January 28, 1995
“The death or disappearance of a parent, before or during puberty appears repeatedly in the literature on depression as a trauma sometimes likely to create nearly irreparable emotional havoc.” then I wrote in all caps IREEPERABLE EMOTIONAL HAVOC to really drive the point home to myself that I was a complete wreck. Did it in marker too. It was the irreparable havoc part that got me then and gets me now. Too damaged to try and fix or do anything about. Was was the rationale or the family and cultural distrust of therapists and therapy and I guess the process of self examination or really giving too much weight and credibility to our own thoughts or feelings. Mom never had the space or understanding to do that to process all of her own shit and did not have the skills or the tools to help us deal with ours. The quote was from William Styron’s book “Darkness Visible” a Memoir of Madness…. the quote resonates, funny how it resonated then, in 1995 and does now as I’m on the path of untangling my own shit in the mid 2020s.
“Now this is home, but the properties on loan. So much forletting go. I’m picking up the phone”
January 28, 1995
Two years ago today, my father died. Two years ago, and I still have dreams he is alive, I hated everyone, I felt guilty, horrible and in truth, I felt relieved. I struggled with how this could happen to him, he was so bright, why did he let himself go? What was everyone thinking, ignore the problem and it will go away? And those relatives we have not heard from them since. I cannot get that image out of my head, my father in the intensive care unit at Riddle Hospital, withered away to nothing.
I cried then, wondering why this had to happen to our once healthy father who wore wranglers and cowboy boots before the hipsters and who ended up floating around our house like a ghost before he was dead, looking like a walking skeleton with pasty skin and a bad disposition? I recall laying in bed and listening to my mother scream at my father to go to the hospital and then saw him carried away on a stretcher, never coming back home again. I remember being at the hospital after work, wearing man-made shoes and aunt sally was inspecting me while wearing her deer skin coat to ensure I’m not wearing animal products since I am a vegetarian. That’s what she was focused on while the worst thing to happen in any of our lives was unfolding feet from us. Then they gave dad a shot of morphineand that ended it all for him but not for us, for us it was just the beginning. It’s when life changed completely. I changed completed. When it all changed. But I guess that is life – constant change, constant motion, constant thought if you do it right.
“Today I wake up, tell myself this is me”
