The Tragedy of Brenda*

Painting by Picasso, 1902

 She lived downstairs in my apartment building. She dressed like a lady. By that I mean as if she was caught in a time warp of 1956. Pressed slacks with a matching cardigan and a coordinating blouse. She was younger than me by about seven or eight years. Her hair was carefully blonded and feathered. Always low Cuban heels. Never sneakers or teetering stilettoes. She came to some of the senior advocacy meetings I held. Never saying much but totally lady-like in her demeanor amongst all the jeans and t-shirts.

The rumour mill fired up, as they do. She had a drinking problem. She was selling all her "stuff" her jewelry, her crystal, her china and her designer clothes. Her husband, a doctor, had divorced her years before but had left her with an expensive house in a good part of town and alimony until her Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security kicked in.

Within ten years she had sold the house and managed to deplete the investment account by buying herself a new car every year and taking extravagant trips. She moved into my building about five years ago, her savings close to zero, carless. 

One of my close friends in the building had visited her and found her in dire straits in her bedroom surrounded by bottles and no food in the fridge or elsewhere in the kitchen. Just a horrific mess and a bucket beside the bed for her waste. She notified the management who informed her family. They came to visit from great distances. She cleaned up her act and stopped drinking.

As soon as they left, she resumed. She managed to get "loans" from various tenants who took pity on her. ("Enabling" more like it.)

The breaking point came when she tried to wash fecal encrusted cushions in the laundry.

She was evicted about six months ago but she kept returning here, in cabs, buzzing different tenants from the lobby to pay her cab fare so she could wander the halls, banging on doors, looking for loans from her soft touches, the enablers, who were worn down by the begging. I had never given her my telephone number, though she asked many times. She drunk-called all the numbers she had late at night rambling on about her wealth and status and privilege and how she was in a far better class of people than those in her circle.

She died, drunk, yesterday. I didn't know her though I had met her several times. Nobody knew her. 

She took a drink and then the drink took her, removing her humanity, her personality, her very life at the end. Her only pal alcohol, fierce and relentless in its hunger to consume her, inch by inch, emotion by emotion, relationship by relationship.

Her only legacy is a reminder to us lucky few sober ones, of how voracious an appetite alcohol has, if left unchecked. 

It consumes those addicted to it down to a husk. 

*Not her real name

Blog Jam

I haven't moved to New Blogger as the reports I'm hearing from the kind keyboards of other bloggers are not favourable. If more steps are added to the process I don't see where the advantage would lie. Your comments are very welcome with either yays or nays for the new platform.

I did something major for me, which will probably be petty for others. But I ordered, on line, a seat for my shower. This is part of the journey of my acceptance of disability. It arrived ready to be assembled with very clear instructions and nuts and bolts and warnings about making it secure. Well, I sat down and assembled it. And installed it in my shower/bath. I mentioned to Daughter what I had done and she said: It's really hard to wash long hair like yours, you had a choice, cut all your hair off or make washing it more comfortable. I'm the only old woman I know with long hair. We all have our oddities and peculiarities.

After a long sojourn from him, I picked up a Michael Connolly Bosch from our community library and I'd forgotten how much I enjoy his writing and plot and character development. I see that they have made a streaming series out of his books on Amazon, but I'm not sure I want to see it. I have a visual image in my head of how he is and don't want that destroyed. Sometimes we need books that are fairly frivolous and utterly distracting. I will try and sort out the problem with my page reading lists as they're not working on here for some reason.

I am 34 years sober today which is really nearly half my life without the "divil drink". I think I would be long dead if I had continued my love affair with booze. I am so very grateful that all those years ago I found a better way of living my life without the self-destruct button.

Photograph is of Woody, a pink elephant, whom I treasure, given to me by Younger Daughter 33 years ago.

Free Floating Fridays

This pen and ink drawing hangs in my bedroom where I see it every morning.

In between stuff like a corporate tax return and rehearsals and the book launch of a friend and social gatherings and working on SOS, the Support Our Seniors mandate we are putting together (fact checking is a job unto itself), I am trying to find time to work on my new card. And design a new afghan (sofa blanket) for a niece who's getting married.

It's all quite wonderful, I feel confident in the stage work and we are having our first cast party tonight so we get to know each other a little better. I try and pay attention to the spoon theory which I wrote about before. When I do, I find my life balances out a lot better. Exceeding my spoons makes me cranky and exhausted and well, useless to myself and others.

