Old Me: Just Stay Home

OH MY GOD.

I'm depressed again and I even wore my depression shirt. [I remember this shitty shirt, it's depressing to think about even now.] I wrote to Sarah last night but gosh darnit [sic] I didn't have a stamp. I just never could call her. I'm mad at Dave and I wish I would've stayed home today because I didn't do my homework for this most highly exhalted [sic] class. I couldn't -- didn't know how.  I'm mad at Dave because he didn't call me back. And because he's so moody. He may have called but I'm not sure. [OverReacTron 2000.] I hate the fact that he has this special knack at making me mad. He's so obnoxious. But I'm still here -- mad, depressed, hungry, tired, confused and downright pissed. [This all sounds suspiciously like PMS, which is the hunch I had about the last entry.] Okay - I'm going to start over now.

[...]

No offense but this class is getting terribly boring. Oh, great, now the sun's coming out. Just what'll make me feel better. Where's the wind and rain and darkness? I'm really in a bad mood and I hate being in a bad mood.

Later -- Should I call Dave or wait and see if he calls me? I'm opting for the former. But what if his mom won't let him call? [It seems I actually meant latter.] Does that mean I'm allowed to call him? I'll wait a while.

I wish I could think of something... Oh! Guess what? Janet's preggers again [my sister]. 10 weeks. How she waited that long to tell I don't know. I was so happy when I found out. I wasn't suprised - I wasn't last time either. I knew it had to be soon. I've been really wanting a baby, too. (Wanting Janet to have one, of course.) They're so cute, just to hold them and rock them and give them their bottle. They're cute until they start walking and talking [I still agree]. (Kenny) He's not a baby anymore.

I was just thinking of what I would write to Dave assuming I did love him. And not something about the psycho child from hell.

[Here I wrote out the alphabet with "Dave's" full name interspersed.]

I'd write that but much more elaborate I'd imagine. [I can't imagine.] If it were to come to that of course.

Which right now I don't care. I'm in a bad mood. A real bad mood and I don't want to be in a bad mood but I am in a bad mood and I hate it. You know what would make me in a happy mood would be if I would've stayed home today. Then I would be in the best mood cause I'd be asleep. I miss sleep. I really do. Sometimes. I can't stay home tomorrow, it would have to be either a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. I'm hoping Sarah calls me tonight. Or I call her. I was going to call her last night (as I am every night but don't). I really want to talk to her. It must be because I'm terribly sad.

Did you know that Jim Morrison was killed by Pam, his girlfriend? How tragic can you get. She was giving him heroin. [Mmm, free will. I was kind of obsessed with Jim Morrison, reading books about him and poetry books by him. I was never that into the music, though. Huh.] It can't be all her fault though. He let her [Oh. I should've read ahead.] But then a few years later she herself overdosed and is daid [sic] as she should be.

[...]

There's so much I want to write about. I bet  you can't guess what/who it's about? Yep, you're "write."  There's so much about him I don't know. But that's mutual. I guess you can never know everything about a person, it would be boring if you did. As far as I can tell I love him [whoa!]. He's so fucked up right now [double whoa for the first f-bomb I drop!]. I don't know if he can love back but that's that [sic] important. [Freudian slip? A. How could that NOT be important? B. I think it is THAT THAT important, dummy.] You should never waste a chance to tell someone you love them [jeez, embroider a pillow, why don'tcha]. I lost my train of thought again. (Chug-chug.) There's so much I want to say I can't think of anything. My newest discovery? NIИ - Nine Inch Nails. The coolest stuff yet. I've got to get more.

I have this huge secret I'm just dying to mention. It's the coolest thing. And to think all this time and I'm just now finding out. [I think I'm about to die from embarrassment.] I feel like a weed for thinking it's so cool [you should feel that way]. I mean it's got to be terribly difficult to actually live it. To think I actually know someone who's attracted to people of the same sex. Isn't that wild?! [And... I just died.] I wonder what he'd say if he knew I felt this way? [Also embarrassed?]

[... I mention my cat, transcribe some Nine Inch Nails lyrics for 3 & 1/2 pages ...]

