Death and my f %$#@d up family.

Death has a way of bringing out the worse in people. Perhaps it is only our western culture, though. I hope so, it is a sad world and it can only be sadder if every family is like mine. I am going to bore everyone with background. Of course, it is the world as I have come to know it, some of it contains the truth of others, but most of it is my own.

First off, let me say we were never a close family. We all had our secrets. I tried to keep the darkest family secret, as I knew it, from my siblings and anyone from the outside. No one was allowed to come over; our mother would not permit visitors outside of family members because the house was always disorganized. I think she had an ideal in her head that if wasn’t matched, than no one should know. Was the place really that dirty? I think much of it was not in good repair. Seems like my dad tried to do things and never finished the jobs he started.

The house we all grew up in was not too exciting, yet contained a remarkable feature. There were big windows, so there was a lot of light. The house was situated facing west, with a back slider for the backyard, facing east. Two of the bedrooms had a one window, which went from floor to ceiling. The other bedroom had a window along the entire east wall and the south wall had a high window. This one was the largest bedroom and eventually, it housed the three youngest children, two girls and a boy, in order of age, Shannon, Daniel, and Stacy. Our sister Micki and I shared the front bedroom with the large window and our parents had the other rear bedroom, with that one large window. I don’t have the history of this decision, but Dad and mom decided these two large windows needed to be only half as big, so the bottom half was removed. That required making a wall, framing, tar paper, chicken wire, stucco and all. My parents window was completed, the outside of the other one never was. Well, I can’t really say never, it might have been sometime after my dad bought our mom out of the house in the early 1980’s.

The house had two halls, one short one that came in from the front door, and the other that made a right turn off of it and ran to the back of the house. Off of this longer hall was the bathrooms and all bedrooms, included was the closet where the furnace was and at the end of the hall a ‘linen’ closet. The shorter hall had two closets off of it, one was not very large and contained the water heater and the other was large with room to hang things on both sides. The shelves above the coat racks held such mysteries as the 8 mm camera that was never used in my memory, and board with large flood lights attached, I presume to use for light for the filming. Other items that were out of reach were an old pair of binoculars, but nothing else of interest I can remember. My dad moved the water heater from the small closet, made it only a few inches wide (I think we kept the broom in there) and left the door. The space that was the closet was opened up to the kitchen, which was situated just off the short hall, to the left, as you walked in the front door. This gave us a pantry once the washer and dryer were moved from the kitchen. The floor of which was never finished, there were no doors, and so the shelving dad added, made of plywood, was open. The water heater and laundry machines were moved to the ‘breeze way’ that separated the house from the garage. The garage wasn’t totally detached, there was a roof that ran from the house to the garage. Dad closed it in, putting a door on either side and plumbed it with a utility sink, making the breeze way, which is what we always called it, a laundry room.

Another adventure in remodeling was removing the ¾ wall between the kitchen and the dining area. A half wall was built closer to the living room, but, once again, never finished. The mish mash of odd jobs left the house untidy. On top of that, there were always small children around, five of us born with seven years of each other. My mom was a stay at home mom and my dad was always working. Well, I don’t think he was always working so much as he didn’t like to be home, so he didn’t come home. Where does one go when one doesn’t want to come home? A pub / bar. If you drink every night, you become addicted to alcoholic beverages.

Some how, I ended up being the one to take care of things around home. I have to admit I was full of ideas of what was right and how things ought to be. I missed having my dad to hang around with. When I was young, and being the oldest, we spent more time together – or should I say I would hang out with him. He disappeared into a side business, owning taverns. Too bad for the family; he was gone now on the weekends, every night, and I am certain many times it was to be away from our mom. He probably didn’t want a big family, but he never said it to us kids. That was what matters, and I know he loved all of us, if he wasn’t always proud or happy with us.