I wish I'd arrived at the stage sooner where I didn't give a rat's what anyone thought of me. What causes these insecurities do you think?

I remember being enormously self conscious starting at about 13. I was way taller than my parents and the comments of extended family would crush me. "Where did you get her?" "What are you feeding her?" "She'll be patting your heads soon!" And on. Then the breasts. Men would leer at me, a child, on the streets, so much so I would bind my breasts as these men frightened me in ways I couldn't articulate. I remember being singled out at rehearsal for a school play when I was 14 (I had a great voice and good articulation) when the director shouted at me in front of everyone "Stop walking around as if you're ashamed of your very existence!" My father said to me when I was about 16, with a heartbroken look on his face: "Your brains have been wasted on a girl."

Those words stick and damage and hurt and shame forever. I felt terribly lost, ugly, too intelligent, too introverted, too out of place, too everything.

I hit the age of 19 and suddenly I found the solution to all these insecurities. Alcohol. With a few drinks I could charm the pants off anyone, sing at the drop of a hat, pack up the guitar and throw down the self-consciousness, hang with intellectual friends, not be ashamed of all my reading, my questioning, my stage-work and not feel out of place anywhere.

Alcohol saved my life for about 10 years.

Then it slowly began to turn on me and for the next ten years it owned me, body and soul.

Sunday Smatterings (2)

I am grateful for the pieces of work that come my way and supplement my meager pension.I am also grateful for my newly subsidized rent, geared to my total under-the-poverty-line income, but shocked on the application that one of the questions demands of applicants to state the "amount donated as gifts by family members and friends in subsidy." Seriously. I read it three times. Surely this is private?
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My very favourite aunt (I had 8 blood aunts and 2 aunts by marriage) in her heyday. This picture is circa 1940. Her name was Daisy and she was beautiful, vibrant, talented and artistic and married well. I wrote about her descent into alcoholism in two parts here.

Here's another photo, taken around the same time:

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The fog is rolling in again, it's been three days now. Can't tell you how much I love it and the sound of the foghorn warning the ships. This is a picture I took at my old house to give you an idea of how softly it drapes everything.

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Random. I love this photo I took one November sunset with the tracery of the trees and the sleeping boat and the lackadaisical water of winter. This was well before the madness and destruction took place next door and hundreds of trees were felled.

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Feel free to join me in Sunday Smatterings. No rules, just whatever takes your fancy in photos, song, memories, surroundings and link to your blog in comments.

Rear View Mirror

An old journal survived in another box. From well over 30 years ago. I don't know does anything good come out of this sorting through old crap thing at all. I started reading it and it was so compulsive I didn't stop until half way through and found myself teetering on the edge of an abyss.

I realized I was reading about an undiagnosed nervous breakdown I had. It was awful stuff. Heartbreaking too. Do all of us suffer, in the past, from such dark nights of the soul/spirit? I frankly don't know how I survived as I wrote about suicide and death so frequently and I was still in my thirties. Briefly: I had unexpectedly got fired from a career position. At the same time my former husband was having an affair and missing from home frequently. One of my kids had quit school and was on drugs. I was flat broke, pennies in the bank, no energy even to lift the phone and hire a labour lawyer as my self esteem was in the toilet. I can tell from the writing how I had rejected friendships, anyone reaching out to me. I must have been a one note samba, full of lament and hopelessness. Everyone stopped calling and that's how I wanted it. Isolation, fear, poverty. I certainly didn't let my family of origin know - in hindsight probably a very good thing - and I was nursing a seriously infected leg without medical attention. And oh yes, drinking heavily. I must have been an alarming sight. Well to anyone showing up on my doorstep and actually seeing me for I didn't answer my door. Or my phone. Or open my mail.

My father arrived in the midst of all this unbelievable mess. He never showed how distressed he was. He asked to see my leg. I cried at him: no doctors, no hospital and he showed me how to treat it with salt and sunshine. He assured me it wasn't cancer (my mother had malignant melanoma and died after multiple amputations, I was sure I was following in the same path). He took me out for walks every night, long walks along rivers and lakes and on one weekend to the art gallery in Kleinburg to look at Group of Seven paintings for hours. I had forgotten all of this. He must have been disturbed and scared at my condition but he never let on. By action and deed he showed me he was on my side.

My leg healed with a big scar. My mind took another couple of years before I was good and ready to deal with my alcoholism.

