"A tombstone with a question mark on it isn't the worst way to go."
- Shalom Auslander on the Novelist Spotlight Podcast Episode #35
I'm waiting. Sitting by mom's bed on her 13th day in hospice, I'm aware that I'm waiting not only for her to let go, but for her to finally utter some explanation for how she raised my brother and I. Some admission that mistakes were made, she was too harsh, she wished she had done better. Even now, as I've done all my life, I hold out hope of reparation, for all to be forgiven. To be fair, I'd been staying with her all these months as she was in and out of the hospital, and she would often thank me sweetly at night for taking care of her. I'd wonder if she was finally softening up, having a glimpse into how unfair she had been to us all those years, and tell me how amazing it was that someone she had mistreated for so long could be such a good caretaker. Even if she could acknowledge it, knowing her, I imagined she would justify it by saying something like, "See, God has used me to shape you into a more compassionate person." Implied is, "So stop your complaining, God is in charge, everything according to His purpose. No harm, no foul.'' I guess the same could be said for my years of wandering the streets of NYC in an alcoholic blackout. Thanks God.
"But you're lucky to be alive. See how God protected you so you could come to the light?"
Well I guess God was ok with my brother not 'coming to the light.'''
"Free will."
"Oh yeah? Where was Pharoah's free will when God hardened his heart against the Israelites?"
"Old Testament. Jesus gave us a New Testament. God works in mysterious ways. Have faith."
It was just me now. My brother died a few years ago after living on the streets of Ft. Lauderdale. Poetically, he walked into the bar he frequented, had a drink by himself, went through the back door and sat down next to the garbage cans to die. He was discovered later in the night. His body was shipped back to New York and my parents had to go about the grim task of laying him to rest. My mother dryly said, "Well I'm glad now I don't have to worry about him anymore." And that's the last time she ever brought him up. His funeral was a chance for her to showcase her "pious-christian-mother-whose-wayward-child-met-his-inevitable-ruin-and-she-deserved-better-but-would-carry-on-bravely" act.
Years later when I sat with my dad as he lay dying, he turned to me and said, "I wish your brother was here." I wasn't really sure why he said that, but I imagined he was expressing some regret at not being as good a dad as he wanted to be. Or maybe he didn't want me to have to go through this alone. As he was so short of breath, I didn't want to ask him to explain. Just another of life's mysteries.
Today would've been my dad's 96th birthday if he hadn't died more than 7 years ago. I really miss him, sometimes more than others but always a lot. It doesn't hurt as much as it first did, but even then, it was a sweet grief of reliving happy memories of a man who always deeply loved me and whom I deeply loved as well. These memories were his legacy to me. I had been lucky to have him as a dad and so I had the luxury of missing the beautiful things about our relationship, rather than the desolation of lost hope, bewilderment, and the emptiness of wondering if I had ever really been loved that I felt when my mom died. With her I just felt that I had fulfilled some filial obligation to prop up the façade of her as the devout, long-suffering mother to an ungodly family.
Of course I always understood on an intellectual level that she was the product of her upbringing, was doing the best she could, and all that. But the foundation of love and trust that was destroyed by mental and emotional abuse, and humiliation on an ongoing basis left little space for compassion as I sought to fill those empty spaces with addictive behaviors. In truth, she had her own addictive behaviors that took the forms of rage and religiosity, which were were unleashed at the slightest provocation. We, my brother and I, descended more and more deeply into a spiral of shame and our own unexpressed rage. I turned that rage against myself becoming predictably depressed, then lost in love fantasies with older men, and finally acting out with my addictions of alcohol and sex, trying to find a connection. And indeed I did, for there are many willing participants suffering in the same way. However, the connections were not for very long, and this left me feeling lonelier than before.
Mom raised us on the literal interpretation of the bible. "God said it, I believe it, and that's that." Of course verses were cherry picked and used to achieve whatever ends were necessary to achieve in that moment. Which reminds me: she got tired of hitting us with her hands she said because "it hurt too much," so she purchased a paddle with a picture of a boy and girl bent over a fence, their bottoms looking ragged from the spankings they received. The caption said, "Never punish a child without a definite end in view." Hilarious. The best part was that whenever I was punished, a deluge of urine would issue from my bladder no matter how much I had already gone to relieve myself beforehand. This, of course, made her furious as she interpreted it as my insolent rebuttal to her efforts at discipline. For this I got a little bit extra "attention" and was told, "Stop your crying or I'll give you something to cry about." I wondered briefly what that would look like, then tried not to, because it was too dark and scary. Then later, if she didn't enact the silent treatment for a few days, she'd say: "If I didn't care about you, I wouldn't bother teaching you right from wrong. I hit you because I love you."
My poor little brother got the worst of it. Dad was caught up in his own issues surrounding the disappointment of marriage and family life, and his dysfunctional dynamic with his own father, so he didn't have much left over for my brother who I suppose reminded him of his repressed self if he could access and remember it. He once told my eight-year-old brother to mow the lawn, but the mower was broken. When Little Eric complained about it, Dad said angrily, "So, fix it!" jumped into his car and took off. Looking back, maybe it was a good thing that he took off because we rarely saw Dad's anger fully expressed, and I think even he was afraid of what would happen if he did. I know mom tried desperately to push him over the edge so her martyrdom could be celebrated in suffering his onslaught, but somehow he would remove himself from the scene of the potential crime, muttering, "Excuse me for living." I always loved that one. I mean, what can you say to that? I imagine answering, "You're excused." But in real time it would've been too risky unless one longed for death, sometimes a desire, but such a final one, in which case it would've been a masterful move.