Years went by, he moved away or mom kicked him out – either way, there was less money for everything because he now had to support his own home and ours. I know he was not comfortable seeing mom and he visits with his kids on the weekends were strained at times, but he never skipped a weekend with us that I remember. He did, however, become more dependent on alcohol. In the meantime, at the age of 49, he had a heart attack while feeling bad and in the hospital, lucky for us and him because they could save him, with quintuple bypass surgery, he was a ‘new’ man. He gave up smoking and drinking for only a short time. He got more exercise (golf) but not enough and he was soon smoking and drinking again. Perhaps he was more moderate with it, but he would never be free of the addictions that were killing him.

Eventually, he bought half the house from mom, she had money to go to live in Oregon and he now had the house, which he shared with Daniel. Dad had a stroke in October of 1988. I was in Australia playing softball and found out about it on my way back to the states. I could not take time off to care for him, but he had my sister Micki willing and able to help, and Daniel lived with him. Only Daniel did not accept how bad off dad was. Micki was beside herself with taking care of him without the help of Daniel to watch him when she wasn’t around. Did dad need watching? Sure, he could not remember to take medication, but he could remember how to get to the local bar and Daniel did not take the car keys away from him. My dad, who could not remember to eat, cook, form four word sentences, or speak coherently, could drive a ½ mile away to find drink.

I took dad for a visit to the speech therapist at the local hospital. She was more like a cognition therapist because she dealt with understanding, or communication both in and out. She said the girls in the family, Micki and I, had no problem understanding the importance of this therapy. Our brother, however, would try to complete dad’s tasks for him and would say things like, “c’mon, you know you can do this, stop messing around.” She said that it is the boys who have a hard time accepting that their dad isn’t the strong man he once was. The morning I took dad to the therapist, I could smell a stale odor of an alcoholic beverage on his breath and about his person. Being an expert at intoxication, I knew he had not recovered from the effects of his alcoholic beverage consumption from the night before. I remember being furious at my brother for not taking steps to prevent this from happening. It was just a couple of days later that my dad suffered a final stroke while at the corner bar. He started acting strange, so the barkeep called my brother to come get him. Daniel arrived in time to see my dad collapse. He tried CPR, but nothing would have prevented dad’s death this time.

Death and my f %$#@d up family.

How dare my mom claim that she wasn’t allowed to grieve for our father, whom she was divorced from, when he died in 1988. Its 2006, what 18 years have gone by and she carries resentment for … wait until you get this … me! Yes, she blames me! How do you figure? Here is the crooked logic; I was cold to her at my dad’s funeral. Let’s see, I had stopped being clingy to my mom years before, as I grew up and as a teenager just could not take care of being the mom of the family. She had checked out of being responsible and I took over when I was young, hey, someone had to do it and I didn’t know it wasn’t my job.

It was hard to hear her talk about the abusive man my dad was to her. Yes, I did witness family violence, or shall I say, the aftermath. Dad rarely got into it with her in front of us kids. He also never spoke badly about her, even when I lived with him. I didn’t ask, but he didn’t volunteer… not like our mom, boy did she blurt out whatever she felt had on her mind. She was abusive verbally to us kids, very much so. I understand she was frustrated. I can accept that, but it did not help my feelings about myself and my abiding insecurities.

Oh, back to the cold at the funeral thing. I remember thinking I did not want to comfort my mom. I guess because I never have understood how she could speak in such a hateful way about dad over many years – as if I was a confidant, or therapist who should hear these things. To think she was feeling grief for herself was foreign to me and I if I wanted comfort, I certainly did not expect to gain it from her. Instead, I remember thinking this and still do, I would find no comforting but instead would have to give it, as I have given so much all of my life with mom.

I once got hurt at work, had to go to the hospital after a high speed, high impact traffic collision in which I was rear-ended. The one thing I did not want was mom to know about it. I did not want her taking a trip to my house and ‘take care of me’ because I believe it would be me taking care of her. I was in barely in condition to take care of myself, let alone anyone else, emotionally or any other way.

So how does she figure I didn’t let her grieve when our dad died? She gives too much power over herself to others. That is the operative issue here, she gives power away in order to be powerless, thereby blaming others for … everything that goes wrong.