Last night I couldn't sleep (and I sleep well today and for many, many years) as my thoughts raced over again and again that absolutely awful, terrifying time when I felt death nudging at my door every hour of the day and I would succumb to the cold comfort of that bottomless pit of hopelessness and despair.

Sometimes we need to glance briefly in the rear view mirror but staring in it for too long can be a very dangerous visit to the dark side.

Can anyone relate?

Gratitude - Surviving.

I am grateful I have survived this long. Life isn't always a bowl of cherries and certain times of the year are worse than others for most of us.

I was thinking back on pivotal moments. The ones that changed everything.

I've had a few directional shifts in my life. Emigrating to Canada. Semi-retiring to Newfoundland. Recovering from alcoholism. To name but a few. And children. Bearing and rearing of same are enormous pivotal moments.

I have very little regrets, if any. I can't think of one offhand apart from wishing I'd been kinder, less defensive. We use the tools, often faulty, that we're brought up with, and frankly I should have abandoned mine much sooner. But I can't preordain the speed and direction of my own personal and spiritual growth.

I can't understand you if I can't understand myself.

I'm shocked by people who put an end to their learning. One said to me recently: I hate new words, I hate learning things. I've had enough. And she's 8 years younger than I.

And here I am wading through a book about Burma and designing a book cover for a daytimer. How? I ask myself. How can we abandon being curious, being creative, being a scholar?

So as I age I find fewer to discuss ideas with. I find, on the whole, talk is reduced to gossip and medications: yours, mine, ours.

But I have a cherished few. And the Young One. Grateful for that I am.

Grateful for Daughter who sees me right each and every time in ways I can't even count.

Grateful for the one sibling who checks up on me with frequency and concern. One out of 5 ain't bad.

Grateful for dear friends who are there, always, with love and open hearts.

Grateful for this one wild and precious life.

Privilege

We take so much for granted don't we? At least I do. But now and again, more often than not, I become aware of how privileged I am. How good my life is. How I have opportunities to re-invent myself. How many lives I've lived. Opportunities and chances taken. Friendships solidified. Good health rescued.

I've visited my young friend twice now. She's still sober but needed help with other issues. So she went off for 28 days to learn about self-esteem and setting boundaries, and acceptance of herself.

And I get to see her companions in the treatment centre. All ages. All conditions, all stages of recovery. And my heart swells with love for them and for her. And I hope with all my heart that life will improve for them. That they will embrace this opportunity, this brand new life force and hold it tight so they don't drown.

And then feel privileged in turn. As I do, for being reborn as it were.

We go out for dinner, my wee friend and I. And she is full of hope and plans and nearly 4 months sober. I haul her back into the moment and talk expectations and ask her again, as I do every time I see her: "What's the most important thing in your life?" And her answer is uncertainty and contingent on others.

And I think: one of these days....

Fun

I didn't think I could have fun again, so much loss my dears. So much I didn't write about the half of it, it sounded like so much fiction. Like a fantastical situation, my gawd, you'd say, the woman has to be exaggerating. So I didn't. I just carried it. Sometimes not so bravely. Under covers. Not functioning too well. Performing life, one might say. Knowing life will never be the same again is a huge adjustment. Knowing that those who purportedly love you absolutely do not.

And then this little one walks into my life in a hell of a mess. I've written about her here and here.

And the fun starts to happen. She is dyslexic but has a photographic memory so if she's seen something once, her memory stores it. Very handy in a store where I was looking for a small fan for a bedroom and she whizzed off and came back with one small white convertible one and I said "perfect". And we laughed. And she got her hair streaked foiled today for the first time in her life and she looks amazing. And she bought stuff for her kids and a big rosebush for her mother and a special halogen light bulb for her father ("how do you know which one?" - "my photographic memory!"). And she was so full of joy and gratitude and just plain into life that I realized that for the last week or so, some huge black heavy object has been lifted from my heart. And it's all due to her pushing me out of my own misery and she wouldn't even be aware of that. She connected me with fun again.

I see the world through her eyes and she's funny and talky even though her life story would make you cry for her. She doesn't cry for herself.

I hope she makes it. I truly do. And so far so good at 2 weeks and 2 days.

She says

She says to me once we finished dinner together in a restaurant:

"I've never eaten at a restaurant with a friend in my whole life. I like this. There's no pressure."

She insists on paying.

