Approaching the Pain, Keeping the Love

I am coming upon the end of my first year of this blog. And I want to say up front that there will be some  uncomfortably vivid entries about my life. The hints have been  here, a couple of stories ... memoir includes the ugly sometimes, if ugly is there. I do not live in the dark places, but those places made me myself as well. Surviving them and using the gifts of mother and sister, other brother and father--using those gifts of people at their best allowed me to fly out of the worst.

Anyway, I will not include those entries without caveat, so that those who would rather not read, who are used to my blog, have the choice to wait for a lighter day. Abuse is never pretty. Another blogger I follow pointed out the our past has only the weight we give it. I think of it in terms of power.  The things that no longer rule my nights, confuse my days, those things have no power left over me.  Now that I think about it, nor do they have weight.

Yet they are part of my truth, part of what has ripped me to shreds, part of why I was and am so determined to be whole, to love, to try to act out of love when it is hard to feel love, why I would prefer to slough off anger or bitterness as soon as I can honestly do it after being hurt or wronged. I do not always succeed particularly well, but I try and I'm getting better at it as I get older.

This Entry May be One of Those!  
I have no problem if people pass this over. I still have to write it, for my own sake, because I am a writer and because I think every person's story can offer comfort or hope or benefit to others.  I see that over and over in the blogs I follow--stories of HEALTHY families offer as many lessons, and offer me joy. I love reading about solid marriages and families that treat each other well. I do not assume there are dark secrets, or that other families are perfect. The voices of the writers and your visions are powerful, from wherever you come.

Enough. It is enough for now to alert you followers, for whom I am grateful. You all are giving my writer's voice a power I never knew I had in me.  If I want to write a memoir, I MUST be able to find a public voice for what is not pretty, and this blog is the place where I am finding that voice. Sometimes I may not do it as well as I want, but writing is a learning process. I hope to learn to tell fewer and fewer of the details, but still make it clear what happened. I want the living details to be about seriously flawed, yet remarkably human people bound by MORE than just their illnesses or pain.

***
"What doesn't kill us makes us strong." Perhaps, but sometimes I have wondered whether, I mean really, just how strong do people have to BE anyway? I never liked that statement. Sometimes one can wonder what the definition of "kill" is. Killing innocence does not necessarily make anyone strong. Plenty of people are strong without that. And sometimes those whatevers DO kill. Why should survival of the fittest include surviving what is unconscionable to most of our culture, to most of the world?

Yet I accept that, if we are given tools from somewhere within or without, withstanding enormous adversity has created remarkably strong people in some. I was given something very early on--a child's faith. God is Love. Why I got that at three, I'll never know, but I did. And I am so grateful. I have written of this. And that was my secret weapon against my brother Jim--I loved him out loud and it usually threw him so far off, he would stop... for a while. I loved my mom and it allowed me to see beyond her psychoses and ultimately opened the door to our closeness by the end--a reconciliation that my siblings never had with her.

I did not learn that all by myself. It was a gift given to me... probably BY my mom, when she was neither drunk nor psychotic.  I am surrounded by love for much of my life now. The phoenix women, laundry eagles. My sister's love wraps around me, all around me in my home and in my heart, as do my mother's, my father's, and my brother Jack's.

I survived. Sometimes the survivor of suburbia has survivor's guilt. Why did I get the gifts that my siblings did not? It's not an important question, nor even relevant. The fact is, I am here and I love life more than the others did. All I can do is hold onto that, to honor it, and to honor the two siblings who gave me the safety and the love to be here now, ready to start fresh. To tell the whole story to the best of my memory and ability, to include the music of their lives, not just the pain, is my only way to honor what they gave to me. I think their souls are worth revealing, and the stories worth the telling.

In the telling of these stories, I try to recreate them as I experienced them at the time.   I write them that way, but understand that I no longer have flashbacks. I no longer feel conflict about my family. There was a lot of work, therapy, pain--all of it. But now? Now there is sadness, sure, but  mostly there is love. And a deep-seeded appreciation for that rain forest of a family: lush or rotting, with little in between.  And for the exquisite beauty of each member when they were at their best. I may have gotten each person's worst at some point; I also got their best. In that, I think I was uniquely blessed among my siblings. I am not sure that any of the others got the absolute BEST from all five other family members.