I'm not a happy (humpy) camper. I don't think Dave is here. My day's shot. I really almost stayed home today. Now I wish I really did. School is getting boring. I'm hoping to go over Dave's house Friday night. Saturday we're going to 3 Little Bakers [yeah, it's a dinner theater]. My mom's a weiner. She won't let me go over on a week night. Is that the most bogus thing you've ever hear? [I'm still amazed she let me go to his place at all.] But weekends aren't out. I'm going to make a list of all the stuff I want to take with me when I go. [WTF?] I'm going to have a suitcase full of stuff to take with me. [KNOW ME! LOVE ME!] What if he is here but I just didn't see him. I hope so. We didn't get to talk much last night.

This day is going to last forever.

[Page(s) missing. When it starts up again I'm talking about my father. I think this might be around the time my mother let him move back into the house with us:]

...he even home, too drunk to notice, I guess. Fifteen years I had to deal with the stupid bastard. Until, um, last May I think it was when I finally decided I wasn't going to live like that anymore. Not that he ever said or did anything to me. [Hmm. He definitely said some weird shit to me but I think it was after this time period.] We barely acknowledge each other's existence. But nobody deserves to listen to him constantly putting other people down, especially your mother who has somehow accepted that living like that's okay. It's okay to be called a bitch and/or worse every single day of your life. I blame her a lot for everything. How she can sit there and watch 9 kids be put through every kind of abuse possible is beyond me. He used to beat David, punched Diane right in front of everyone while they were eating dinner, nobody even tried to stop him! The worse stuff happened before me.

I don't want to talk about that anymore.

April's not here, the wench. She said she wouldn't be here Friday, it's only Thursday. She's here, the wench. I couldn't stay home today, my mom did. It's truly hell trying to stay home when she does. Acting like you're sick all day. It makes me really sick.

I wish Dave and me [grammar, people!] could hmm. I don't know how to say what I'm thinking. I want more. I'll just leave it at that. What is more? More everything. That's sickening. [???] It's not a great feeling, wanting to be with a person all the time. [Oh.] It just makes you sad because you can't be and really you don't want to be because I get annoyed after 2 days of the same person being constantly around. I'm flustered, I love/hate that word. Frustrated is a better word. It's crazy because I don't know why I am. I got my pepperoni "logs." They're real cute all wrapped up avec bow [WHAT are you talking about?]. I'd rather have a bologna (baloney) (I like that word better) log, though. Oops. I shouldn't go there. Sometimes I think I do want it but then sometimes the thought of it makes me nauseous. [I hear ya, sister.] Not because it's Dave. It could be anybody. It's a scary thought.

Tales of a 15 year old virgin. Next: more relationship confusion, mostly revolving around cryptic conversations and news of the relationship getting out, thoughts on Madonna's movie Truth or Dare, and remembrances of childhood friends.  

"He did pass away." Pt. III

The thrilling conclusion of the 3-part series "He did pass away."  If it feels a little rushed that's because it is.  I just need to be done with it right now.   

Thursday morning my niece Jessica and I drove out to the house on Fell Road.  My father had literally been dying in there over the previous weekend and so there was an unpleasant odor throughout the house.  My brothers, brother-in-law, and nephews had already loaded up the mattress from his bed and the carpet from the bedroom and taken it away along with some of the other furniture.  The house had been disinfected days ago but the smell still lingered.  There were 13 adults moving around in this small one-story house so while it did take the majority of the day it really didn't take all that long to clean everything out.  Most of the things in the house were not worth much so a lot ended up being sent to the dump.  Dan, one of my nephews from Virginia, climbed up into the attic with me to bring down the few boxes that were still up there.  Most of my mother's glassware collection that had been up there was already gone, my sisters having taken it out last summer.

