Death in the family
My father passed away on Monday evening. It was ironic that with all of his health problems, none of them killed him. He died of atherosclerotic embolism (a stroke) while reading the paper after dinner. We should all go that way.
My mother of course is a basket case. Sobbing and weeping (although she doesn’t with me but tells me that she is that way with others who are so kind). Perhaps she suspects that I will not be kind or merciful. I have a lot of rage issues with them both – now that he’s gone I can focus on her.
I am really quite amazed at myself. It was as if I had no relationship with him anyway. He never wrote, he never called. He never selected a birthday gift or a greeting card. I never had a conversation with him. I never was on my own with him. I never got to ask him about my sister, about the money he spent on a prostitute and gambling in Puerto Rico while my sister was having an abortion. Oh, so many things I would like to have known the truth about. But Shirley never let either one of us have a relationship with him, much as she cut him off from his mother and brother.
She wants me to be pencil thin and wear my hair like Diana. How I can accomplish this by the memorial service, I haven’t a clue.
I had recently found his brother in Minnesota as when we last visited before going to Italy, Donald mentioned had lost touch and Mummy wouldn’t let him use the phone to find him. So back at work and within seconds, I found him gave him the numbers. Last night I asked her if he had talked to his brother before he died. And she says without pausing for breath “Oh no, I keep out of that. I think they were very distant.” And I said maybe so but Jerry is his only last living relative on the face of the fuck’n earth lady. Nooo. No she says she is not going to get in touch with him. So I did. I called him last night. He was very grateful to hear from me but now I am terrified that for some misguided reason he may call Shirley direct. She will hit me or take my allowance away or make me empty the garbage every night for a month or scrub all the bathrooms on a Saturday afternoon!
Meanwhile I let my sister know who is on vacation with her daughter Erica in Rehoboth Bay, Delaware, having just moved back in with Chuck and into a new house (the old one just got too dirty). My sister has many more issues with my father than I do. But suffice to say now that she is totally estranged from both of them, she had little to add to what I have just said other than he owed her an apology.
Death is such a common denominator. Apparently, the phone rang and Mummy picked it up to hear this strange and unfamiliar English voice. Howard (Clive was too drunk to speak or dial or dial and speak, whichever) and you may recall Howard and Shirley are deadly enemies because of one certain letter that Howard sent her some 33 years ago, hereinafter known as The Letter which in essence said not nice things about her and even worse things about me. I think the objective of The Letter was to get them to defray some of Clive and Howard’s expenses taking care of their errant brat (me). It was pointedly worded, I must say. He showed it to me before he mailed it. I thought it was right on and far better put than I could have managed at my stupid young age. Anyway, she recovered from her shock when realizing who it was then says to me in recounting the phone call that she is too old hold to hold a grudge (only held it for 33 years – just a drop in the bucket really) and wasn’t Howard so sweet and called her “my dear” ten times. Howard must have had a few cocktails, too, as the “my dears” fairly pepper conversation after the 3rd scotch and soda.
So Daddy-O didn’t want a funeral (good – don’t eat my inheritance) and their friends are all rallying around to pull together a memorial service some time in the next few weeks. Considering that Dad was an atheist even that seems over the top to me. All of East Haddam’s best and gay are presenting. Adam and Leighton or doing the flowers, Ray is doing the eulogy, Tom is going to read W.C. Auden’s Funeral Blues which is a killer poem and very sad (4 Weddings & a Funeral). I’m amazed I was invited at all. Will probably shed a tear but most likely not. I don’t feel sad. I feel happy that he is in a better place and doesn’t have to be nagged constantly from dawn to dusk by her. Although she says that she let him drink coffee and have chocolate pudding toward the end. This is when she tried to get a Dr. to prescribe a dug to cut down on his cholesterol and the Dr. point blank told her it won’t do any good any more.
I have to go down there on Saturday morning which I dread not so much because of him but having to be alone with all her stuff and tears and poor me and can I bare life without him whom I loved soooo. I have already heard it over the phone for an hour every night but now I will get it in 3D and stereo.
One down. One to go. She is going to be the tough one. England is not going to be far enough away. Maybe a teaching position in a missionary post near the middle watchtower of the Great Wall of China? No fax, no telephone. That’s it.
Well, I’ve got to rush out and get my hair done like Diana’s and buy a life-sized poster of Diana to wear in front of me when I go into the church. “Ravishing” was the word she used – as in you would be “ravishing” with your hair like Diana’s and I said “ravishing and 52 years old, I don’t think so” and she said “You wouldn’t say that if you weren’t….(she was trying to think of another word for fat)…if you were pencil-thin.”
OK well that’s my input on this subject. Love, me”