Monday, December 28, 2009

Father

My father's absence, perhaps, has affected me as acutely as the presence of some other fathers affects their children. Not in a good way.
Through the alcohol-burned hole he left in his wake crawled an assortment of characters who might not otherwise have gotten such passage. They were opportunists of a predatory nature, no doubt trying to satisfy some cravings of their own.
They are at fault, but it was at least partially my father's absence that made me vulnerable to such approaches. The passive-aggressive priest, the overly tactile teacher. I was receptive because, as I can see in retrospect, I was searching for a father figure. A cliche but nevertheless true. And they observed few boundaries.
Such vulnerability brings home the point that we live in a world in which the predators will prey and has shaped my perceptions. So, father leaves, teacher/priest step in and interaction indelibly influences kid's perception of human nature. In other words, the world is full of fuck-wads trying to satiate whatever it is that nourishes them.
Now, maybe they're just too stupid or lack the introspection necessary to recognize that what they were doing was inappropriate. When priest ignored me or took my friends on outings from which I was excluded, that hurt. And I didn't know why he was doing it. Was it because I quit the fucking altar boys? Sorry. Adults shouldn't be trying to satisfy some kind of emotional deficiency through relationships with children not their own. And no adult should be trying to mold a child into someone for their benefit, as opposed to the child's, except for rearing a productive member of society. Priest wanted to be a father, as evidenced by his subsequent desistance from the priesthood. He got married, sired progeny and then divorced. Unless he had an epiphany, surely he has fucked up his biological children.
Teacher should not be taking grammar-school kids to movies and on trips to Washington and Gettysburg. Those were educational, in ways some people might not suspect. These men sought validation from children, but I think the impact was less corrosive on the children who had fathers, probably because the perpetrators knew the fathers wouldn't tolerate certain behavior. We're supposed to believe that teachers and priests have our best interests at heart. I think that myth has been discredited.
Beyond them, there were my mother's boyfriends. Had she still been married, she may not have had boyfriends or, presumably, wouldn't have brought them around. Tony is the first one I remember. He hit me more than once. One time was on the butt, I think, but another time, while I was in the back seat of the car (not wearing a seat belt and leaning over the bench seat), he hit me in the face and caught me in the eye. I wish I could hit him now, but he's old or dead, so I suspect it wouldn't be especially gratifying .
I might be reinventing history with the chronological order, but I think Joe was next. And I pale in comparison to others when it comes to historical reinvention. Joe was a nice enough guy. Union man. Auto union. Helped me out when I had to prepare for a school debate in which I would be advocating for Jimmy Carter to be elected. Joe's proclamation that Mr. Carter was "for labor" is the one nugget I remember from that conversation. He also showed me how to test the life left in an automotive battery.
Russ was in there somewhere. Nice guy, also. Played the piano. Sent Christmas cards even when he didn't come around anymore. Then there was Dave. A steelworker. Told me if I went to the exclusive high school to which I was accepted, I'd be able to "write my own ticket." Not quite true. He told my mother they were going to get married, and she said they weren't. They didn't.
I liked George. Auto-insurance guy. We shared fishing as a common interest. He bought me a fishing book that I still have. He wrote a nice note inside. Once we went fishing down the shore, and we were driving on the beach, and my mother asked him why insurance was so expensive. "Because there are 26,000 niggers riding around without insurance," was his reply, meaning that those who paid the car insurance essentially subsidized those who didn't. At least I think that's what he meant.
She went out with Dr. Fasullo (don't know if I'm spelling that right) a few times. He pursued her, but she demurred. Probably had money--he was a medical doctor. Wasn't horrid-looking. Spoke with what I guess was an Italian accent. He was widowed or divorced. I don't know if this is apocryphal, but he apparently was driving home one night and saw the flashing lights from a police car or ambulance stopped at the scene of an accident. He stopped and went over to help out, and the victim was his own son, who had been struck by a car while riding his bicycle. The kid was 13, I think, and he either died on the spot or later as a result of his injuries. Probably nothing worse than that.