I don't know what they did with all of it, and I don't care, I was just glad it wasn't still there.  For some reason in her later life my mother became obsessed with collectible glass and then proceeded to buy so much of it, mostly at yard sales, that it filled the attic.  There were some xmas decorations and some boxes of my old toys.  Nothing good, a bunch of Cabbage Patch dolls and other junk toys that my 9-year-old niece Lexi and I dumped out on a bed in one of the spare rooms and went through.  I told her if there was anything she wanted she could take it.  She took a couple of things but we pretty much both decided that it looked like a bunch of trash and threw it away.  I generally am not one to be sentimental about objects but having said that I'm going to share an odd exception with you in a moment.  I ended up bagging up the Cabbage Patch and storing them in my sister's basement but when I looked at them again a couple weeks ago I told her I didn't want them and she could throw them out if she wanted.  

My family has never been wealthy, or even very financially comfortable.  Some of us live modestly out of necessity, some of us go the other direction people who were raised in a lower income family go and end up hoarding "treasures" from the dollar store.  But almost all of my siblings are tacky.  For some reason my taste in things tends to be a bit more...let's say, discerning, so some of the things my relatives were taking or deciding not to throw away were boggling my mind.  Near the end of the day I went into the bathroom and noticed that on the wall were these white plastic wall decorations (one of the things was holding fake flowers!) and a matching mirror.  I can't even find similar images of them online they're so tacky but let's say they were something akin to this:        

 

And these things had been hanging there since, like, we moved to that house in 1987.  So I grabbed all of these tacky monstrosities off the wall and shoved them in a trash bag and put it in the back of my brother's truck to be taken to the dump.  It was not the first time I had done that with something terribly ugly that day.  Later my sister asked me if I had taken, meaning to keep, the stuff off the bathroom wall and I just smiled and said, "Yup." 

I ended up with some useful things, like a paper shredder, a blood pressure machine thingy, a blender with a real glass container thingy, some other stuff... I claimed all the Pyrex bowls and quickly become annoyed when my oldest sister kept pointing out that they're "collectible."  Then there was the cast iron frying pan.  For years my sister Diane has had a claim on this frying pan which is really old and so it's well-seasoned, which is what you want in a cast iron pan.  Suddenly I was being asked if I wanted this frying pan, which I did, why not? but I was so perplexed by my sister suddenly not wanting something she had wanted so badly for years.  "I bought my own," was her response.  I brought my own as well, assuming I'd never see this one again.  And so it goes.  Now I have two.  Which I will rarely use.  

Speaking of lack of sentimentality: Much earlier in the day I had gone into the laundry room and found an old denim jacket that my father used to wear hanging on a hook next to his winter coat.  It's old and has paint spattered on it and what looks like dried blood in places and it's well-worn.  I found myself putting this jacket on and wearing it for the rest of the day.  I have it at home now and wear it out sometimes.  I find it hard to explain what attracted me to it in the first place or why I want to wear it.  I guess it's because even for all the pain he caused there were a few not so bad moments, too.  And he looked good in this jacket.  And after all, he used to be my daddy.  Listen to me, being a sentimental bastard.

A photo from the mid-80s in the kitchen of the Tony's Road house.

So the big deal of the night was that my father was buying us dinner.  Unfortunately it was at Shady Maple.  Prior to arriving I was super-stoked on going.  Even when I first got there I thought it was hilarious, probably because we were having a good time on the way.  Jessica was driving and I was in the passenger seat with Kenny and Brian in the back.  Brian was telling jokes and Kenny told a story about being arrested at the beach and we were all yelling about "Maple Shady!"  Chris refused to go even though it was free food.  Now I totally understand why.  He had been there before and believe me, once is enough for "Maple Shady."  You walk into this place and it's all fake fancy and huge, it's exactly like a casino except there are no table games or slot machines, just a buffet and a gift shop.  I made the joke but I'm not sure anyone in my family's ever been to a casino so it was greeted with silence.  We were escorted down this long hallway, all 19 of us, and given two tables in a banquet room.  The buffet is in its own huge room and runs for...a while (see the photos in the link) before it repeats on the other side.  It was awful.  There was this thing called "filling" which I kept being told was a bread stuffing but it just looked like a brown shape.  And there were the most massive fried chicken legs I've ever seen.  Then I watched in horror as almost every member of my family ate one of these genetically modified, hormone injected curiosities, including the small (the term is relative) children.  Even though I was eating meat at the time I just could not bring myself to touch those things!  They were that unnatural. 

