Turkeys and Pools...

November 30, 2014

For starting so late in the fall/winter “season” of 2014’s RV’ing this is a most excellent November-cum-December. Another Thanksgiving, day of many thanks for our beautiful retirement to the sun, our family, our friends. At almost 58, each holiday, anniversary or birthday brings a flashback of memories from a film in my head of past gatherings and celebrations. 

My ex-husband, Alex’s one and only father, Doug, is fading again. A staunch believer in drinking, smoking and various pill-popping; not opening the creaky old box that was his fucked up childhood; never, never once, addressing the abuse to his mind and body from a series of his Mormon mother’s “boyfriends” directed toward both he and his dear sister Kathy, leaves him a tiny soft-shelled crab, all structure burned away with poison. Our life together is one that spends a lot of time unreeling in my mind’s movie theater – no popcorn or Dr. Pepper, no faux velvet seats stickily rocking me, marking each day of our unlucky years together. 

He has been sick with drink for years and years, never really quitting the shit, just abstaining for a bit in order to let his body recover to start in again. His life is made of promises broken to himself and a dwindling few people left in his life – there is really no one left, no friends, no family, who want one such as him in their life. He is broken, suffering physically and mentally, scornful of love, even for his dear daughter.

She hears from him occasionally, when he’s either sober for a short while – and by short I mean a day, hours – or “shmammered” out of his mind on street oxy’s, beer and vodka. Now he’s calling her because he has a “business proposal” for her, consisting of the following:

1)      Needs help paying his bills – not monetarily, he has money – but physically. He is so debilitated that he can’t write anymore, including signing checks. He needs to sign over his accounts to Alex but she needs to get him to the bank in order for that to happen and he can’t be transported without an ambulance, which he refuses. The ambulance drivers, Sheriffs, local cops, hospital staff know him by name.

2)      His recent “mini” stroke compounded by his continuous drinking and pill-popping  has left him unable to leave his barcalounger. Smelling food makes him nauseous therefore he doesn’t eat; what he does manage to get down is frozen food, beer, oj and vodka. Weakened by no nutritious food or drink, his muscles can’t support his skinny-ass frame anymore. He keeps a pee bottle next to his lounger due to his little problem of not being ambulatory. We shudder to think what he does for the pooping…

3)      He insists he does not want an ambulance called, does not want to go to a hospital or care facility , although he admits he needs help. He is sick enough that Alex can’t manage him in her car.

4)      He has no teeth, a heart valve was replaced, plates in his wrists, cancer in his  prostate and perhaps elsewhere, liver and other filter organs on the way out from the abuse they’ve suffered. No wife, girlfriend, siblings who care; no parents; no friends. All have been consistently and poisonously shoved away over 30 years. There is no one left to care if he lives or dies or suffers, except Alex, Tony and I. 

Alex is brave, braver than a neglected daughter need be. She is performing tasks for him as she can, between her two jobs. His “business proposition” for her is that he pays her as he would any aide. Thus far she cleans his house, buys him vodka, pays his bills. Her next task is trying to make sense of Medicare and VA to see what help they offer. She must repeat any information many times in order for his brain to slowly comprehend any of her words. These tasks are hard for this beautiful woman who was never, never shown a fractal of consideration from this man who unknowingly donated his sperm to my egg. 

His relationship to Alex is actually like the weird family uncle: occasionally shows up for a family gathering shitfaced – makes inappropriate comments to all present, especially the women (“If she were my daughter I’d…”).  He never attended a parent teacher conference, science fair, talent show, camp. In ten years he may have shown up, buzzed, to maybe a half dozen 4H horse shows; he certainly didn’t come to the state fair in Puyallup when Alex qualified, twice. In short – he nominally cared for her but abundantly and lovingly cared for his booze.

That is why we eventually ended our marriage, a beer and a bump always stood between us from the minute we met in Alaska. I think we had ten, maybe fifteen years together, two of them separated. Hard to remember as I was shitfaced most of that time too. He cried when I confirmed Tony and I were seeing each other, wailing, “But we were going to get back together!!!” Really?! Uh, when was that going to happen? We had two years apart but he never said he missed me, loved me, wanted his family back. I got sober, he didn’t. How was that going to work out, Doug?

He’s had so many close calls with death the last 25 years that I’m always yearning to call our old friends, the ones that he attended boat school with, those who were his best man and roommates, all those men and women he worked beside on vessels as a shipwright, a captain, a mate, a carpenter. When I’ve succumbed to that yearning and called, none of the men are in the least sympathetic to his decline. They truly don’t care to hear about him, and certainly refuse my suggestion that they visit him to try and talk some sense into his addled ass. As one of them said when I contacted him last year, “There’s nothing I can say that will sober him up.”

After our crazy, lustful affair in Alaska his live-in girlfriend moved in with his best friend and he came looking for me – her replacement, I guess. That color film running in my brain is a smiling, handsome, charming, funny Doug tracking me down from his home in north Seattle, to my dad’s in south Seattle. The joy I felt at seeing him astonished me, as in some way I felt we had just been a fling; it surprised me that I still wanted to be flung by him. He made me feel so beautiful and sexy, my skinny no-breasted 22 year old college educated self, suddenly willing to end a three year relationship with a man who would not commit a lifetime to me, barreling full force into a constantly drinking, irreverent, talented, manipulative mustached man. God the roller coaster that ensued! And the baby girl that was the best result of our chaos.

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We spent Thanksgiving day with our sister-in-law Rose about an hour’s drive west in San Jacinto. Only eight of us bumping around her beautiful home and only two allowed to cook – Rose and her brother in law Steve. Her sister Margaret, she of many smiles and easy laugh, nephew Matt and wonderful wife Yoshiko, Tony and I made up the rest of the vagabonds longing for turkey. I put aside my meat and veggies menu for the full fisted version and had at least bites of mashed spuds and gravy, stuffing made with Rose’s fresh sage, my sweet potato casserole. That’s living.

I also discovered a table implement completely and delightfully new to me – a personal gravy boat! I get such enormous joy out of the discovery of such a small thing. And I was the only on utilizing one at the table because I’m special.

Rose and my private gravy bowl.

After dinner with the Seahawks playing, we begged off and ran for home to finish the game. And what a damn game it was! Trounced those Cards, putting them behind us again. 

This post Thanksgiving weekend we have done zero. Well, we did lie in the sun at the pool as after all it’s not snowing here, as it is in the NW. 75 here, 25 there. That is all.