Soc was last, as far as I know. He used to own a small plane to which he still had access, and he and I flew. He told me how to bank the plane out over the ocean, and I stepped on the left petal as if it were a clutch, trying to depress it abruptly. If you ever find yourself trying to turn a plane around, don't do that. He righted the ship, so to speak, or we would have had to use that plane as a ship when we landed in the fucking ocean. My mother told me Soc's son moved him down to Florida last year, took his money, put him in a room and didn't allow him to have any contact with the outside world. Then Soc died, she said. Don't know if any of it is true.
Except for Tony, I think, they all had blue balls unless they were having sex with someone else. My mother told me she would end it with Soc if he tried to "put the moves" on her.
This rotating cast of characters didn't exactly foster stability or quell my insecurity. Father out, boyfriends in.
I got to know these guys relatively superficially. I remember being disappointed having nobody with whom to attend some kind of school-related father-son activity. He took me to a movie, I think, to compensate. It was one of the few things we ever did together. He told me in the car that he would always be my father, no matter what happened. I was 6 then, and it may have been the last time I saw him. He died when I was 12.
My father's absence also caused some role confusion; my mother doing what a father should have been; my oldest brother assuming some of those responsibilities and then relinquishing them, leaving me to wonder what I had done to cause his pullback; eventually my workload around the home mirrored that of a husband. These experiences helped build the foundation upon which my abandonment fears rested.
Another aspect of the turn of events is that I didn't really know my father. What I do know about him has gone through other people's filters. Here is what seems indisputable: He was an alcoholic who drank himself to death at age 49; he left his wife and five children. These actions raise some questions. How could he have skipped out on the kids? Perhaps it was the alcoholism that made him relinquish all responsibility for us. I've had doctors tell me that alcoholism is a disease, and here's how the dictionary defines disease: a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ, part, structure, or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, infection, poisons, nutritional deficiency or imbalance, toxicity, or unfavorable environmental factors; illness; sickness; ailment.
This makes me wonder what the incorrectly functioning parts are that incubate alcoholism. I agree that there's a genetic predisposition to drink more (and more) after having taken the first drink. But is there a malfunction that makes a person take that first drink? Maybe I'm missing the point; perhaps alcoholism is a latent disease that you manage by abstaining.
So, for the sake of argument, I'll say it's a disease, and my father had it, and so do at least some of his kids. Can I then fault him for abandoning his children, considering he had a disease? There seem to be few other diseases that prompt that kind of behavior. Cancer is a disease, the manifestation of which appears to be vastly different from alcoholism. But my father's disease was particularly severe, so much so that he's dead as a result. My mother probably refused to use birth control, because of the Catholic thing, and he was probably like, "What the fuck? Five kids? Get me a drink."
Anyway, a pivotal difference between alcohol and, say, cancer is that cancer patients appear to have less control over their convalescence. With alcohol, if you stop drinking, you can reverse the effects of the disease unless you've gone so far overboard that it's too late. The alcoholism helps to explain his departure but doesn't excuse it. Did he not love his kids? Was the alcoholism too overwhelming? I can't fathom leaving your kids no matter what other issues there are. But everybody is different, and I don't have the answers. I won't get them, since he's gone. Maybe if he had been able to provide some of the answers personally, I wouldn't have found myself fruitlessly groping. I wouldn't have been as vulnerable. My mother discouraged me from going to his funeral, but she later denied having done so. When I was able, I tracked down his grave. Standing there among the markers, and his being modest, chilled by the wind, was part of the process through which I was seeking answers,. They didn't come, and the confusion didn't surrender its grip.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Night at the Nursing Home

