I wrote this last night at one in the morning, to throw my experience into the air, but I thought I’d saved it in my drafts. This morning I realized in a panic that in that bleary-eyed, heavy-lidded moment, I’d actually posted it, instead. I took it down; it’s too much, too personal, too revealing, and too weak. Where is my empathy, my forgiveness, my maturity and graciousness? But it’s also my truth, and a good chunk of twenty years of it, and if I can’t write my truth here - overtired typos and stream of consciousness run-ons and all - I can’t write it anywhere.
Twenty-one years ago, my father and I went somewhere special - I don't remember where - while a caretaker who knew my father from church took care of my mother. She was in the middle stage of Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease, which she was diagnosed with at age 53, and at that point could not be alone. I was home from college for spring break.
When we returned from the outing, it had started snowing, and the caretaker was too nervous about the roads to drive the 15 minutes to her home, so she borrowed my mother's nightgown and slept in our downstairs guestroom.
I remember laying in my bed upstairs talking on the phone with a friend, and whispering into the phone, "Matt, there's another woman in my house!"
I knew before they did. I saw her coming for him.
Six months later, my dad confided in me that he was interested in her, and soon after swore me to secrecy when he told me they were seeing each other. Seeing each other where? Across the table while my mom sat between them hoping to be fed? I kept his secret for years, even from my brother, who was my best friend. I covered for them, listened to him when he vented about her infuriating or hurtful behavior, supported him through their arguments, held him up when she hurt him. She is 13 years younger than him, and at 55 was still living with her parents and sister, not out of necessity or to take care of them, but simply because she had never left home. She'd never had a relationship before, and didn't know anything about how to be in one without bending the other person into a shape she found pleasing.
My mother died, and my father shoved his grief into a box in the back of the closet and six months later, bought her a huge diamond engagement ring to make up for the one he'd never gotten for my mother. Six months.
From the moment she married him, she began the work of tearing him to pieces. She is a vulture, a predator and scavenger at the same time, simultaneously searching, ripping, shredding, devouring, hunting. I, in my own turn, have been a mouse, quietly and slowly disappearing into the background, trying desperately to be here without impacting her, without crossing her, disturbing her, without making a sound.
I miss my father so much, though, that yesterday, I made the 6 hour drive to be here for one day, and I left my children at home because she told me years ago that she hates children, and she's proven it many times since.
Tonight, my father snuck down the road with me to have a beer. A single beer; he isn't an alcoholic, he doesn't drink often and never more than one or two drinks. He's always been very careful with alcohol. But she doesn't like the smell of beer, so when he occasionally wants a beer, he sneaks it.
When we returned, she hissed at him. "Where the hell have you been?!" She'd wanted him to help her with supper. Spaghetti. How do you help someone make spaghetti? So he picked up a plate to try to help, and she shouted at him the same way she shouts at the dog - "LEAVE IT!"
And I lost it. Twenty years of anger and shame and resentment and rage came boiling up through my ribs, and I told my father I would take him to town for dinner. He agreed at first but then backed out, and I said that then I would go alone, or I would just leave and go home. She said, "This is between your father and I," and I said "No. This is between you and I," and then I told her all the things I have held in for the past two decades.
That she was the reason I barely come, that I used to come for four days and then for three and then for two and we'd pay $500 to stay in town for two nights so we wouldn't overwhelm her, and now I am here for one day and have left my babies at home all so she won't be mean to them or feel upset by anything, and I walk on eggshells, and here she is throwing a fit and shouting at my father like a dog (and their poor dog…), in front of his daughter no less. I told her I would never speak to my husband that way, and I would certainly never talk to him that way in front of his family.
She was stunned and stammered and apologized and things settled down, and she said I had cleared the air and said she was reading Ephesians the other day and look how God is using what was brought into the house with evil intent for good instead, and now we can be friends, don't I think we can be friends? Look how much we have in common. And she lit incense and banged on a gong and moved a basket of crystals into the livingroom to clear the house of negative energy and later sat down next to me on the edge of the bed to tell me how worried she is that my dad’s memory is slipping, and see how he loses his glasses all the time? And can't remember where he set his cellphone? But he is 82 and has been losing his glasses since he was 30, and I can't remember where I put my cellphone half the time either. "I told Connie, don't you think he's slipping? And I asked Dee, have you noticed he's slipping?" It's almost as if she wants him to have dementia. He can't say anything without her accusing him of getting it wrong. She tells him what to wear, which hearing aids to get, threatens to sell off part of his property if he doesn't spend $6,000 on the ones that are Bluetooth capable, but he doesn't want those because he doesn't like the technology. She doesn't care what he wants.
She talks like a certain politician we all know, in nonsensical circles with fragmented sentences that break off just before critical information is given, and flits from one subject to another and back again, so a person doesn't even know what she's talking about. She is insulting and crass and offensive. At a wedding, the bride's mother mentions her Irish heritage, and my dad's wife says, "Did you know that the Irish are inbred?" My niece burns her fingers on a slice of bacon and my dad's wife laughs at her and says, "Of course it's hot, you stupid kid!" She opens her mouth and swarms of flies come out and shit on everything, everywhere. They are shitting on the last weeks, months, maybe years that I have with my father on this earth, and I hate her for it.
