When I heard Mom’s voice say that Nancy had passed away, I ran out the back door, to the edge of the hill, fell on my knees and dug my shoulders into the earth as hard as I could, trying to bury myself from existence. I was an animal. My son came running out and watched me in helpless shock.
Not Nancy, not Nancy.
The last thing she said to me on the phone, while gasping for air, was, “I wub you. I wub you bewwy much.” She was slipping back into her childhood.
I stumbled back into the house, collapsed on the couch in the living room and sat there, my spirit snuffed out. Stunned and speechless, I watched my step-father tell my mother that I was fine and not to worry about me. He had no idea the history I had with Nancy because he never knew anything about us. Then I watched and listened in horror as he dialed the phone and insulted the people who Nancy respected and loved the most in the world, her minister and her in-laws.
“You people need to have some kind of emergency answering system,” he growled over their answering machines late that night. He was being dramatic as usual. Everyone in the world was a piece of shit except for him, his rich wife, his children and the youngest of his stepchildren.
This was the part he had to play to humor his wealthy wife and he did so with bravado, a fraud to the core. He never knew a thing about any of us and never wanted to know.
~~*~~
I went into Nancy’s visitation room and outside the door of the room stood Beth, who followed me in. I leaned over the casket and stroked Nancy’s face. It was ice cold. I knew she was no longer there and that this was only the shell that had once held my Nancy. I was wishing so much that Beth would just leave but this is the way she has been with me all of her life. She hovers for fear she might be left out of something. I gave the shell that once held my sister a final kiss and Beth gasped in horror. She did not touch Nancy or the casket or say any kind of goodbye but remained inches behind me, hovering. I wanted more time with Nancy alone but I could tell that the clinging bitch Beth would never give it to me so I walked out of the room just to fake her out. When she’d stepped far enough from the door I turned around quickly and went back to the room so I could kiss Nancy one more time without having to hear Beth’s horrid gasp in the background.
~~*~~
At the funeral the following day we were expected to walk past the casket. I really didn’t want to in front of the crowded room. This was no way to say goodbye. But I went along. This is the time when Beth decided to become dramatic. Beth and I were standing side by side at the casket when Beth grabbed the rim of the casket and began to groan loudly, making the public scene she is known for. The casket began to rock as Beth shook it. I held onto the casket for dear life, praying that Nancy’s body wouldn’t come tumbling out. Beth can put on quite a show when she thinks there is an appropriate audience.
~~*~~
As the minister began to give the eulogy I didn’t listen. She went to him for advice quite often, trying to deal with her deadbeat husband. The minister advised her each time to allow her husband control of the check book, even though the deposits only came from her paycheck. The bum couldn’t keep a job himself. If the utilities shut off from time to time because of that, that was something she would have to accept since he was the man of the house. This minister did not know Nancy so I didn’t pay attention to his canned eulogy.
Instead I talked to Nancy and said, “Can you believe this, Nancy? They think you are gone. ha, ha. When this funeral is over I am going to go and call you on the phone and I know you will answer.” That did not happen.
Mom walked up to me a few times at the burial site and put her arms around me. Each time she did so I tried to respond with civility by hugging her back but she had to put on her drama. Each time she pretended to collapse
in my arms, forcing me to have to hold on to her to keep her up, but I didn’t. My arms fell limp each time and, amazingly, she was able to straighten her legs and stand up without falling. She’d spent Nancy’s entire life being cruel to her and demolishing her self esteem while I’d spent my entire life defending my innocent and loving big sister. She ran everyone off and then walked away from Nancy when she was struggling for her last breaths. She knew that I knew she had done that. No way was I going to let her get away with this fake drama at Nancy’s funeral. Only Mom knew for sure that I knew that she had abandoned Nancy in her greatest hour of need. I never shared it with my nieces for fear it would be too painful. I kind of wish now that I had. I hear they turned on me and said false things about me to support Beth now. She has 3 times the money as I.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYs3hR4w_8 They were never interested in a relationship with me after Nancy’s death. I had no money. Everyone else had plenty.
After the burial Beth came to me and said that Dad had requested I drive with him because he knew I was Nancy’s closest sister. This is the first and only time that I saw him stand up to Beth, and the only time Beth has been forced to be honest to me about family relationships. As I sat in the backseat of the car, my father redeemed himself to me somewhat. “I was cruel to Nancy,” he said, shaking his head in remorse. “No you weren’t.” said his heartless, brainless, whore wife. “Yes, yes I was,” he insisted. I knew exactly what he was talking about. He stood by and watched her abuse throughout her childhood, sometimes contributing in order to please his selfish, jealous, rich wife.
The morning after Nancy’s funeral the family began to accumulate down in the hotel restaurant. We’d all traveled from different directions to Austin, TX, and each taken a room in the same hotel. There was no plan to gather in the morning, it just happened. We were sitting at nearby tables, barely speaking, staring like zombies, coping with the shock and despair we were feeling at the loss of our Nancy. It just so happened that Beth was the last one to wander in. There is something she does that everyone knows well as a warning of an impending tantrum of epic proportions. She goes silent. She frowns deeply and then she is silent. It’s the silence before the storm, before the attack. I’m assuming she must have thought that we intentionally excluded her from this spontaneous family gathering. As Dad became nervous he joked to Beth, “Gee, what’s wrong, Beth? You look even worse than Kay this morning.” As usual, the family used me as the butt of a joke to humor Beth, one of the few things that ever humored her. I was okay with it. Hurt, but okay. Beth was not. She swept her arm across the restaurant table knocking everything to the floor. It was bedlam after that.
The entire family packed their bags in a panic and headed to Beth’s house, parked in front of it and waited for hours for her to emerge, allowing her to steal the show as usual. I told them I wouldn’t and that this was the last funeral she was going to destroy and headed back to New Mexico, alone with my son, across the desert, giving reverence and attention to Nancy, feeling more alone than ever before, yet preferring it.
Oikos 