Scene: the nursing home into which I walked two nights ago. Three people seated in the hallway in wheelchairs, Claire (my mother), Marge and unknown man.

Claire: Did you talk to Michael?
Me: My brother?
Claire: Yeah.
Me: No.
Claire: You didn't? He was just here. I told him to get me out of here. He was talking to someone right over there and just looked over his shoulder and smiled and left (she gives a dismissive shrug).
Me: Hmm (not mentioning that he works at night).
Claire: You have a coat for me in your car.
Me: No.
Claire: You don't? I just want to inquire about my clothes.
Me: They're probably in your room, at the end of the hall. I'm sure Patty (my sister) brought them here from St. Lawrence (the rehab facility).
Claire: I don't know if that room is open.
Me: Where'd you get the clothes you have on?
Claire: I wore them from home. Yesterday.
Marge: You don't have a coat. That's the first thing I look at before I leave the house. If you're going out tonight, you need a coat.
Claire: It's an old sweatshirt.
Marge: I don't have anywhere to go tonight.
Claire: You could go to jail.
Marge: I don't know about that. My brother used to be in charge of the police. In Trenton. Trenton, New Jersey. You know the circle?
Claire: White Horse (a traffic circle, not in Trenton)?
Marge: Yeah. I used to live by there. My daughter don't live there anymore. She's married and lives with the husband. That's what ladies do. At least the ladies I know.
(Claire looks sideways at me and laughs, as if she and I are the ones in on the joke and everything she has said so far has made perfect sense. If I recall correctly, it's like Danny DeVito laughing at his fellow institutionalized patients in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
Claire: We were talking about cats, and a big one walked right through here and went right up there.
Me: Right there (in the hallway by the nurses' station)?
Claire: Yeah. I think I'm the only one who saw it.
(Elderly man sucks his upper lip into his mouth again, making a Rice Krispies sort of sound.)
Nurse to elderly man: You want to go to bed?
Elderly man: Uh-huh (it's 7:25. Someone wheels him down the hall, and I reposition myself away from the break-room door, next to Marge, so as not to be in the nurses' way).
Marge: I'm trying to see in there (bathroom door behind me). You've been standing in front of me for fifteen minutes.
Me: I'm not in front of you. I'm on the side of you.
Marge: Yeah, I was over there.
Claire: A girl walked out of there yesterday (the bathroom), took her jeans off, rolled them up and threw them against the wall.
Marge: Right there?
Claire: Right between the two doors.
Marge: You might have seen that. I didn't.
Claire (to me): Is my suitcase in your car?
Me: No.
Claire: No? I thought Patty said it was.
Me: I'm sure Patty put it in your room. I brought it up to St. Lawrence.
Claire: So what'd Michael have to say?
Me: I didn't talk to him.
Claire: You didn't? He was just here. Where'd you park.
Me: In the parking lot.
Claire: Yeah? Geez....
Marge: If you're gonna stay, you need somebody to call because you don't know the people. That's my problem. I don't know the people. I used to. Until I turned 80. I know the dogs (she barks twice, and Claire gives me the sideways-laughing look again. Nurse calls housekeeping to clean up spilled milk.).
Janitor: You have a milk spill?
Claire: There was a big blob of it right there (makes a circle about the size of a baseball with her fingers).
Janitor: Where is it?
Nurse: In there (the break room).
Claire: No, it wasn't there, it was in the chapel.
Me: Ma, I'm going.
Claire: Let's go. (She starts to get up out of the wheelchair.)
Me: No, you're staying. See ya later.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Mother