As she gets into my car, she says, "I know you're supposed to tip. I didn't know what to tip. Was $50 OK for her? The bill was $36.00."

She says: "I've nowhere to hide my pills. My mother steals every pill from everyone. Even her own mother's and my father's. And I need my liver pills. What do I tell the doctor?" (the truth)

She says: "You're like a therapist. I never knew how to talk to people without yelling or blaming until I met you."

She says:" I'll miss my kids' first haircuts." And starts to cry. I let her.

Her mother calls.

I hear the mother yelling about pills. She doesn't care how her daughter procures them. Get her pills now. She doesn't want me to hear. She's embarrassed.

Then she says: "I hate going home. She'll attack me for pills once I walk through the door. She'll go on and on about how she gave birth to me in pain and I owe her. I never want to speak to my daughter that way. Never."

And she doesn't cry this time but holds herself a little more stiffly in the car.

And I think: We are so privileged. We have absolutely no idea what hell others face on an hourly basis.

I love this wee woman as if she were my own.

The Tribe

Sunset at Holyrood Pond - Newfoundland.

Once upon a time I decided to do something about my drinking, known as "The Failing" where I come from. The Failing was an exclusive classification given to drunken old priests in large stone mansions with a doddery old housekeeper cleaning up after them. Or a gawd-luv-'im bank manager soaking his braincells to mush every night in the pub while his wife and childer hid behind the curtains, starving and waiting for another smashup of the remaining sticks of furniture. Status was everything when it came to categorizing these swanky alcoholics.

A drunken woman wouldn't be spoken about in the same breath. She'd deserve a fresh gulp of air and a brand new paragraph full of words like "a drunken slut", or "she should cop herself on" or "her poor suffering husband should leave that terrible wan, the church would give him an annulment for sure, they'd understand."

The old double standard, still rampant to this day I'm sorry to say, especially out on this Rock where women die in droves from untreated alcoholism, too ashamed to make themselves visible in recovery houses or detox centres. Small island, endless gossip syndrome.

I hang around recovered alcoholics. They're my tribe since June 1986.

I've learned a lot about the disease. Yes, much of it is hereditary, some of it can be environmental. You get the old nature vs nurture argument. But the debating society can continue without me. I yam who(m)I yam. Whether it was because of grandparents or aunties having it, I really can't be arsed. I did once. But it's just a distraction from the recovery. The drinking is merely a symptom for all the emotional shyte underneath, festering, needing a regular airing. With those who understand completely.

All I know is if I walk into a function/party/wedding/funeral and one or two or three of my tribe are there we will seek each other out with an ESP that would astonish you and immediately zero in for an often silent hug before we move on.

Why? You might ask.

Because we live in spite of.

When so very many died because of.

My tribe.

My life.

To Soothe the Inner Beast

I know. Some of you haven't a clue what I'm talking about. I do have inner beasts. I would slay them with alcohol, food, whathaveyous. Sedate them into briefly napping. And then they would wake up and start to savage me from inside once again, they were insatiable. It was an endless cycle.

Not anymore. Not for today.

I felt them tickling my brain earlier today. I made a few phone-calls. Talked to others who like me, feel the dragons stretching and yawning. Not all the time. But especially this time of the year when the intensity of the Christmas is passed and there is a lull before New Year's and all is quiet. And then the slow stirring of the inner monsters begins.

I don't entertain them, these dragons followed closely by the Black Dog. I put plans in place: my annual Nollaig Na mBan for Sunday, January 5th. I reach out to others. I think: I need to paint this place. I think, like my father in his time: what can I truly look forward to this year? I think: my town has put me in such a position of trust, I will not let them down. I think:what a gloriously awesome day, can I put grippers on the soles of my boots and negotiate the now ice-layered snow. I think: what else can I do with turkey, what was that dish I would do with noodles? Tetrazini or something.

And I play Haydn's Maria Theresa Mass, see above. It soothes. Oh, how it soothes.

For a truly and thoroughly recovered former Catholic that is ironic, n'est pas?

Additions

I often bring you views of the ocean at the front of my house - but this is a view of the meadow at the back.

"Magical are the additions to one's life that don't involve money or material goods." (an original quote from me)

Following up on the last post, I reflected on what I had added. I try not to take anything for granted but some lovely stuff just slips under the wire and I hardly notice until I think. Hard.