After everyone had gorged themselves, myself included, we all had to wander around the gift shop downstairs for an interminable amount of time.  But that wasn't the end my friends!  No, there's another store to go to!  The Amish (Mennonite?) department store, Good's! which, whoo hoo, is open until 9!  So I guess that means we have to stay til 9?  It sure does!  (Was it only 9?  We must have gone to eat super early...)  At one point I looked around at those of us gathered out front waiting for the serious shoppers and saw Jessica, Kenny and Brian.  Holy Fuck, WHY ARE WE STILL HERE!  This is us!  We're not waiting for anyone!  Jessica, can we please go?!?!  No, we couldn't.  She wanted to say goodbye to my sister's family who were going back to Virginia the next day.  

Eventually we made it back home and to bed and the next day Chris drove me to the train station in Philly, almost taking the exit to the airport until I yelled, "No, TRAIN STATION!"  

I've pretty much come to the end of my story.  I've been dragging my feet on the ending most of the day because I just want to move on.  I will tell you that a disturbing side affect of this trip, and the one Allen and I made a couple weeks ago, has been that I think about moving back, a lot, not necessarily to Cecil County but at least in the general area.  This side of the state has yet to feel like home and I doubt it ever will.  And I'm jealous of what my family has, their jokes and their camaraderie, but I also know that it wouldn't be the same if I saw them every day.  It wouldn't be as funny.  I can see that from listening to the things Chris tells me, he's still too close to it.  I know that time and distance have changed the way I feel about my family and I am grateful for that because it allows me to love them better.  I guess the moral of this story is that [insert cliche about family]...       

By the way, when Allen and I were there last they asked if we wanted to have dinner at Maple Shady.  We declined.               

The quote that is the title of this 3 part series comes directly from the voice mail message Jessica left me when she called to tell me that my father had died. 

[Bonus Material: I asked Chris to sent me any thoughts he had regarding my behavior that week and this was his oddly flattering reply, I doubt I said anything even remotely this eloquent and I hope he won't mind that I'm allowing all of you to read this.]

What I remember most from January was your prediction about our family's behavior at the funeral.  You said that they wouldn't own up to the reality of your father's harsh behavior in the household - specifically his [...] toward your mother - and stated that you would prefer they accept that reality as to promote healing for a family without him rather than do the cutesy funeral thing as a rite of unfulfilled passage and perpetuation of a fairy tale as to fit the mould of some happy Norman Rockwell home.  Naturally, it all unfolded as you had divined.

I'm still glad he is dead but his ghost sort of just lingers in the periphery.

I also remember the funeral home.  You approached his casket and cried and shook like many normal people would.  You were one of the few who decided to grieve openly rather than pretend like everyone else.  One thing you kept saying was "He hurt mom."  Uncle David wanted to console you but he knew that he had accepted this a long time ago. [?]  There was a bit of bravery on his part.  It was eerily reminiscent of what had happened in 1993 just before you went to hospital. [Another story for another time, maybe.]

"He did pass away." Pt. II

Outside the funeral home, the WORST funeral home I've ever been to, where conveniently my mother's funeral is already planned and paid for, I met my 13 year old niece Mariah for the first time.  She's the daughter of my brother Tom, who is the longest hold out from the family implosion of 1993 (another long story).  She looks disturbingly like my ex sister-in-law except with blond hair and feels nothing like an actual member of my family.  She's not awkward and she goes to private school, pretty telling if you ask me.  I was later informed by my brother-in-law Charlie that Mariah's mother Paula has gotten ridiculously fat since I last saw her which pleased me to no end.  We then spent a long while standing outside while those who drove put the vehicles in order by oldest to youngest child at the request of a funeral home employee.  Why that was important I don't know.

Just as a bit of background, my parents have 8 living children, 4 boys and 4 girls.  This was the first time we've all been together since I don't know when.  At least the early 90s but maybe earlier.  And it was incredibly weird how we all just kind of slipped back into things being like they used to be.  I apparently am still the emotional and dramatic youngest child who fits in better with the younger kids, nieces and nephews, who are actually closer in age to me than any of my brothers and sisters.  Rick and Tom are jocks, Ken's the nerd, Janet plays the mom, etc. 

