Raised by Wolves

I don't know where my head is at lately. I swear I'm teetering on the precipise of manic depression. My highs are unreal and my lows are heartbreaking. And my blogging is like homework. I want to do it because I know I'm learning stuff - about me - about being a better writer - and about the people who read my blog and share their feedback (which by the way I so totally love - gobble it up like keg-a-beer as it were). But I just can't seem to find the balance to make the stuff I'm writing not sound like crap.

So lets see how this goes - lets choose a topic for the day. Hmmm. Let's choose family.

You know I have parents, who are dead. So needless to say I haven't seen a lot of them lately. I have a brother. He's an interesting one. But we are "estranged" - I just like that word because it sounds cool and kind of like we are in a french detective novel. How did that happen? That's a good story.

About 6 years ago my Dad got sick. His leg was so sore he could hardly walk. Turns out he had end stage lung cancer that had metasticized into his bones. At the time when the doctors gave him 6 months to live, he was living in Goderich, about a 3 hour drive from where I live. Since he couldn't drive, and needed to be closer to civilization, hospitals, etc. I convinced him to move to Stratford, into a ground floor apartment.

At this point, I had been driving from Ajax to Stratford (just 2 hours each way!) once or twice a week. I drove Dad to all his doctors appointments, did the banking, bought the groceries and took him for lunch every week - even to the nasty Chinese Buffet in Mitchell that had all you can eat liver and onions and Chinese food! I also ran all those pesky get drugs and oxygen errands! Little things. I couldn't handle the other bits and peices so I arranged for meals on wheels 3 times a week and set him up with someone to come and clean.

Dad didn't much like meals on wheels. He said everything was tasteless and white. He was right - it totally was. So, I would make him his faves - chilli or lasagne and freeze them in margarine containers (cause the man had a million - he never threw anything away). I would haul these to Stratford on that wendesday too - take the empties and refill the freezer. He ate those at night and on the other days. Lots of people who visited brought him food too - I had SO SO SO much support from my great extended family!

Meanwhile, back at the trailer park, my brother and his family had moved in to my Dad's house. Good that it wasn't sitting empty. And since they only had one car and my Dad's van couldn't be driven (oxyconton and driving don't mix my friends!) why wouldn't they use Dad's van too? It just made sense.

So, on we go with the illness - and my brother did visit Dad - I'll give him that much. Once every couple of weeks he'd try to haul dad out of the apartment in his wheelchair to church. Now, my Dad was NOT a churchgoing guy. He used to say that he went to the round church - so the devil couldn't corner him. Oh no, not when people asked him about church - he just used to say that all the time!!! But, my brother was really involved in the church - he was a lay minister at the correctional centre and big into the Dutch Christian Reform Church. Or was it the Baptist church that week? Maybe it was the Pentacostals. He was an equal opportunity religious freak.

Dad didn't like going to church. It made him angry for the whole week. But, since my Dad did think until the day he died that the sun shone out of my brother's ass and lit up the world, he went because it was his son!

Long story shorter - on the night my Dad is dying (which by the way was 6 months and 2 days after the doctors told him!) - we show up at the hospital and so do my brother and his wife. Sit up all night waiting for Dad to stop breathing. Seriously. Just the 4 of us sitting there in the most surreal horrific firghtening circumstance, waiting for my father to stop breathing. It was one of those awful awful things that you never would wish on your worst enemy. I literally sat there making deals with God - saying "please let this be the last one" and "no don't" "yes please just put him out of his misery - please just let it stop".

Morning rolls around and my Dad is still breathing when his fuckwit of a doctor shows up. Is there anything we can do I ask to help him go, well, frankly, faster - he seems to be suffering so much? Yes, the doctor says - you could just take away the oxygen mask. Take it off and he will die in minutes not hours. Will he be in pain? Will he suffer? No - he has medication for the pain and we won't stop it. So the four of us talk and basically the three of them say - whatever you want to do - like we are picking a restaurant for dinner or something. So, its my decision. My decision when Dad dies. And let me tell you, just because you can make decisions doesn't make you a bitch - it makes you decisive.