1. Being present at my own life.
2. Participating in the full spectrum of life.
3. Being of service in whatever way I can.
4. Physicality - dancing, walking and, lol, racing.
5. Music, ah the charms, listening to it, dancing to it, singing to it.
6. Writing.
7. Writing.
8. Writing.
9. Excited as each fresh stage of my life unfolds - I must post about the latest soon.
10.Directing.
11.Photography.
12.Rediscovering cookery, experimenting with more exotic and fancier dishes, sharing these discoveries with others.
13.Blogging - making new friends and actually meeting some on the flesh so to speak.
14.Crafting of all kinds.
15.Book Club.
16.Theatre troupe.
17.Gratitude - what a wonderful feeling that is. Focussing on what is in my life and not what is NOT in it.
18.Staying in the moment.
19.Learning from the past.
20.Realizing everyone is here to teach me both what not to do and what to do.
21.Seeing clearly that it is not the years in my life but the life in my years.
22.Some incredibly supportive family and friends.

Life is Series of Subtractions.

A blog-mate and I were exchanging emails about how she was giving up this 'n that and I was sharing with her what I had chosen to give up when I was reminded of a spiritual retreat I was on back in the day, when the facilitator mentioned he'd always thought life was about what we could add to it (addition) when actually it was the exact opposite (subtraction).

I've never forgotten that. We were all a bunch of recovered alcoholics there so we'd already let go of the "divil dhrink" but being told we would improve our lives greatly if we subtracted other stuff - Whut?, give up more? - had us just about running for cover.

But he was right. Now I'm listing some of what I've given up over the years since I first gave up alcohol. Much of it's not "stuff". It is behaviours and attitudes that do not serve me well no matter how cushy they feel. And some were not by choice but by circumstance.

Alcohol
Tobacco
Compulsive eating and/or restricting food
Television
People pleasing (still working on that!)
Sex (not by choice!)
Abusive people
City living
Well paying work I found unfulfilling
Pharmaceutical crutches
Toxic relationships in the guise of "romance".
Unsupportive relationships.

I'm sure more will come to my mind.

I'll write about the additions I've made to replace these subtractions in another post for nature does abhor a vacuum.

Same Old Conversation

 

 

I'm driving back from the shop with Leo where we had to get gas for the chainsaw and the ATV.  Leo picked up a 40 ouncer of rum and a few bottles of coke.

Me (M) I know it's your birthday tomorrow, but you're going to be so sick after drinking that 40 pounder of rum.

Leo (L) *giggle* yeah, I know.

M: So that means you won't be able to work for a couple of days.

L: Yeah. *Laugh*. I'll have a grand old time.

M: You'll have about 10 minutes of a good time, then about 48 hours of a really bad time.

L: Ah, who cares?

M: Well I do, because there's still wood to be sawed and put in the barn and you won't be around for a couple of days to fill the bin in the house.

L: I wish you drank with me.

M: No. You really wouldn't want to see that wish fulfilled, buddy. That bottle would end up in a right old battle between the two of us. I'd have to buy another two or three, or four hundred.

L: *excited* We could party for a week!!

M: Well, party wouldn't be the word I'd use. Alcoholic poisoning and wet brain comes in there somewhere!

L: Ah, it's a shame you had to stop!

M: No, buddy.  Everyone around me needed me to stop. And believe you me you wouldn't want to see me start!

A Death in the Outport.

You asked about Carrie's husband Jack? Well, it was awful. The kids came home from school and there he was in the bedroom, bloody bits stuck to everything, walls, ceiling, floor, bed. He blew his brains out. Thirty-seven years old. A gambler and a drunkard.

Carrie's husband Jack? You saw the grave? We had a card party and raised nearly $6,000 dollars, paid for all that black marble and the photos. Expensive. But it helped the widow. Only thirty five and three children to raise. But all the money went on the grave.

Jack, Carrie's husband? Yes, eight years ago now. Not much of a loss. He kept getting fired even from jobs that never fire you. Know what I mean? Drunk by breakfast every day.

Poor Carrie, trying to hold it all together working at the fish-plant when the kids were small while Jack spent every bit of it on booze and VLTs. Awful life.

Jack was tortured, poor fellow. What with Carrie carrying on with his brother Vinnie for the six months before Jack finally took his own life.

We still can't get over it. There was Jack, a ball of blood in the bedroom and all the neighbours had come into the house when they heard and there they were sitting in the kitchen as if it was some kind of party with all the bottles laid out like soldiers on the table. So the ambulance comes and they have to wait for the cops, can't touch anything as he is so dead that his face was gone off him. And the party got louder and louder. No respect. And then the cops when they got there sent everyone home.