My mother had a stroke about three weeks ago, and the turn of events has driven home the notion that we come full circle, with the role reversal rendering kids as caregivers and the infirm parent regressing into the lack of self-sufficiency that is one of the hallmarks of childhood.
Along with this descent into dependency comes the inevitability of emotions surfacing that I had segregated and mostly controlled for much of my adult life. My first reaction was decidedly ambivalent but weighted toward pity. To see someone who was previously a robust 81 years old in such decrepit condition elicited that pity. Tempering the pity has been a long-held survival mechanism that I installed to protect myself from my mother's manipulations.
The initial physical toll on her has receded somewhat, but cognitive impairment has remained. When I sit in the rehabilitation facility and watch her attempt to sort out her thoughts, it's disturbingly similar to watching a child attempt to grasp complexities. I've never felt understood by my mother or that she ever considered my feelings to be as remotely as important as her own, but now she literally doesn't understand me. When I walked in her room a few days ago, she asked me if she heard me discussing Gus a few hours earlier. No, I hadn't been there a few hours earlier, let alone discussing my late Labrador.
She has to relearn how to eat, and some of her visitors are inclined to feed her to expedite matters. I can't bear interaction of that nature with her. In feeding a child, you're providing nourishment for someone who has yet to arrive at his full potential; feeding my mother is the equivalent of sustaining a life that is far down the other side of the mountain, but also a life that long ago surrendered its innocence and involved exacting a particular toll from me.
This is the distillation of a life. The innocence of children gives them extraordinary license. The machinations of adults do not.
When I consider her self-serving undertakings, especially as viewed through the prism of the parent I have become, I try to control the flood of emotions. First, I suppress the initial burst of anger, hurt and shame, and allow my rational self an opportunity to reason. She behaved like she did because that's what she knew. She turned around and repeated the cycle instilled in her by her own upbringing. She was just incapable, perhaps, of sorting through her experiences and discarding those that were detrimental. I don't think she had the capacity to acknowledge that there was anything amiss about her upbringing. Her life was idyllic, and her parents were deities. Somewhere along the line, she shut out the realities of fallibility. Her preoccupation with her parents was obsessive, and she provided her own father with end-of-life care that included enemas. So, she was a victim of her own upbringing.
Sometimes the rational self gives way to the angry self. How could she have done this to her own child? How could she have saddled me with guilt that has taken a lifetime over which to gain a measure of control? Why did she never reach a point where her kids' emotional needs were more important than her own? She put an inexcusable amount of pressure on an 8-year-old when she told me that she would kill herself if I turned out like my brothers, for I believed her. She charged me with being responsible for her survival. She denied me a childhood, because she wanted me to be the husband she lacked, without the physical intimacy.
Then there's the undeniable familial bond tugging me in the other direction. This is my mother. She read to me before school when I was a child. She sang to me. I used to call down the hallway, telling her how much I loved her when she put me to bed. More than all the stars. She bought me a dog when I graduated from eighth grade.
But that dog may have been to assuage her own guilt. To make up for the dog she took from me and dropped off in a neighborhood when I was younger than that. That was her solution to my not caring for the dog in the manner she would have preferred. Denying issues, pushing them aside, served her well.
She used to go out at night or on vacation and leave me in the care of my siblings, just kids themselves with too much responsibility thrust upon them. I recall, as a boy of about 9, phoning her preferred social establishment at 1 a.m. trying to track her down. I was in tears, terrified. I was in fear of losing my one remaining parent, and the pit in my stomach threatened to swallow me. I cried when she went on vacation, again out of fear that she wouldn't return, as she sometimes threatened. I hadn't yet gotten to the point at which I didn't want her to return.
She wanted me to go to a particular high school, and when I balked, she shunned me. Same thing with college. She made it appear as if my worth was a direct result of the school with which I was associated. But her sense of worth was at issue. She was unapproachable when I wanted to discuss my reservations.
She was a child of the Depression and seemed to take pride in retaining the habits instilled decades earlier. Money was an overriding factor. I attended school with holes in my shoes. I bore the ridicule of coaches for having worn-down spikes. We could have afforded better, if she hadn't been hell-bent on clinging to that house like a drowning person to a life preserver. Study the practical disciplines. Go after the job with the benefits. Never did she encourage me to follow my heart.
She turned her head the other way. I needed shelter from the violence and drugs, but she allowed my exposure to them. So I smoked the pot and drank the booze. Why wouldn't a sixth-grader? I was collateral damage in her war to satisfy her own needs.
She has enabled my 50-year-old, alcoholic brother to continue that way of life, without having to hold down a job or otherwise pursue assistance. That has mattered more to her than trying to improve relations with her other three sons. As long as she was satisfied. She would still put me in situations that would be damaging if I allowed. That's a source of enormous frustration, that my mother still doesn't care enough, or isn't capable enough, not to put me at risk.
Her mortality, like my own, always seemed so distant, often too distant. I knew intellectually that she was elderly, but there appeared to be little difference from what I had always known. I tried to explain some of this to her while her faculties were more intact, but I failed to break through. She's gone now, and I don't know if she's coming back, but I accepted years ago that an epiphany would never be forthcoming. Maybe it all boils down to there having been too much risk for her to put anyone else's interests above her own, even her children's.

