"Kill me..."

         The day was October 8, the fifth anniversary of when my mother was killed during a robbery.  The family was struggling without my mother's income.  Even though my father made a good income himself, it was not quite enough to support five children.  His job gave him constant pressure, working sixteen hour days just to get the bills paid.  Without my mother around, my father was depressed regularly, and he became a drinker because of it, which did not help help him any.  He would come home, more drunk than a college frat boy (he made sure we were in bed first though), and then passed out until morning when he went back to his job.          
One night, he came home looking like he just went through a World War.  "I just got laid off," he said quietly and shamefully as he walked to his chair in the living room of which he usually occupies.  "What am I going to do now?  I can't pay the bills anymore, I'll have to go to the streets and beg like trash. Actually you know what, screw this..."          
He went to the cabinet and pulled out his pistol that he owned from when he was a cop.  My father walked up to me, pressed the steely cold butt of the gun in my hand, and whispered his request with pain in his eyes.  "Kill me..."