It is a hard story, this story of my family. We take it in stride when we read The Prince of Tides because it's fiction. But, in real life, sometimes families hold the same horror and beauty, humor and meanness, kindness and cruelties--and over-the-top stories. We had no tiger. we had other things.

Onward to today's attempt.

***
I move to Robin Hood. My brother Jack.

My protector, when he was big enough to stave off Jim's attacks long enough for me to run and hide in my father's sloping closet, perched on the shelf at the back, wrapped in Old Spiced jackets with patches on their sleeves.  I would hear the muffled mysteries. "Whatever" did kill him, just slowly.  I watched alcohol kill him by inches, and he died at only 50.

The year before, he showed up at my house one early summer's  night. I had not seen him for three years, and he realized inside he was ill, and that his own pain had made him refuse to see his little sister who had been, for 23 years,  his best friend and confidante--until he got married. Then he cut me off and cut Jean Ellen off. Just like that. Boom.

I saw death in him that night... I had seen it in my father's and mother's eyes, and it was there in his that night. His skin was just beginning to be tinged with yellow. But his gentle spirit seemed to have returned, and he sat very near me, holding my hand. I tried to remember the last time he had done that.

***
The day my daughter died.

Jacky came from school and sat beside me. We did not know where her body was, how she had died, or even where she had died. We knew only that she had. Jack volunteered to go to Jessie's Mom's house and to go to the police station. I'd been given  no answers in calling, but, then, by that time, I had already called our senator's office to locate Jessie's Mom in el Salvador, tried to locate her father and his new wife off on a vacation, and had had to tell my son, on the phone, that his sister was dead, and arrange a flight for him to come. I was all out of practical.

That afternoon he sat with me, silent for ten minutes. Just as we had when we were children, we were face to face, and he leaned toward me and we rested our foreheads together a moment.

"I will find her." He left, and an hour later, he had found out all we needed to know for that time.

That night, her dad had come to give ME the news, having driven seven hundred miles to try to get to me first, and he and I had gone into my sister's living room to escape the twelve women who hated him for deserting me.  I'd had to tell HIM what had happened--he knew only that she was dead. The police had called to tell him to come home, she was dead, and had hung up! So I comforted him, to the disgust of my friends. I had had to tell her MOM what had happened--on the phone to el Salvador! EVERYONE came to me for answers, for comfort. Five kids came over to cry. But the women came, and they managed to flutter the rest away. When they, too, left, it was Jean Ellen, Nancy (her best friend and my non-related big sister) and me. We heard guitar music on the front porch. I walked out to Jack and he said, "Come out and set a while and we will sing each other to peace." He was NOT drunk, and Nancy took my sister up to her side of the house.

We sat outdoors,  with the nighttime cacophony of August insects, and we sang. I drifted off, and he began some familiar old riffs, then suddenly all was silent. My brother took me by the hand and walked me to my room, sat me on my bed, removed my shoes and tucked me in. I heard him play a while more, the sound drifting through the distance of three rooms and I finally slept.

He came to the funeral mean drunk, though. That afternoon he slurred, "You need anything more?"

"Not today, no. thank you. I'll call you if I need more."

"ONE day offer. You're just like Ma. Give one thing, you ask for it all."

My son said, "Jack, go home now." We looked at one another and Jay said, "I think he's next."

That had been the last time I saw my brother for three years. When I called at Christmas to get together, the response was, "Well, if nothing better comes up, maybe you could come over for a while." My sister and I declined the offer, tempting though it was. I moved to PA the following May, for two years. I sent Christmas and birthday cards from there, but apparently no one noticed. They sent joint cards to Jean Ellen and never looked at mine. I had sent them a note with the card, but it was thrown away.

***
The night he called to come over, it was because he'd heard from his best friend that I was back home after being in Pennsylvania for two years; Jack realized he'd never known I had left. It haunted him. He told me, "Jetty, I made the mistake of throwing out you and Jean Ellen because you both made me remember Jim, just because you are part of my family. I could not look at you without... without remembering things I hate."

"I've been a crappy brother to you since I got married, haven't I."

I looked him full in his impossibly deep brown eyes. "Yes, Jack, you have."