When I walked inside I couldn't go near the open casket at the front of the main room.  I went immediately to the side room and sat in a chair facing the opposite direction where I stayed most of the morning.  It seemed that I was the only one having a rough time with this.  Rick talked to me and was understanding of what I was feeling although I don't remember exactly what we said to each other.  Then Tom was sitting across from me and asking me inappropriate questions while I was visibly upset like, "So, what do you do?"  Are you fucking kidding me you strange person who I used to live with but haven't seen or spoken to in almost two decades?   

After a little while Chris and I went to find a coffee shop on Main St.  We talked as we walked and I felt significantly better being outside but when we came back I was told I couldn't take my coffee inside and I wanted to start screaming.  Janet appeared to be running things, standing by the body and receiving the...guests? visitors?  Then my nephew Dan was doing some sort of sermon and his wife, whom I had never met before yesterday, was singing some hymn, Rock of Ages or something.  I was getting angrier by the second and ended up walking outside, grabbing my coffee off the ledge near the front door and then slamming the door as I exited.  I stood around outside, realized the funeral home was right across the street from the very first place I ever went for psychiatric therapy when I was 14, got a little more angry and started sending Allen text messages about how fucking ridiculous all of this was.  I finished my coffee and went back inside only to realize that I was at a funeral home that didn't provide tissues for the bereaved.  I was forced to go into the bathroom and get some scratchy paper towels.  I went back to my seat off to the side and noticed that my mother's not crazy sister and brother had also sat over here, separating themselves from the fakery which I thought was very telling and it made me wonder how much they knew about what I knew about my father.  At some point, before my outrage took over, I said hello to my cousin Bob and aunt Emily.  They informed me very matter-of-factly that one of my other cousins, Brian, their brother and son respectively, had recently been killed in an auto accident of his own causing, telling me basically that it was for the best in his case.  Apparently he had drug and alcohol problems.  Well, then.

Eventually the service was over and only family was left.  Chris, who cleverly referred to himself as a "Paul" bearer (my father's name was Paul), offered to go up to view the body with me but I never did get too close.  I went as close as I could, which was still about ten feet away.  Standing there staring at this shell that represented so much anger and hatred and pain in my life...I just burst into tears again.  Then my oldest brother David put his arm around my shoulders and comforted me.  "He ruined her life!" I said to him.  As he should, he reminded me that she let him do it, she stayed with him.  While I don't 100% agree with this, it is ultimately true, she did stay with him for over 50 years to the detriment of EVERY ONE of her nine children...  So she's not entirely blameless.

    Last photo I have of my parents together.  This was taken the day Allen and I got married, September 20, 2002.

Soon his body was loaded into the hearse and we all drove to the grave site.  My brother-in-law Don delivered a surprisingly appropriate eulogy.  I think he said something about how some of us had sometimes wished for or dreamed of this day, how he had been a total asshole to his family.  Not in those exact words, obviously,  but he didn't shy away from the truth.  Afterwards, everyone wandered around for a bit, looking at other family graves: My brother Mike, that cousin who was killed in a tractor accident when he was like 12,  Uncle Emory, my father's parents and others.  Each of the daughters took a rose from the flower arrangement lying on top of the casket.  I didn't really want the rose, I just wanted to spit on that damn box.  I ending up throwing it away not long after, once we were at the church for the "wake."

Going to Pleasant Hill church was not what I had wanted to do or what I had planned on doing, Chris and I were supposed to go to lunch at the Howard House but he forgot to drive or something.  So there I was, at this church that had given me so much grief over the years.  Oh, look, it's Mrs. Kramer, who made me sing in front of everyone as a child (with a microphone!) when I knew perfectly well that I couldn't sing.  And there was that time that she made me and Sally Richarts play our flutes for the congregation.  She was a fucking nightmare task master, I definitely want to talk to her for longer than necessary.  There's Mr. Kramer, showing an appropriate lack of interest in both me and what's going on around him, thank christ for old men.  Here's someone named Brenda, remember her?  Um, oh, yes, of course.  I'd love to talk to her for an uncomfortable amount of minutes about her children who were significantly older than me who I didn't hang out with.

