Sometimes, I get really annoyed.
I visited family graves last weekend and took a number of
photographs of head and foot stones. I started my trip in Granby, MA, where my
father’s family is buried, as are my brothers. Danny was twenty years old and schizophrenic;
one winter weekend, he went off camping, to get away from the demons that only
he could see. There had been unseasonably warm weather at the end of January, with
days hovering around 60 degrees. On the night of February 1, the temperature
dropped precipitously as a cold front came in; the nighttime temperature
dropped into the negative digits with 40 mph winds. Danny didn’t have a chance.
He froze to death, a few hundred yards from the nearest road, struggling to
reach it, crawling when he could no longer walk, as evidenced by the scuff-cuts on his poor hands
and knees.
Danny was joined by our brother, Paul, several years later. Paul was
a good-time guy – everybody loved Paul and Paul was the life of any party. One night,
coming home from a bar, only about half a mile from where Danny died,
he apparently fell asleep at the wheel. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt when his
truck hit a tree and rolled over. Paul probably never knew what happened and
never felt any pain after his neck snapped (a “hangman’s fracture” - he was unable
to breathe with the injury and suffocated in minutes). I miss them both terribly, even
though they both died so many years ago.
My father and his parents lie nearby. I never knew my
grandparents. My grandmother died a few days after giving birth to my uncle;
she had already given birth to five children. The family story is that her
doctor was a cocaine addict and had used it just before getting word that she
was having a difficult labor. He didn’t come for another day; she had been in
active labor for several days at that point, non-stop, and it is surprising that
the baby was still alive. The doctor delivered my uncle but my grandmother died
– whether from blood-loss, exhaustion, heart failure, infection, or something else – a day or two later. My
grandfather sent the baby to a neighbor to raise for a year, and then pulled
his only daughter out of school at the age of 13 to raise her baby brother. He
also pulled my father out of school at the same age to work on the family farm.
My dad became estranged from his father when he married my mom – my grandfather
– a German Protestant immigrant - considered it unforgivable that my father had
married an Irish Catholic. My grandfather died shortly before I was born. I don’t
know if he and my father ever really spoke again, although my grandfather did
not disinherit my father.
My dad died suddenly about fifteen years ago; he was at his
vacation home in Maine when he got sick. He had a silent and undiagnosed diverticulum
and it suddenly ruptured (the same thing happened to me two years ago). He
became septic and needed emergency surgery. During the surgery, his heart went
into a rhythm incompatible with life and, although his surgeon finally shocked
his heart into a normal rhythm, my dad had suffered irreparable brain damage from the lack of oxygen for the fifteen minutes when his heart wasn't pumping blood properly. We waited
a few days to see whether he would wake up (he didn’t), or even start breathing
on his own (he didn’t). As a family, we decided to terminate his life support
and he died a few hours later.
Ironically, my dad had had a serious argument with his older
brother the previous week, just before my dad left for Maine. My uncle was
dying of cancer and wanted to settle the disposition of the family farm, which
was held in common by the three living brothers (my dad, my dying uncle, and
the “baby” who had lived when their mother died). My uncle was used to getting
his own way and, for a change, my father did not want to acquiesce. My uncle
said, melodramatically, “You’ll just have to settle this with my heirs!” My dad
was incensed and said, “How the hell do you know that you’ll be the
first to die?” My uncle had snorted and my dad left. They never spoke again. My
uncle was utterly grief-stricken at my dad’s funeral, and he followed my dad a
few months later.
Whenever I visit my dad’s grave, I am also visiting my uncle’s
grave. They are interred in an eight-person lot; my grandparents, my uncle and
aunt, and my father are all buried there. There is still room for my other
uncle, his wife, and for my step-mother to join them (my step-mother died last
year but her children have not yet decided to bury her ashes).
What annoys me is my position in that family. I now have reddish
hair (courtesy of Lady Clairol) but I really feel like the red-haired
step-child, despite being a blood relation.
When my parents divorced for the first time, my father did
something unforgivable. He was angry at my mother and took it out by accusing
her of infidelity. Not only that, but that I (the youngest) must have been the
product of “her affair” with our only neighbor’s son. The fact that I have
ALWAYS looked frighteningly like my father was irrelevant; he was mad. So mad,
he told my uncle, his older brother, that I wasn’t his. And from that moment onward,
I was treated like the red-haired stepchild. I didn’t understand until I was a
teenager. No one who knew my mother would have believed such nonsense but, as I
said, my father was very angry with her for having the audacity to leave him,
not once, but twice. The first time, she realized that she had no means of
supporting us so she went back to him and back to college, to get a teaching
degree. Eight years later and gainfully employed, she left him, this time for
good. I was twelve.
My uncle was the worst. Once my mother came back after the
first separation, my dad stopped claiming that I wasn’t his - he had always
treated me like I was his favorite child and this didn’t change. My uncle was
another story and an ugly one, at that. At the town fair a few months after my
parents separated for the last time, I saw my uncle and called a greeting to
him. He ignored me. I was puzzled; did he not hear me? I shrugged and played
some of the games, then saw him passing by again. A second time, I called out
to him. He continued walking and appeared to have not heard me. I thought that
he must be going deaf! When he passed by a third time, I walked up to him and
said, clearly, ‘Hello Uncle! How are you?” He looked me in the eye, then
pivoted and walked away. I was crushed. I was no longer his niece. Only then
did my big sister tell me about the terrible thing that my father had said,
eight years earlier.
I saw my uncle a number of times afterwards, always in my
father’s presence. I was always polite. He was cordial but I was little more
than a stranger to him. I was never invited to any family functions, except the ones
that my father hosted. My cousins all married; I wasn’t invited. His children are
adults with children of their own and they have hosted a number of “family”
reunions. I’ve never been invited, despite living only a few miles away from
the old family farm. They don’t know me or my son, yet they are very close to
our other cousins.
Amusingly, one of my uncle’s sons, my cousin, became a local
cop. He called the department of anthropology for assistance in identifying
some skeletal remains. I was sent to identify the bones. They turned out to consist
of the forelimb of a deer, nothing human. He never said anything about our
relationship and neither did I. Afterwards, I just chuckled.
I have another uncle, the “baby” who lived. He has an email
list, to send various funny or political items, and I’m on it despite his being
a rabid Republican and me being a liberal. We correspond occasionally. I still
feel estranged – this uncle has lived in the south for my entire life and I’ve
only seen him a few times. In the last few years, he built a vacation home on the property
of the family farm, but in that time, I’ve only seen him once. I still feel like I’m the
red-haired step-child. Now, I have the red hair, at least!
.
