My wife’s beloved and jovial grandfather committed suicide with a .38 revolver after a prolonged bout of health issues that left him feeling desperate and dependant on his family for care. My wife’s father finds his dad dead with pistol laying next to him. After the funeral, we’re going through the possessions of the estate, and seeing that pistol laying on the table and watching everyone relive that loss was just terrible.

15 years later, my wife’s father dies of heart issues. and invariably we find it again amongst her father’s possessions. It compounded the feeling of loss already being felt by the sudden and unexpected death of her father.

My brother-in-law has it now and has already had one stroke, and is petty shitty at taking care of himself. We expect he won’t be around too much longer, and we know we get to revisit that damn gun again. Should it come to us, I’ll melt it with a torch into slag and drop it into a lake to rust into nothing.

I realize that we’re the last ones to know and feel what pain that weapon was at the center of. Our kids weren’t even alive when it was used that way, and they’d likely see it as a family curiosity piece. That said, like our family members, it needs to be put to rest once and for all. It’s been a part of too much pain.