"Is it too late for me to be your brother now?"

"Never. You're Robin Hood and I'm Maid Marion."

The tears made his eyes shine in the dim light. I saw the hollows around them, that muted brown-gray of pain.
"You're not well, Jack."

"Well, no. It seems I'm more like Mom than you ever were or will be. It would seem I am drinking myself to death."

"You gonna stop?"

"Nope. Just some nights, like tonight. I go some weeks sometimes, when I feel like actually seeing my life. Which isn't all that much. But tonight I want to see."

He had my hand by then and I asked, "What is it you want to see?"

"Did Jimmy rape you?"

I said, "Yes, Jack."

"Was I in the house? How come I didn't stop it?"

"You were over at your friend's house, Jack. You weren't even there. Jim was there with Mom and me and Mom was, well. Drunk in her chair of course." The horrified laugh escaped us both.

But Jack was shaking now. "Well if I wasn't there, why do I remember? How come I KNOW?"

I said nothing for a while. We had never spoken of it. Well. We'd never had a conversation. "I'm not sure," I lied.

"Okay, did Daddy backhand Jim into a wall at dinner?"

"Yes Jacky."

Pause.

"Do you want to know more than that, Jack?"

Excruciating pause, and my brother began to shake. And he mouthed "not about that." No sound came out.

"HOW DO I KNOW WHAT JIMMY DID?"  He was in agony now. And then, "Did I rape you, too? Oh, GOD, did I do it, too?"

I looked at him, his fear palpable, his pain intense. He had been 21 and I just 19. He had been stumbling drunk and I'd run to his and Jean Ellen's place because Mom had been drinking and was rather more horrid than usual. Dad was "away on business" and I did not want to be alone with her.

Jack shared some more wine with me, and we were sitting together on the couch, watching tv.

"God, you know how gorgeous you are?" he'd said.

His tone was weird, but I simply said, "Yup." And he had his arm around me and I stood up. So did he, and he came at me and kissed me on the  mouth.

When I could pull away, he was touching my breasts and I smacked him. Then I shouted and smacked precisely,  "NOT"--smack--"YOU"-- smack-- "TOO!" Punch, right in the kisser.

With which he went, "huh?"And he tipped over like a felled tree onto the floor. I stood over him and screamed, "YOU are NOT JIM. YOU ARE NOT HIM!" And I left, humiliated, shocked, disgusted, hurt. But mostly inordinately sad.

But I was absolutely right.

He was not Jim. It never happened again and until that moment, I assumed it had happened in one of Jack's alcoholic blackouts. There, I was only partly right. But maybe that's the nature of blackouts--you remember dim images of the truth, but cannot sort it out.  I took both  his hands, and I turned to face him full in his horrified and pained face.  We tipped forward once more, foreheads touching, tears dropping into our laps. Robin Hood had come home and I did not have to lie or hedge.

I simply said, "No, Jack. Not you, too. You did not rape me." Something made me smile a little, and I added, "Honey, you are not our brother Jim. Nothing like our brother Jim.  And you never really came CLOSE."

He looked as if he wanted to say more, to respond to that crack in the door to come clean, to face that demon. He tried, but the words stuck. We were crying, those big tears that it seems only children have... silent tears. It was more than enough for me, so I did not ask for more.

I released one hand and sang, "Ride, ride, ride, won't you let it ride."

And he picked up his guitar, which he'd brought with him... the same guitar he'd brought to play outside my house, just for me. We moved outside and sang, as was our custom, from back in high school, on the hot summer nights when Mom was drunk, Dad was "away" and we needed the cool of a nearby lake and the peace of music. And our tears ran into the "Song of the Great Silke" and faded into the accompanying chorus of late spring tree frogs.

No brother loved a sister more. No sister misses a brother more. I missed him for those decades he could not face us, could not bear the memories that haunted him until he drank to go numb. I did not force him to remember what I, myself, had blocked for so long. His secrets and pain were not mine to expose.

 I had my brother again, if only for that year. I am alive because he was there to save me and to spare me pain he endured too many times. Robin Hood died; Maid Marion lives. That story is for another time.

I have to stop here for now. I have to listen to Judy Collins' Wildflowers CD and sing to him a spell.

***
It's a start.