Shootin' (or what I did on my fifth wedding anniversary, and the bizarre way my life has turned out)

I grew up in Montana, where guns are part of the culture.  However, I’ve never really been a fan.  Actually, I’ve been known to say, “I hate guns.”  To me they have always been a symbol of everything violent and dangerous.  I know too many people that have been hurt by them, both accidentally and on purpose, by themselves and by others.  I just don’t like them.  I want to stay away from them.

Sawan owned several when we got married.  He moved into my condo and I told him that I loved him and accepted everything about him, so the guns could come, but I wanted them put away safely.  I wanted them in his closet, where I wouldn’t see them.  I asked him to lock them, and he promised.

When he died, my brother didn’t want the guns in the condo with no one staying there, so he went to get them.  I told him they were all locked and I had no idea about keys, I would never even look at the guns with Sawan, so he hadn’t shown me where anything was kept.  My brother and dad went to find them, and, I suppose luckily, none of them were locked.  As far as I know this is the only thing that he kept secrets about.

I found out the night before last, from one of my best friends, that he had run into Sawan at a gun show once and Sawan had made him promise not to tell me that he was there.  I also heard stories, when we were all sharing about his life of adventure “pre-me,” in the weeks after he died, about shotguns and sliding glass doors and non-returned apartment damage deposits that I had never heard.

This is one of my greatest regrets.  I regret that it was a part of his life that he loved and I wouldn’t enter into because of my fear.  Guns are something that, as I’ve gotten to know other men (like, my brother), are deeply connected to their masculinity and I wouldn’t share that with Sawan.  It makes me sad.

When my brother took the guns that were Sawan’s and agreed to lock them up (and I know that they are, because I tried to open that closet at my parents’ the other night and couldn’t) and take care of them, he also made me promise that I would shoot them.  On Sunday, I did this for the second time.

It was Sunday, July 1, that I did this, which may seem to you like a strange way to spend my anniversary.  We had decided to do it that day because there were three of us that were trying to get together to do it and that was the first day we were all available.  I hadn’t thought through the date when I agreed to it.  It ended up being the best thing I could have done that day.  Being with my brother and my friend, who are both very gentle with me, getting out any aggression I might have been feeling by firing a powerful weapon, and getting good quality time with these two amazing guys was a pretty great way to spend my anniversary.

Plus, I felt like a bad-ass, which is always fun.  Sawan would have been proud.

Shooting Sawan's Smith and Wesson (I call it the Dirty Harry Gun)

Gabe and Jon.  I try to pay attention when they're talking about guns but it literally sounds like another language to me, so I find myself thinking a lot about what I'm going to wear the next day.