Keeping Secrets

My grandmother woke up one morning and fell. She got up, got dressed, and went about her business and it was only much later in the day, that the stroke caught up with her. She died very shortly after.

I flew to Boston for the funeral which was held in the small chapel at the funeral home. I listened as her favorite hymns were played and as the minister spoke about her life and her family and how she would be remembered. A few days later, I went to her house. It was exactly as I remembered. I stayed several hours, going through closets and drawers room by room. Shelf after shelf of glassware, linens, quilts and lace tablecloths, knicknacks, flannel nightgowns, decks of playing cards, neatly discarded mail, books and pictures. Not the smallest item was dusty or out of place or even slightly out of alignment. My grandmother had believed in routine and order and everything in its place.

It must've been a shock to learn that my grandfather had produced an out of wedlock child with a woman no one knew. Dad told me about it during my visit, hoping that it would help explain some of the hardship my mother had gone through and exuse her behavior. He said that the illigitimate half sister had been continually thrown at her when she was growing up, thrown at her and my grandmother in the viciousness of every drunken rage. Imagine, he said, just try to imagine what he put them through. And I did, with no effort at all.

Alcoholism is a disease of the mind, the body, the spirit and the emotions. It takes all with heartless
and suffocating greed and leaves the remains of its victims in pieces and their families shattered, often beyond repair. It flourishes and gets passed from generation to generation, partly because we provide a safety net for its victims, protecting them from the consequences of their behavior, and keeping their secrets. We do whatever it takes to keep it in the family. He would come home drunk, my daddy told me, and pass out on the stairs. We dragged him upstairs, your grandmother and I and put him to bed. And then it would start all over the next day. I listened to this with a sense of resignation but no surprise and no pity. This assault on my grandmother's well ordered and neatly arranged world had taught my daddy how to deal with my mother. He taught me so that I could deal with my husband and if we'd had children, I would've taught them. No, I told him, it stops with me. And my daddy walked away.

In a way, we never got past those few moments. We stayed close, he and I, but something had shifted between us and would not be put right. We never spoke about it again until my mother was dying and by that time, I had years of counseling and meetings behind me and I was able to stand my ground against the accusations of selfishness, the name calling, the threats, the blame and the manipulation. This is killing Dad! my brother screamed at me, You're killing him! And I hung up the telephone.

Pain kept private, denied or hidden never heals.