The low clouds and rounds of fog clothe the valley this morning. Not the dense kind where nothing is visible but the kind of fog that accentuates the already present beauty of pastures, hills, and mountains. The night with Buddy was long, with sporadic sleep in between her meowing of a cat who has lost its last friend. She hasn't. I gave her two doses of pain meds yesterday and the first dose seemed to help her during the afternoon. The dose last night couldn't overcome her adrenaline.
Just read that today is Grandparent's Day. So happy day to all who go by the various names of grandparents. The recognition brings to mind the story that I will continue and conclude told by the best dang liar in all the world.
Back in the day before phones and computers held our pictures, most people had a box of photographs taken with a camera, then the film developed and hopefully the roll of film captured the moments. While we still lived in Illinois, so I had to be 3-4 years old I remember sitting with my parents on the living room couch going through pictures, mostly of family days. There was one picture of a tall man as he attempted to reach a window with one foot on the porch and the other one on the brick ledge of a large window on the front of a house. I recognized the house, it was my aunts but I always asked, who is the man? The response from my father, that is your Aunt Amy's first husband. He died the year that you were born. Somehow in my little mind I took that to meant something about me being born made him die. No one ever said his name, no one called him Uncle William or Uncle Bill. He was just a man trying to get into the house after he and my aunt accidentally locked themselves out. As the years went by, I didn't ever think of him. There wasn't a reason to because he seemed to be a nonfactor in family history or memories.
That is until one day, my brother called with a story that seemed unbelievable. A story with suspicion that maybe that first husband and his death were highly suspicious. Then for the first time in my life I learned his name. Whenever my brother was in Houston attending to my father's needs and living situation, he would question my father if the suspicions were true. My father began giving details, the kind of details that someone who knew what happened would have. The last two years of my father's life seemed to be the best years my brother ever experienced with him and based on that fact, we never questioned whether he was telling the truth or not. At the time we were also under the assumption that the Possum Hunter story was true and would be a stage to set the events that led to this man's death in the year that I was born.
When I heard this story, my genealogist friend Kelly began helping me by doing some research in her limited free time. She found this man's tombstone in the cemetery complete with a picture. Just said his name, then husband and the years of his birth and death. That seemed to fit the story of suspicion, because clearly this was a headstone meant for two people and my aunt wasn't going to spend eternity next to him.
But I had questions. How come if something happened in the home, why wasn't there a police report? My father cast aspersions on a uncle alluding to maybe some shady relationships and that seemed believable because of where this all happened is located...cough cough, near Chicago. We couldn't find an obituary in the paper and why didn't his family question his end? It was explained by our father, the man was estranged from his birth family and the family that had adopted him. The story behind all of this was, the man was an electrician and he was screwing but it had nothing to do with lightbulbs. He was confronted by the uncle, aunt's brother and uncle was told he wasn't going to stop the shenanigans. Uncle took matters into his hands, talked with his brothers that he had been in the Possum Hunters with and they met in my parents basement across state lines to plan and then execute the judgement. End result happened, aunt had basement repainted by family members over the course of two Saturdays and a party was held on the third Saturday.
Our beloved aunt. The aunt everyone loved and was so fun. She told great stories and she was the only woman I knew that could smoke a ciggie, blow the smoke up one nostril and it came out the other. She stopped smoking in later years, but wowsers, what a talent or so I thought. When my brother and I were with her, she clearly favored him just a bit over me. I only tell this because this fact makes sense when you know how my father operates. We loved her brother, the jovial uncle. He was into ham radios and he would explain and show us he could talk with people around the world. His handle was soap maker because he worked for a corporation known for their soap and household products. He also was ahead of his time being a picker. He found really fun and unusual items from the dump. My grandfather was a kind man, who couldn't keep a secret. He would tell you what your Christmas or birthday gift would be without a lot of prodding. I could not for the life of me see how he could have not talked about being a PH, if that had been a true story, nor how he helped his sister by taking care of a problem. The thought that we would have family gatherings in my aunt's basement, with this new knowledge provided by my father was beyond me.
All this news changed when I began researching on Ancestry and Newspapers.com. I found the first husband's obituary, the one in the paper. He had not died at home but in a hospital. Thus, the likelihood of a police report was explained but what I found next startled me. His father, mother and sister were listed by name in the obituary. All since long dead. He wasn't an electrician but a welder, a pipe fitter at the Sinclair Refinery. Once I started putting the dates together of Possum Hunters and the brothers, it begins to look like, once again, out of the blue, we were hoodwinked by my father. He told half truths, like he is prone to do with just a shred of truth somewhere.
My father was narcassistic. He also had attachment disorder but he lived to embarrass and besmirch others. It brought him joy to be the one to cause the pain. He had stopped talking to my Aunt Amy, quit calling her cause he said she put him on hold, but we had also heard she suggested that they both quit talking about their aches and pains, doctor visits...he stopped the relationship right there. She had been a favorite all his life. She hurt him so it was easy for him, being an adroit liar and story teller, to throw together enough things to make them look like something real. He once told me, something I had observed and mentioned earlier in the post, that Aunty loved and favored Doug. I reminded her of my grandmother, his mother, and she tolerated grandma because of her brother. My father hated his mother because she did not want a second child and he was mistreated by her and used by her, all his life. He hated me since I was five years old, so he got some mileage from telling me this. By telling my brother this story of a first husband, he attempted to smear her reputation and at the same time, maybe malign any good memory Doug had of her.
In hindsight, it is so easy to see now his pattern, how he used his hate. He tore down good people, wonderful people my parents went to church with. He lied about neighbors. He fabricated so he could tear down my mother's side of the family. He was relentless when it came to tearing up my brother and me, to remove any confidence we could have and gaslight us to believe his beliefs of where we would end up in life. My brother tells a story and it had totally been lost to time, until he talked about it. Doug would watch from a safe distance like we all did, as my father lit into me about my life. I said something like, I am going to get married, have a happy life and feel secure about money. My father replied back to that statement, right up in my face, "dreams don't come true little girl, dreams don't come true. Go on and dream."
Hey Mom, look at me, I'm living the dream.
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