Inheritance

My Dad. Probably mid to late 1970s. Looks like he's been drinking.

 I am quite certain that my Father would still be with us if he hadn't drank as much as he did, given his health issues. He was diabetic, type 2 I believe. He was on medication for it. When I was there going through his personal effects, I noticed an unopened test kit on his dresser. I seemed he had stopped testing his blood sugar levels, while still drinking around twelve Milwaukee's Best Lights a night. When he could afford it. His bank account was usually in the negative at the end of each month. While his wife, my stepmother, Geri was still around she used to remind him to test himself. She died in 2006. I don't know how much he kept up with it after that. Not to mention that he was pretty depressed after that.

I remember him speaking of his brother, my Uncle John. He told me that he would sometimes drink a case of beer or so at night, and call my Dad, weeping, talking about his (and their) unhappy childhood, and regrets he had about his adult life. He was also a habitual smoker. He died of a heart attack when he was around my age. The death of his brother, who was younger than him, was very hard on my Father.

Uncle John. 1994.

All of this has given me pause to consider my own drinking. It's like we all knew this deep emptiness, like some sort of family disease. My Grandfather and Grandmother divorced when my Dad and Uncle were quite young. I'd guess around the time my Dad was five or six. I think this was very hard on both of them. My Grandmother was a kind and caring person, loving and affectionate. My Dad and his brother were left with my staunchly conservative and christian Grandfather and and their new Stepmother, also a strict and austere christian. The first time I ever saw the Grant Wood painting, “American Gothic”, I saw my Grandparents. I am certain very little love or affection was demonstrated in that household. My Dad said that my Grandfather wasn't physically abusive (my Father was), but he was all about fire and brimstone, hell and damnation, guilt and shame. I remember it well. When my Sister and I would stay at their house, we were brought to church, were expected to say prayers (“if I should die before I wake”), and it was impressed upon us that it was imperative that we “accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and personal Savior” (like a seven year old can grasp that), lest we be cast into that lake of fire. My Grand-pop would give us those Chick Publication comic books (A Chick tract: This was your Life. I remember this one). that graphically illustrated this dreadful fate.

I think that my Father had feelings of abandonment, which filled him with an emptiness that he tried to mitigate with alcohol. I'm sure when Geri died, these feelings came even more forcefully to the surface. I know this feeling of emptiness well. My Dad and Mom also separated when I was young, and I was often left at a baby sitter by the name of Mrs. Lee for months at a time. Of course, I had already suffered my share of  physical abuse, and witnessed the violence between my Mother and Father. My mother abandoned me to my Dad and my abusive soon-to-be Stepmother, Diane. I'll save the specifics of that abuse for later, but suffice it to say it was a mostly joyless childhood, punctuated by horrible physical and emotional abuse, which almost led to my death from an overdose of muscle relaxers at the age of fourteen, in an attempt to ameliorate my pain. I'd already discovered my Dad's cheap Carlo Rossi jug wine, which I began drinking, sometimes watering it down if I consumed too much. It  seemed to work, and my pain would evaporate for a little while. My young brain eagerly embraced this new palliative. So began my dark odyssey with alcohol, which would lead to many problems in my youth.

Me, around 1977. I believe this is after the overdose.

The death of my Father, in spite of, and perhaps because of, our complicated relationship, hit me very hard. I tried to drink the pain away, but it didn't help. I found myself weeping, thinking of everything I'd lost in the past four years. I couldn't shake this despair. The thoughts about the untimely deaths of both my Father and my Uncle, made me more aware of my own mortality.