Worth Writing

Family ties

When my mother returned home from PEI where she witnessed her brother’s death I sat on the end of my parent’s bed as she unpacked and waited for her to cry.  When she didn’t show any signs of tearing up after a while I made some remark about her not crying, though I can’t remember what it was now.  I do remember her response being that “there’s nothing to cry about.  He’s gone.  It’s over.”  I was not about to accept that.  Not after Geordie.

When we were in grade one or two, around there somewhere, the next door neighbour boy about my age, Geordie, was hit by a car outside the school.  When he died later in the hospital my mother came to inform me of the (to her) solemn news.  I was sitting at a small desk in my bedroom when she came into the room openly weeping, a confusing sight I’d only seen once before.  When she sobbed, “Geordie is dead,” my gut reaction was relief and I said simply, “Good.” 

Oh. Man.  Wrong answer.  Her face contorted in rage and she clocked me on the side of the head so hard I fell of my chair onto the floor.  I remember looking up and seeing her through blurred vision obviously yelling at me but hearing it like it was way off in the distance, but mostly hearing just a loud buzzing sound.  I got the gist of what I couldn’t hear though: you cry when people die, no matter what.

I utterly loathed and feared the kid.  To this day I maintain there was something seriously wrong with the boy.  He used to hide behind bushes to catch me unawares, then knock me down and shove dirt and grass in my mouth.  If he saw me on my bicycle he’d chase me and push me over.  I would go home crying to my mother with skinned whatever and bloody something, tell her what he did, and she’d say that she didn’t believe me, that he wouldn’t do such a thing and I’d made it up.  Time and again.  I learned never to ride my bike when I was alone except in circles on the driveway.  He would also collect his dog’s poo off the lawn and throw it at me, or smear it on me with a stick if he could sneak up close enough.  Whenever I wasn’t ready on time to leave for school with my brother, the neighbour psycho-boy was absolutely guaranteed to catch me and shove me painfully face first into one of the many stands of bushes on the way to school.  Yes, I thought it was a very good thing for me that he was suddenly gone.  It was like a gift from the universe. 

I was thinking about the unfortunate events of his death announcement as I poked and prodded my mother for information about her brother’s death, determined to make her cry.  I was a teenager at that point and used to her rage if she should happen to snap that way instead.  But she did cry.  He was her younger brother and she loved him very much.  It turns out that he was an alcoholic that died of cirrhosis of the liver.  “He used to be a big man,” she wept.  “He used to be a great big strapping 300 pound man!”  She told me he was tall, but I forget how tall.  “When he was dying [another brother] picked him up in his arms and cradled him like a baby.  He’d just wasted away to nothing.  He was just skin on bones!”  She wept bitterly as she told me how he’d asked for more alcohol even on his hospital death bed.  She kept saying, “I’ll never understand!  I’ll never understand!”

So I got the tears out of her I was looking for, but I got more information than I expected.  She told me next that her father, who died the year my sister was born (as I recall), had been an alcoholic as well, a violent one who used to beat her mother.  Gramma?  She was so tiny!  Anticipating a statement of hatred toward her father to follow for treating her mother that way I was totally confused when she instead expressed hatred and disgust for her mother for being weak and beaten.  I could tell when Gramma was still alive and lived with us that my mother resented her mother and barely tolerated her presence but could never understand why because my grandmother never argued with her and always seemed to do what my mother wanted (from what I can recall).  My mother said she would never forgive Gramma for being so pathetic and weak.  Years later, my mother further complicated my confusion on the matter by telling me how very much she loved her father and that when he died she “wanted to crawl in the coffin with him.”  My stomach lurched when she went on to say how much she admired him for being such a strong man that made people listen to him.  It had always been my grandmother that I admired for being soft spoken, gentle, accepting, and never rising to my mother’s bait. 

You can learn a lot about a person by looking at their heroes, but it kind of depends on what you look at, doesn’t it?