Monday, December 7, 2009

The Last Resort

I'm going away to the last resort in a week or two real soon....
--John Prine
I would have killed myself, but it made no sense, committing suicide in self-defense....
--Butch Hancock

When the medication doesn't work and the therapy doesn't work and desperation is at hand, don't fret, you still have options. Foremost among these is suicide. Granted, it's extreme, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Sometimes life is a task, and I look forward to its conclusion. No more of the trials and tribulations. Unless, of course, purgatory is real. Then I guess it will just be more of the same, and who needs that? Anticipating the relief that will accompany my earthly demise is akin to looking forward to summer vacation at the end of the school year, just on a grander scale. But killing yourself is a mortal sin, so I guess you don't get into heaven. Do people who accidentally overdose get into heaven, though? What about alcoholics who kill themselves slowly over a number of years? People who commit suicide are merely attempting to mitigate their pain, just like substance abusers. If drug addicts and alcoholics get into heaven, so too should people who commit suicide. And are there drugs in heaven? Because heavenly detox could be in store for the substance abusers.
Just as alcoholism is characterized by medical professionals as a disease, a predisposition toward suicide appears to have been hard-wired in me, accompanying the depression as far back as I can remember. I threatened to jump out the window when I was four years old. I would think that might have set off alarm bells, but apparently not. So, I've been thinking about suicide longer and more consistently than anything else.
I've come close but also felt constrained by the finality. I have envisioned the cold steel blade of a knife liberating blood from my veins and bathing in its warmth. I never thought of a half-measure, the suicide attempt that's really a cry for help. Because if you really want to kill yourself, how can you screw that up? I've held a gun to my head that I didn't think was loaded. I didn't squeeze the trigger, and it turned out to be loaded. What made me not squeeze the trigger? I've wished many times since that I had.
I've always considered that it might be selfish, also. What would the people left behind think in its wake? Although I also have thought that if the people who cared for me knew the pain, they would endorse the decision.
The suicide-prevention brigade, for all its good intentions, could be off the mark. Don't kill yourself. It's not that bad. Things will get better. There's help. You're not alone. How do they know things will get better? Maybe they'll get worse. And you most definitely are alone. Anyone seriously contemplating suicide has to feel that the suicidal pros outweigh the cons. Probably in some cases, preventing a suicide is noble. Maybe a person has had a considerable moment of weakness and isn't really a suicide devotee.
It is reasonably popular, though. In 2006, suicide was the eleventh-leading cause of death in the U.S., accounting for 33,300 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That year, suicide was the third-leading cause of death for people ages 15 to 24. There are even statistics regarding the suicide rate for children 10-14 years old. Either these kids have incredible insight into what the world holds in store, or they're misguided. In these cases, intervention should be a duty. Children this young are too inexperienced/uninformed/stupid to recognize that perhaps there are alternatives. The same is likely true of some adults, it's just that there are other adults who have come to reasoned conclusions that suicide is a viable option. And I know that there are people who will say that that kind of reasoning is warped, but what do they know?
According to the Web site suicide.org, more than a million people annually die by their own hands. Cancer deaths globally were about eight million in 2007, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
I knew someone who killed himself within the past few years. Left behind two little boys. And I thought that was incredibly selfish. And when I see those boys, I think of the ramifications for them. His legacy is anguish for them because he was incapable of enduring his own anguish. He passed the buck to two children.
I used to have so much more to say about the subject, but suicide no longer offers the solace it once did. Sometimes I find it disconcerting that I no longer have the comfort of suicide as a fallback option, like a safety school. Instead, it's just wearying and doesn't arouse the same passion it once did. And I know two kids who wouldn't understand.