Taking Sides

Upon discovering that my parents are not buried together, my first thought was "He had to die to do it, but he beat her in the end." An appalling thought, full of bitterness and rage toward the dead. I tried to regret thinking it and found I couldn't.

My daddy lies in a small cemetary in a small village, close to where he was born and where I think he was the happiest. In the end or maybe even long before the end, he chose not to be alongside my mother, chose not to validate her any longer. For me, it's a satisfying if sad kind of justice. That he neglected to tell his sons about this decision, tells me he knew how ugly it would've been and wanted to avoid what would've been an inevitable and drawn out confrontation. He broke free.

For better or worse, people who are chained together can only move in the same direction, whether they want to or not. When I would ask him, why do you stay, he would look at me and shake his head wearily and his answer was always the same, she depends on me for everything, she couldn't survive without me. It wasn't true, the only thing she depended on him for was money but he believed what he believed. I'm responsible he would say with a resigned half smile, she's had a difficult life and I've been a great disappointment to her. How is it your fault I would demand with righteous teenage rage. And he would begin an answer, not be able to find the right words, and fall silent. She has everything I would yell at him, a car, a closet full of evening dresses, she doesn't have to work and she only wants to make us all miserable. And he would say, hush, now, you'll understand when you're older.

One of the things I came to understand is that addiction casts a very wide net and it entraps not only the addicted but families and friends as well. Addicts manipulate and lie as a means to an end, they use guilt as a tool and shame as insurance. The only side worth taking is against the addiction.

Would my mother have been different without the alcoholism? Outwardly, probably so. Would it have changed her basic nature? Made her less hurtful, less miserable, less determined to strike out at everyone she hated or was jealous of? Would she have been tolerant instead of racist, loved her children instead of resenting them, supported her husband instead of blaming him? Would she have been generous and kind instead of selfish and venomous? I've never thought so but who can tell.