In the second chapter of "Fun Home" it is labeled "A Happy Death “and according to the first chapter, I could see why Alison believed it was happy. She was much older when her father died (in her college years) and seemed as though she never really made that attachment to him. She looked very unphased in the first few pages at the funeral about his death. It was sudden and somewhat expected by Alison. He was allegedly hit by a truck but Alison believed that he planned it out to happen according to his past actions and clues throughout her childhood.
She remembers sneaking peaks of books that he had highlighted and most of the lines were clues to his death and why he might have committed suicide. "He discovered the cruel paradoxy by which we always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love-first to their advantage, then to our disadvantage"...."A fitting epitaph for my parents marriage" At the time of his death, Alison’s parents were getting a divorce and I believe that Alison foresaw this event taking place. Another clue for her was his head stone when he died; she had remembered the shape of it when he described it to her one day when she was younger. "He had an obelisk collection, in fact, and his prize specimen was one in knee-high jade that propped open the door to his library." It's ironic that he used it as his tombstone when he died because he tells Alison that it symbolizes life.
She tells her mother when she arrives home "I think it was something he always meant to do." Meaning, she had observed her father so much even though she wanted nothing to do with him. It goes to show you that maybe she really did love her father and maybe she just wanted a little attention from him or a closer and stronger relationship with him. Although if you look back, he was always in her life up until that point, just not in the way she wanted him to be. It was very hard for her to figure out her dad; to her he will always be a mystery.
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