At my brother’s funeral, the church was filled with local people, most of whom barely knew my mother. None of them knew my brother, Johnny, who had lived for the past two decades in a half-way house in Santa Fe, a thousand miles from any family.
Mom stood before the crowd and suddenly slumped forward, looked down and then stood back up again, facing the crowd and said, “I’m different from all of you,” and then she paused. I realized that she was about to announce her atheist beliefs, as she took every possible opportunity to express them in this way and I held my breath in disbelief, astonished that she would make my brother’s funeral about herself.
My brother, himself, was deeply religious. She never continued in that direction, never announced her atheist belief as I’m certain that she had intended. Thankfully, she must have thought better of it.
This was a very conservative and elderly crowd she was facing in a county that was 95% republican.
So Mom directed the attention back to Johnny by informing the crowd that he had been mentally ill for most of his life but she didn’t want him to be thought of in that way, as she explained, “I like to think of Johnny as what he could have been: a doctor or a lawyer or ……” and then she went on about the trials of mental illness.
~~**~**~~
It wounded me to hear her reject Johnny for who he was. It was difficult for me to comprehend this point of view. Johnny was loved by almost everyone who came in contact with him, for who he was, a charming and witty man who had been injured in life, brain damaged infancy by a sever beating that my mother witnessed and did nothing to stop it.
My brother carried a treasure trove of insights to share. He saw things through the eyes of a child, and expressed things verbally very well, with a fresh, unfiltered and unprocessed point of view. His observations, when he voiced them, were usually shocking and funny. Most people found him delightful. He was very much a people person. Much more so than our parents and step-parents. He genuinely liked getting to know everything he could about everyone he met.
~~**~**~~
I’d always wanted to ask her how she would feel if at her funeral I said, “I like to think of my mother as something other than what she was …. ” ?
~~**~**~~
My mistrust of my mother began when I was 4 or 5, as I watched her stand there and snicker with pleasure while my baby brother was being beaten senseless.
I was standing beside her when it happened.
Dad walked into the little entry foyer just getting in from work. He and Mom were exchanging words in an increasingly heated dispute when Johnny ran in, jumped up and down at Dad’s feet, wanting to be picked up, arms stretched upwards as he excitedly demanded, “Daddy, Daddy … “.
~~**~**~~
In the flash of an instant, Dad jerked him upwards and shook him violently, turned him upside down and continued to shake him violently. Johnny’s shrieked in horror, when he was not gasping for air. I looked up at my mother, fully expecting her to stop this wild animal that had just entered our home and was mauling my little brother, and finding myself doubly shocked that she did nothing to stop him, but instead got a wry smile on her face and snickered angrily at him, after Johnny had slumped to the floor.
Dad spun Johnny’s tiny body right side up again, shook him again a few time and then threw him against the wall with a loud thud. Johnny slid to the floor in a limp heap, sobbing, as Dad walked away and past my snickering mother. My mother turned and followed him into the next room, where they continued to argue, leaving my little brother there, a sobbing heap on the floor.
The whole thing probably happened in 30 seconds, it was quick and it was violent.
~~**~**~~
They both went to their deaths at age 83 and 88, still competing with each other, neither ever mentioned the beating that I witnessed. Nor did I, except for my sisters. I’ve told this story to my sister many times over.
~~**~**~~
There was once when I almost spoke to my mother about it. I found a really nice home for Johnny in the same town where I worked in San Marcos, Texas. It was for disabled people who had been physically brain damaged. When I suggested to my mother she was shocked and insisted that Johnny’s problems did not stem from physical injury. Along with paranoid schizophrenia, he had epilepsy and diabetes insipidus, both of which can be caused by brain trauma. I wanted to bring up what I had witnessed those 50 years earlier but I didn’t. She was never one to be disagreed with.
~~**~**~~
It only makes sense that both of them must have stuffed away such an ugly memory.
I will always wonder if I should have brought it to light.
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And this is not to say that I did not love my mother. There were a few years when I was her strongest, and only, ally. She begged me to give up my job and college plans in San Antonio to accompany her move to New Mexico. I could not say no. She abandoned me when she no longer needed me and I didn’t complain for many years.
When my sister committed suicide, the first person I wanted to protect and worried most for, was my mother, until a few months later when a few things were said to me, that chilled me to the bone, and little did I know, would send our relationship downhill from that day on. It was never anything that I wanted.
Sometimes I miss her. I’m angry at the selfish sister who ambushed me at her funeral, insisted that I sit at a meeting, one hour after my mother’s funeral and after having driven 1000 miles alone in the dark of the night, without any sleep, asking me to surrender my inheritance to her step-father and then encouraged what was left of the entire family, a group of people who had not spent one minute of life with us, to say lies about me, that all I cared about was the money, is beyond reprehensible and deeply damaging.
Oikos 