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As anniversaries go...
Yesterday was the 21st anniversary of my father's death. Frankly, and perhaps I should feel bad about this, I hadn't given it any thought. At all. And I don't feel bad about it. My feelings about my father are confused at best since I never really got to know him, and what I did get to know was made ugly and perverse by a brain tumor that destroyed his ability to communicate and relate coherently to the people around him.
It's a dreadful thing to see a man who majored in Speech and Debate in college, who was a gifted public speaker, who could speak extemporaneously for an hour with a thesis no longer than the fortune from a cheap cookie, rendered by sickness not mute but jibbering, unable to utter the simplest sentence without it devolving into a disconnected string of nonsensical, despairing syllables.
Of all us Morris kids, I was the only one living at home, and therefore was the only child to endure the abuse that rose out of the frustrated, wounded animal that became our father. I still have little memory of 1982-1984 that involves my home life, and those few images I do have are nightmarish. My sister, ten years older and the nearest living sibling in age, is having a rough go of it this year, and shared a dream she had about him; I guess that's what started this entry, and why I'm so melancholy yesterday and today. Maybe someday, I'll write the whole story, just to have it said. It's not pretty, and will take a while. It's a walk I don't want to take, but probably ought to.
It's a dreadful thing to see a man who majored in Speech and Debate in college, who was a gifted public speaker, who could speak extemporaneously for an hour with a thesis no longer than the fortune from a cheap cookie, rendered by sickness not mute but jibbering, unable to utter the simplest sentence without it devolving into a disconnected string of nonsensical, despairing syllables.
Of all us Morris kids, I was the only one living at home, and therefore was the only child to endure the abuse that rose out of the frustrated, wounded animal that became our father. I still have little memory of 1982-1984 that involves my home life, and those few images I do have are nightmarish. My sister, ten years older and the nearest living sibling in age, is having a rough go of it this year, and shared a dream she had about him; I guess that's what started this entry, and why I'm so melancholy yesterday and today. Maybe someday, I'll write the whole story, just to have it said. It's not pretty, and will take a while. It's a walk I don't want to take, but probably ought to.
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I am so sorry to hear that you got to bear the brunt of what happens when someone dies slowly of a brain tumor (both of my father's brothers died of the same thing, so I have a good idea of what this means). As such things go, it's a horrible way to die, and so awful for those who loved the person who is slowly fading away, to be gone before the body is done living.
May one day those memories be less painful for you. Perhaps setting it down in one place can empty the box you keep on the shelf of your mind, filled with that experience.
D.