Finally the food was ready.  If you haven't heard me talk about it before, there are four food groups in Cecil County: Meat, Bread, Cake and Diet Soda.  I was actually eating meat at this point in time but I was still freaked out when I looked at the aluminum tray of grocery store fried chicken and saw an actual chicken feather.  On fried chicken.  So naturally I exclaimed, "There's a feather on that piece of fried chicken."  "That's not a feather," my sisters said indignantly as they tried to place it on my aunt Emily's plate.  So I removed the feather and, sticking in their face, simply said, "Look at it.  Feather."  Emily, who is pretty much blind, was grateful that she didn't end up eating a feather.  

My cousin Faye showed up at some point and was awesome and funny, cursing every once in a while.  I noticed for the first time that she has this weird facial tic, which once discovered was hard to stop watching.  Cousin Bob tried talking to me about buying a house and other adult things, he's not too much older than me but was obviously unaware that I'm not really an adult despite my appearance and so I just sorta smiled and nodded as well as I could until I could get away.  When everyone that was not immediate family had left, we had Charlie bring over the box with the hidden house cash in it and we counted it out into eight equal piles.  Then we took photos in the church proper, often waving our individual stacks of cash around.  It was glorious.  And probably for the best that I not publish the photos now that I think about it.  

When we got back to Janet's house later that evening my brother Ken was nearly in insulin shock from taking too much after his blood sugar went through the roof from eating too much so we had to get him some juice and more food.  He's like a genius computer nerd but obviously not so genius about his health.  Me, Janet, Ken, Diane and Charlie sat around talking.  I was able to get Janet to pay me for my train ride from Philly to Newark, DE.  I thought she had thrown a $10 bill in my bag.  Turned out to be a $50 from the petty cash stash.  I was pleased.  Ken had on a Cthulhu t-shirt without realizing it and I was shamed.  Chris and I were planning on going out later because I really needed a drink after all that happened that day.  I was so tired and Chris wanted to take me to some bar in Wilmington but we settled on something closer, Howard House in downtown Elkton.

We sat at the bar and had some drinks and talked about life, my shitty father, shitty friends.  The bartender was clearly ready to close up shop around midnight.  It was a Wednesday night in Elkton, after all.  We went back to Janet's and my nephew Kenny was still up.  I guess I was a little drunker than I thought, even though I'd only had two shots of whiskey and three beers at the bar.  I started going on about how it was all thanks to me that the younger kids had had it so much easier as teenagers.  I paved a path through hell so they could get away with so much more.  I found out recently that my nephews Kenny and Brian are somewhat legendary for their hacking and hijinks at Rising Sun High School.  My sister-in-law's stepson, a soon to be senior at the school, was in awe when I told him I was related to them.  I was so proud.  Then we talked about Sophia Lamar for a while before I absolutely had to get some sleep around 2am.  

The next day the family was going to clean out the house where I had lived off and on with my parents from ages 9-19.  Truckloads of stuff was sent to the dump.  The rest of us loaded up the stuff we wanted to take home with us.  Later that evening was the experience that's come to be referred to as Maple Shady.  It's like a casino where you can only access the buffet and the gift shop.  More on this and the conclusion coming soon in "He did pass away." Pt. III.   

"He did pass away." Pt. I

Since the majority of my relatives behave much like I do, with a general indifference to direct requests for action, I may never receive copies of the pictures I wanted from my father's wake.  I love saying "wake" in reference to my family.  Especially since they're mostly made up of Irish (hence the crazy) and when I think of the words "Irish" and "wake" together I imagine a rockin' good time.  Ha ha ha ha ha.  Yeah but no.  I'm just going to get on with the story.


My father passed away on Sunday, January 17, 2010.  He was 79.  My niece, aka the family whipping girl, called to tell me around 9:30 that evening.  She had been given the task of calling any and everyone who might need to know. 