The hard thing was, is that Carrie's story kept changing. From one day to the next. First she was with him in the kitchen when he went off to the bedroom with the gun. Next day that was changed to she was next door and heard the gunshot. And the following week she said she's been off over to her mother's at the other side of the bay when he did it. The cops said it was shock, but, who knows?

What I meant was, I think she put him up to it. No, no I can't see her shooting him in the face and they have tests for that kind of thing, right? But she made him. As God is my judge.

I remember seeing Carrie at the grave, her red hair flowing down her back, and looking like a movie star with her aunt's black hat on top of it. And I saw a bit of a smile on her. A small one, you'd hardly notice. And I thought to myself, she's enjoying this. She's enjoying the attention.

After all, how much attention does anyone get out here unless you create it for yourself?

The Story of Burt - Part 4 of 4

See Part 1 Here

See Part 2 Here

See Part 3 Here

He would take the time and effort, ever after, to carry pockets full of loonies and quarters and give them to any street person who asked, always with compassion and an ear if one of the unfortunates wanted to talk. .

One thing I always noticed about Burt was how clean he always smelled and how he had an endless supply of pale blue t-shirts that matched his eyes. His favourite mode of dressing was in jeans, with a checked shirt over one of the t-shirts. He told me he showered twice a day. And he had 24 of those blue t-shirts. He managed a shipping company when I met him. He started off loading the docks and within a couple of years was promoted through the ranks.


I'll tell you how Burt saved my life. We became good friends in spite of the fact that he had never befriended a woman before and he told me this at the start. But over the years it just happened. We would look out for each other. I prepared his tax returns and arranged for his pension payments and gave him a freezer I didn't need and we would cook for each other. And then tramp the country together and fish. Two people more distinctly at odds both in background and education and interests you would be hard pressed to meet. He taught me how to live in the bush on the berries and fungi and even edible tree bark. He would shove envelopes with cards and a $5 bill into my mail box with always the same notation on the card: “Somebody loves ya!”

One night I was feeling sick. A bad flu bug. Burt had called me and was concerned. He said if I wasn't well the following day he would take me to the doctor. I told him he was making a big deal out of a flu bug. The following morning after a sleepless night I was feeling worse. He showed up at my door leaving me no choice but to go to the doctor. Who could find nothing wrong. See? I said to him I told you so, now let me go home and go to bed.

Burt kept insisting there was something seriously wrong with me so the doctor sent me off for X rays. Still nothing wrong. Burt insisted again so she sent us to the emergency department of the local hospital where they ran blood tests and my white blood cell count was through the roof. I don't remember much about all of this except lying on a gurney and Burt telling me they were going to operate immediately, my doctor was on her way over to assist the surgeon as my appendix had ruptured and I had advanced peritonitis. I don't know how long the surgery lasted. My family were at the hospital when I awoke, along with Burt who told me I had technically died a few times throughout the long night. His old Indian tracker instincts had been bang on the money.

Over the lengthy recovery process Burt was there first thing in the morning when he would leave after an hour or so and reappear again last thing at night. I've never forgotten it. I had a really terrifying experience in a hospital as a small child and Burt wiped that particular slate clean. I've never felt that purity of love and caring before or since – either given or received. A safety and a certainty of feeling that were unshakeable. Not that we didn't have our differences, we did. And they were many. But they were never insurmountable and the thread of our love for each other was woven into the very fabric of our friendship.

Burt's end was quick. He had a 24 hour form of leukaemia closely related to pneumonia. If he'd chosen his death, that would have been it. Fast and painless. I had never heard of such a disease until his doctor enlightened me. Apparently one of the more famous people who died of it was Jim Henson of Muppet fame.

I was able to be there for Burt's end as he was there for my second life. I was shocked at the number of people who overflowed the church for his funeral, he had touched many lives. I finally met his siblings. His mother had died the year before, a few weeks after his last fishing expedition with her. Fishing set Burt's life to rights. Fishing with his brothers, his mother, with me. It was something he and his father had done, you see, and he said he always felt his father beside him when he fished, coaching him on casting, on tying the flies, on gutting the catch.

I put his fishing rod in the casket beside him. So he'd be ready.

Edgar Benoit, still alive in a care home back in New Brunswick, sent a cheque to cover the costs of the funeral.

