with me in the dark, sweaty gym at the stake dance, and laughed when I jumped at the birthday party scene in Signs, and brought me ice cream and Cow Tales when I was sick. He was still the boy who had carried the weight of my hopes and dreams for a “normal” life for years, without even realizing it. And now, his dad was dead. After five years, I had to text Ben. Damn inconvenient.
I don’t remember the first time I met Brother Stover. I must have been at least nine. He was our home teacher, assigned by the bishop to come share a gospel message with our family at least once a month.
He would bring us Twinkies when he came over; he called them “little pieces of heaven.” When it was announced that Twinkies were going to be discontinued in 2012, he bought as many boxes as he could find, trying to stock up. When it was announced that Twinkies would be returning in 2013, he celebrated by buying even more Twinkies. It wasn’t just gospel messages and Twinkies, though. We became close with the Stover family; so close that, while they were at Disneyland, we were the ones who watched their youngest daughter, Madison, take her first steps, since we were watching her while they were out of town.
I don’t remember the last time I saw Brother Stover. I don’t remember the last time I spoke to him. I don’t know if he knew that I had come out, or if he would approve. If he would be happy for me. He had been such a key part of my life, but especially my life in the church. More than anyone besides my parents, he had instructed me in the gospel, in what it meant to be Christlike. He taught me how to read the scriptures, how to receive personal revelation; he made learning about the gospel fun and engaging. He wrote to me every week on my mission, sending spiritual thoughts and deep insights from his personal studies. He played a large part in shaping me into the person I am, and I never got to tell him how important he was, how much he meant to me. Was I ever going to get the chance to tell him?
For the first time, I wondered if my choice to marry my wife would preclude me from heaven, keep me from being able to tell Brother Stover how much I loved him. Had I betrayed the man who had mentored me so well for so long? And if someone as good and selfless and kind and generous as him had been killed by the insidious poison of depression, what chance did I have? I spiraled. My doctor had to adjust my medication. F—ing inconvenient.
I got the tattoo a year after he died. I chose Shatterpoint because it was the name of his favorite Star Wars book. I chose the inside of my left wrist because it’s hidden most of the time, private. I don’t have to answer inconvenient questions about it. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
But sometimes, I wonder if I chose that word, that placement, as a reminder. A reminder of how easy it is to break. A reminder that I am no better than Brother Stover, no better than my sister-in-law’s boyfriend, no less susceptible to the siren song of resignation. A backup plan; a “break glass in case of emergency.” An escape.
A reminder that I have a shatterpoint.