At that point in time it was believed that it was a subdural hematoma that caused his death.  I think that still is the main cause of death but you can also get a number of speculative responses from my sisters.  Apparently he had fallen on Friday and had been bleeding since then.  But, you know, he had a doctor's appointment on Monday so it could wait, I suppose.  My cousin Wayne had been looking in on him pretty regularly since he had begun alienating his children again and my siblings who live in the area did not like to visit him often.  My mother, who has Alzheimer's, has had to be in a nursing home for a couple of years now so he was living alone.  Wayne found him that afternoon, actually bleeding, semi-conscious and asking for help.  The details are sketchy but I think Wayne called Rick (my brother) and one of them called 911.  He was taken to the hospital where he lasted a few hours and then passed away peacefully, commenting that he was too tired to stay awake any longer.  He had simply lost too much blood and his organs could not recover no matter how much they gave him.         

I hesitate to give too much back story, it would take much too long.  Let me just say that my father was not a good man to his family.  He did many, many bad things in his life but the worst part is that I, along with most of my brothers and sisters, realize that personality-wise he was a good-time guy, a lot of people liked him.  You just didn't want to be related to him or in a relationship with him.  He was also an alcoholic and he, in combination with her own family, hurt my mother in an almost unspeakable way when she was only 16 years old.

My plan for this piece of writing is not to talk too much about the past but about what happened that week in January when I went home to Cecil County to bury my father.  Get ready to meet an interesting cast of characters.
       
Sunday night I got the call that he was dead and I just didn't know what to do.  It wasn't what I expected.  I expected it to be my mom.  Or that my nephew had done something crazy (take your pick of which one).  By choice I hadn't seen him since September of 2002, and I really didn't know what to do, what to feel.  I just sat on the couch.  Allen asked me what I wanted to do and I just kept saying "I don't know."  Monday was a holiday so I had a little time to think.  I woke up that day and knew I had to go for two reasons.  1: If I didn't go the fact that he was actually gone would never be real to me, and 2: There was cash hidden somewhere in that house.  Turns out I was not the only one who knew about the cash.  We may be from Cecil County but we're not stupid.  Monday is also the day I started to cry.  I cried because I was angry about how things had been, sad about how they hadn't been, and relieved that it was finally over.  Unlike my sister, I have not once experienced any guilt.

I decided to take the train since it was my cheapest option on such short notice and seemed much more pleasant than a bus.  My family is also lackadaisical about providing necessary details (another habit I share) so it was unclear as to whether the funeral would be Wednesday or Thursday.  I made plans to arrive Tuesday evening and stay until Friday.  I requested that Allen not come with me, feeling that this was something I needed to do on my own and also because I didn't want to (wrongly or rightly) feel like I had to keep him entertained or rush back to Pittsburgh too soon.

My sister Ruth and her family from Virginia as well as my brother Ken from out near Seattle also arrived on Tuesday.  Ken, who, like me, is married, chose to come alone as well.  My brother Rick sort of snorted at me and seemed incredulous when I told him that I had purposely asked Allen not to come and his absence was not an indication that our marriage was falling apart like his recently has.  He was just being all around weird that week anyway, not that he's usually normal (big fan of conspiracy theories and aliens, it would seem).  Rick had offered to drive me to the train station in Philly Friday morning but when I ended up telling him Chris (my nephew) would do it he asked me if it was because I was "afraid" to go with him.  Well, when you ask me questions like that, yeah, I kinda am.  I understand that Rick would probably like to talk to me but I also understand that Chris (not sure if he'll read this) REALLY needs to talk to me.  Rick and I have had about 17 years of not talking, a little more time won't hurt.    

The viewing/funeral was on Wednesday.  I'm normally an anxious person so as you can imagine I literally thought I was going to combust.  I am not good at funerals, they're so unnatural and sterile and just weird.  To make it worse, no one at my sister's house drinks coffee so I was coffee-less, anxious, and nearly in a panic but when my sister offered me Ativan I was afraid to take a whole one.  I made her cut it in half because I didn't know what it would do to me.  Control freak.  Turns out I probably could've used a handful. 

End Part I.  To be continued on Monday.