Some people leave footprints on your spirit that never leave. I think of him often, think of how he would have loved where I live now with the fishing all around and the simplicity of existence.

He would approve.

Somebody loves ya!

The Story of Burt - Part 3

See Part 1 Here

See Part 2 Here

The series of foster homes Burt was in remained a blur to him. All he remembered was getting angrier and angrier until it was like a huge ball of pain within him and then he discovered that booze and drugs would give him a short respite, that is when he managed to get his hands on them. He recalled his mother visiting a few times but he couldn't meet her eyes when she told him to be a good boy, that Mr. Benoit had his reasons for the breakup of her family and they lay between himself and God. She had no choice. He had no clue where his siblings were.

I always found it extraordinary that Burt never ever blamed his mother for her decision to put her four children into child care services and then on to foster care. I brought it up with him several times. Of course Edgar Benoit was a monster but his mother was complicit, no? Burt would become enraged, the only time I had ever seen him angry telling me never, ever spit on his sainted mother's name like that. Never. She did what she had to do, she had no choice. Door closed.


Mr. Benoit and their mother had moved into a small bungalow by a stream, far away from the town, where in later years her adult children would come and stay for a few days and fish in the nearby stream with her, circling Edgar warily, barely polite, not that he encouraged any kind of conversation, even at table.

One of his brothers joined the US army and rose to the rank of colonel during Vietnam. The other brother ran a garage in Ontario. The sister met an American friend of her brother's and moved to New York with him.

None of them ever referred to that night again or blamed their mother for condoning the disintegration of her family. Edgar became the focus of their rage and despair and hatred even though in later years he became completely blind and totally dependent on their mother and softened somewhat. They refused to speak to him. They spoke of killing him as if it were like taking him out for a beer. They invented plots where they all got their hands dirty and covered for each other. The elaborate plans for his death became pretty much their only topic of conversation when they got together over the years. Which was rarely. None of them had children, Burt by choice, and he was sure the others had made the same decision. He couldn't really tell you why if you asked him.

Burt had many years of pain and turmoil once he escaped to the vast anonymous city of Toronto. He couldn't hold down a job even though his charm and innate intelligence landed him a few good positions. The alcohol would win out every time, sending him teetering by turn from apartments to rooming houses to shelters all the way to park benches and bottles of rubbing alcohol. At times his pain consumed him, it should have killed him, he admits but for his rage at Edgar giving him a life force, a purpose. Revenge.

He recalled, one time, that in a fog, he managed to hitch all the way to New Brunswick and showed up at his mother's home, in rags, reeking of alcohol, many of his teeth rotted out of his head. His mother took him in and gave him some money and a rosary beads and bought him clothes and nursed him back to health after she insisted he go to the local parish priest and take the pledge and swear off the drink. His thanks was to rob all the valuables out of the house and find a hidden stash of cash in Edgar's tool shed and skip out of town without a goodbye.

As such men do, he found a simple loving wife to take care of him for a while, she worked hard and he spent most of her money on booze until they were forced, financially, to live with her mother. A miserable experience for Burt as his wife paid more attention to her mother's instructions as to how to run their married life and consequently withheld money from him for the first time. Which forced him to find a job yet again until the cycle started once more.

This time he was turfed out of his mother-in-law's house and there was no in-between residence in apartments and rooming houses and shelters. He hit skid row directly. Bridges and bottles, he said to me. His life was delineated by bridges and bottles. With maybe the odd blanket to keep him warm as he lay on a sleeping bag on some cardboard boxes. It was one of those charity workers that he despised who woke him up one night. These workers would come around and drop off muffins and sandwiches and hot cups of cocoa and coffee and blankets. Do-gooders. He hated them. The worker squatted beside him and said to him: “I was under a bridge a year ago, just like you, and I've not had a drink in a year and I got my life back.”

Burt told him in no uncertain terms to eff off and rolled over. The worker leaned over and put a business card in front of his face. “Now if you're sick and tired of being sick and tired give me a call and I'll be there.” And with that he got up and walked off. In spite of himself, Burt put the card into a pocket and a week later, after he fell down and bashed his nose in and lay all night in his own blood, he found a call box and put in the dime that would save his life and get him sober.

