The Aerie
Back from vacation, and yesterday was already sucky. Fortunately I
didn't try anything fancy like planning to work in the afternoon
following the funeral, because I was so emotionally drained that I
crashed hard when I got back home.
The funeral was awful, and in so many ways. Judy, who died Saturday of
breast cancer after a three year fight, was 57 with her first two
grandchildren on the way. Her daughter, Jody, was barely holding it
together, while her daughter-in-law was a bit more composed.
Judy was my wife's father's cousin, but had functioned more like an
aunt, and my wife had spent many of her teenaged years babysitting
Judy's kids, who are now all married.
We didn't make the kids attend as they hadn't known her THAT well (the
twins could remember her as "the lady from the weddings at the golf
course"). It would have been their fourth funeral this year, and taken
them out of school.
The Catholic funeral service itself seemed, as usual, to be trying to
console through routine, boredom, and annoyance. No matter how close
to the deceased I am, by the end I'm looking at my watch and saying
"WHEN can we get out of here?" The sermon was 95% about God and 5%
about Judy. It was as if a salesman showed up at a crematory wake and
dumped the urn on the floor in order to sell the new line of vacuums.
The priest's sermon singled out the deceased's expectant daughter and
gently scolded her for saying "It's not fair" and saying "How can you
call this a celebration?" to the priest before the service. When I was
on my vacation over the weekend I saw a woman with a T-shirt that read
"I'm blogging this." I felt the priest should have worn it when he
"consoled" the bereaved expectant daughter -- "It's alright dear, and
whatever you say I will use against you from the pulpit." After
scolding the woman for her pain, he went on to shake his holy
pom-pom's for God. I really wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up,
but I refrained with an effort. Really I'd think God could arrange for
better marketing.
Then of course I got stuck sitting next to my wife's father's sister,
the bitchy aunt who grabbed everything when Grandma died and sold it
all. Fortunately I'd already extracted the upright piano from the
basement for my wife, otherwise we'd have never seen it again. I'd
brought a pocket full of Kleenex and a good thing, since the old
harridan had brought none of her own. For some reason it's
particularly annoying to lend Kleenexes to someone who is bitchy,
short-sighted and selfish, but the alternative was to have her
snuffling next to me for the whole service.
Another odd thing was the deceased's mother. Judy had not gotten along
with the rest of her family, who she considered tremendously
self-centered and abusive (are we seeing a pattern here?). So she
specified that she did NOT want her mother or sisters attending the
funeral because "they would make it all about them." Oddly enough, by
attempting to prevent them from coming, she played directly into their
hands. When Judy's mother and sisters arrived, they behaved perfectly
well: but by singling them out in advance, Judy had inadvertently made
it "all about them." When they attended, contrary to her wishes,
everyone watched them closely.
It's odd the way these family issues play themselves out even after
death.
O.J. Simpson, Fidel Castro, Yassir Arafat, Moamar Qaddafi, Osama bin
Laden and Saddam Hussein are still alive. Steve, Jody, Brady and my
dad are dead. It's a good thing I don't believe in God, because if I
did I'd have to hunt Him down and kick His ass.
After a perfectly miserable and upsetting time burying the young
grandmother-to-be, I succumbed to my own family issues and went to
visit my brother.
After arriving home Tuesday night at 10:00 p.m. I was informed by my
wife that my mother had called: Chris was still in the psych ward at
the hospital, and was telling everyone who visited that his brother
was angry with him and didn't want to talk to him. I called my mother
(who I knew would be awake) and she confirmed this, and also told me
about how Chris had almost died on Saturday when his heartrate climbed
to 210 bpm.
Still sticky with an applique of parental guilt and shame, I headed
off to the psych ward directly from the burial. After the staff
scolded us for visiting outside of visiting hours ("Yeah, thanks the
first time I heard about the visiting hours was on the door over
there"), they let us in to visit him briefly.
First of all to reach the ward we had to pass through one locked door
with a camera, down a long antisceptic hall, and then approach the
desk. Behind the desk, the snarling nurses waited to scold us, then
released the lock on the second door. Robert Blake is out on bail: my
brother is locked behind two doors. Beyond were half a dozen rooms off
a short central corridor. Wandering in that hall were a couple of
orderlies, a stumpy-legged old woman being led gently by one arm, and
Chris, wandering by himself between the stark rooms. No television,
nothing to do or see or look at, just dingy ivory walls scored with
brassy November afternoon sunlight, some beds and some chairs.
If you weren't crazy when you went in there, you would be after a day.
Chris was... not good. He was up and on his feet, and he LOOKED like
he had both oars in the water. Talking to him, however, revealed that
the oars weren't in the oarlocks, but were in fact floating away, and
the boat was adrift.
He talked clearly and in his usual half-shy, hesitant fashion and at
first he seemed okay. But then he started to talk about things that
didn't make sense. A friend, he said, had told him that the police had
trashed his apartment -- I assured him that they hadn't. The police
had told him that the apartment building was shortly to be knocked
down -- I assured him that this wasn't the case, but if something were
planned we'd be careful to pack his things and store them at mom's.
Then he started getting on to making excuses for why the police had
restrained him ("They thought I was Hispanic and tried to give me
instructions in Spanish, but I told them I'm native american, but then
they jumped on me."), what he was doing out in the alley with a sword
("I was just trying to throw it away, it just didn't go along with the
theme of my apartment"), and why he'd spent the night in the swamp ("I
was just out for a walk and, voomp, I was stuck in the mud.")
I assured him that nobody blamed him for any of those things, that we
knew his doctor should not have taken him off his meds, and that he
needn't worry that anyone was mad at him.
The more he talked, the more I understood that his world is right now
veiled with illusion and terrified fantasies.
I also got the uncomfortable sense that my role in my family had once
again been relegated to that of "external judgemental force." I'd
gotten this many years ago: when my sister was pregnant, I was the
last person that she told because she was afraid of what I'd say.
Likewise, Chris seemed to be afraid that I was going to render a harsh
judgement. Since I've never actually done these things with my
siblings (well, with the exception of not talking to the guy who
knocked up and abandoned my sister until many years later when they
were engaged), I am guessing that my mother has projected her own
self-criticism onto me, and then conveyed that to my brother and
sister. It would fit with the overall theme of her life in which she
invents an outside reality out of whole cloth, and then lives by it
without regard for actual reality.
Anyway we could only stay for a short time with Chris, and I certainly
felt odd wearing all-black in that all-white environment. I drove home
in a black funk, got undressed, and laid down again in bed and slept
for several hours. It was the only way I could think of to deal with
everything I was feeling on top of all the demands that work is
placing on me now that I'm back home.
Today's margially better, and I'm getting ready to head out the door
for work. But I dread going back to visit Chris in that horrid place,
while at the same time I think that I ought to go and be supportive.
I need another vacation.
[1]Last
Posted by Albatross at November 20, 2003 12:00 AM