Genetics and......

For some, genetics are a blessing. Inheriting your great-grandmother's beauty or your grandfather's intelligence, for instance. For others, genetics is a bitch.

In my family genetics has not always been kind. We have our mother's mental illness and predilection for suicide married to our father's addictions, plus his own mental illness. For most of us, we fought the addictions and created successful families of our own. Some have not been as blessed. My oldest nephew is an addict. My second oldest nephew is in Parchman, Mississippi's state prison, for assault and rape. His brother just finished a sentence there for assault. My youngest brother's son is an alcoholic. Others have fought mental illness. Thanks be to God, none of my children are addicts.

Last Saturday, both sides of the family tree met up in my oldest niece's youngest son. He called her and told her he loved her, told her that he could no longer live with the drugs and felt that he could not stop. He hung up the phone and shot himself in the head with a shotgun. His funeral is tomorrow.