So yes. Lets do it. Lets help him go. I took off the mask. The nurse shut the ozygen off. And the room was silent with the exception of Dad's laboured breaths. My brother and sister in law said "okay well this could take a while, we're going to get some breakfast" and they left. They left us there. And it took about 3 minutes. My husband held my hand as I watched him stop breathing. There was no dramatic death rattle or last big gasp. He just stopped like the timer had literally ran out. And Wayne left me with him alone for 10 minutes while he went to find a nurse in the cursed understaffed hospital. And I sat with my dead father and screamed that silent scream in my head that you are sure that people can actually hear but they can't. I sat and just let the tears fall down my face without wiping them away. I couldn't function.

But, when everyone was back, I was okay. I made the calls. I made the arrangements. No funeral. Immediate cremation. He and I had talked about it many many times and even met with the funeral home. If people hadn't come to visit him when he was alive, he sure as hell didn't want them showing up when he was dead. Funny old fart.

We had a party at his apartment. And everyone ate my aunt's dainties (since it was days before Christmas) and laughed and, I hope, had a good time.

On Christmas day we always have a dinner with my big extended family. My brother didn't show or call. We waited for over an hour for him before eating. The next week we cleaned out the apartment. I kept the photos and let my brother and family and friends have everything else. I kept telling myself it was just stuff. Funny, now I think I should have fought for some of the stuff.

My brother got the house. And the van. Although my Dad did ask my brother to pay me $2000 for the van - he never did. I was the executor of the will. I got the bills and the debt. And an annuity of $4000 - so really - totally split down the middle......or not. Its just stuff, right?

I called them a few times during the year and always spoke to my sister in law - he never wanted to speak to me. But, in one loud horrible telephone fight my brother said I was a pushy domineering bitch who had to run everyones life and I ruined Dad's. Apparently I always have been. I forced Dad to move to a place that he hated. I treated him horribly. I hung up first.

When the ground thawed it was time to bury the cremains. I had the funeral home dig up my Mom's ashes and mix in my Dad's so that they would always be together. Sweet but also very financially practical (you know, if you are making plans of that nature...). My sisterinlaw wanted to know if there would be anyone speaking graveside. I said I didn't want to (frankly I just couldn't) but she and my brother could feel free - they brought a minister from their church.

We arrived on the day just close family - Dad's brother, his wife and his sister, close cousins, my Aunt, my husband and I - and no kids (hello - its a cemetary and my kids were 1 and 4). The minister spoke - can't remember what he said... My sister in law read 4 full pages of typed bible verse. We were all a little stunned by that and no one knew just what to say. She asked if anyone else would like to say anything and one of my Aunt Jean's (I have 4) spoke a few sentences about when they were kids.

Then it was my bother's turn. He talked of all the times that they had spent together driving back and forth to the doctor... and of how Dad had accepted his illness. He talked of the difficulty of providing him with his groceries and how hard it was for he and my sister in law to take care of Dad. He talked of how near the end of his life Dad had found Jesus Christ as his personal saviour and accepted that he would be with him in heaven.

I tell you what - I was gobsmacked. None of those things happened. Not once. My cousins and Aunts and Uncle all stood with their mouthes open. Afterwards at Tim Hortons (because where the hell else would we go after - really? Seriously?) they all said that they knew it had been me and not Craig. My response was this - we all need to believe what we need to believe to get ourselves by. My brother needs to believe that I am a bitch and that he is the great saviour son so that he can cope with his Dad being dead. I'm going to give him that one.

In the 6 years since I have tried to keep in touch - cards, emails, calls, never forgot a birthday.... And now that he and my sister in law are divorcing, I have heard from her that he truly hates me and never wants to see me again. Why? I don't know and I don't care. I have a relationship with the SIL and my neice and nephews and its all I am going to get I guess. My Dad would be super mad (and lets not even think how angry my Mom would be!) if he knew that we are "estranged" but hey, I did my best - I truly believe I did. And you have to believe what you have to believe to get you through stuff - right?