The Story of Burt - Part 2

See Part One here

By the end of the year, their brother Denis was born. A beautiful sunny child, beloved by all but never more so than by Mr. Benoit who became a man besotted. The child was given his own bedroom beside his parents and his wardrobe put the rest of theirs to shame. Burt remembered no jealousy about this. If Mr. Benoit was happy, and happy he surely was, the lavish gifts bestowed on their half-brother was a small price to pay. Burt's load was suddenly lightened. Mr. Benoit threw him the odd book to read, the extra break in the day and instructed his mother to cut down and resew some of his own pants to fit the lad as he approached his twelfth year.

Denis had just turned three when Burt awoke to smoke and flames screeching across the dark night sky ourside his bedroom window. It was moonless that night, Burt recalled. He awoke his two brothers who shared his room and they grabbed a few of their meagre possessions and then got his sister who was cowering, frightened, in a corner of her own bedroom, and he led them all to safety down the back stairs and across the courtyard to the stables so they could release the few animals and chickens Mr. Benoit kept there.

Burt told them to stay with him, he didn't want to lose sight of them as the hotel was being devoured so fast by the flames and the heat was so intense. They went around to the front of the hotel and across the street where a small crowd was gathering and the geriatric old fire truck had arrived with a great clanging of its bell and the firemen were ineffectually leaking water onto the inferno through the hose.

Mr. Benoit came staggering out of the front door, half carrying their mother who looked to have fainted. Alarmed, the children gathered around her, Mr. Benoit pushed them aside.

“You have Denis? He asked Burt, looking to the rest of the children, “Where is Denis?' his voice rose into a scream that Burt would remember all of his days.

“Denis?” and he dropped their mother to the ground, and began to race back into the building until he was stopped by the four volunteer firemen who had to pin him to the ground.

At that moment, on the upper floor, Burt saw his little brother in silhouette against a hall window, his thumb in his mouth, but only for a few seconds, for the flames were greedily snatching at him from behind until he vanished in the horrible sound of the building disintegrating in a roar of collapsing floors and ceilings. A sight spared Denis' father who was still face down in the driveway, screaming his son's name.

After that, it was all over. Mr. Benoit could not look at the surviving children and ordered his wife to put them into care for he would not have them around him to remind him of how they survived while his son died.

To be continued

The Story of Burt, Part 1

Burt with my daughters

I must get his story down before I toss off my mortal coil. I started and finished it on the ferry, that blighted ferry, so out of lemons comes lemonade, yeah? I mentioned Burt before, here. He was truly one of a kind.

Burt's father died in a mill accident in the town of Dalhousie, New Brunswick, when he was 8. He and his two brothers and sister who were younger, along with their mother, were left penniless. He still remembered the raw hunger in his stomach when he went to bed at night. His mother was a proud woman who kept their worn old clothes in immaculate condition. He would see her sitting by the stub of a candle, late at night, mending and darning and knitting if someone had been kind enough to give her some wool.

When Mr. Benoit, the owner of the local hotel, started to come around a few nights of the week the children wondered about it. Mr. Benoit had lost his wife in childbirth a few years before and the baby had only lived a week before it followed its mother to the grave. He was a tall man who never smiled and who was given to glaring at the children in such a frightening manner that they would scamper up to their attic room and stay there until dawn by which time Mr. Benoit would have left.

Burt was old enough to speculate on what went on between his mother and Mr. Benoit. Except she didn't call him Mr. Benoit anymore but Edgar.

A month later a whole series of events took place. Mr. Benoit married their mother in the side chapel of Notre Dame and they all moved into the private residence end of the Benoit Hotel. The boys shared a large bedroom with 3 single beds and their sister got her own small room. It all seemed like something out of a fairy tale.

One afternoon, their mother sat them down in her bedroom which had two windows overlooking the falls. A spectacular room, with real lace curtains in the windows and an armchair in which she sat while they lined themselves up along the edge of the bed.

“It’s a miracle,” she told them, “My prayers have been answered!” And here she bowed her head. Burt's mother was devout, saying the rosary, offering up intentions, pleading with the almighty for relief and never blaming him when things went spectacularly wrong.

“Now, Mr. Benoit is still to be called Mr. Benoit by all of you. He would prefer it that way. You are all to behave yourselves around him, he does not like noise or questions or out of control or disobedient children. We are all truly blessed that he has opened up his heart and home and taken us in. He is a good man.

“And now also, Burton, you are to quit school immediately and help him around the place, repairing and fixing and cleaning.”

This was a blow to Burt as he loved his books and had hoped to get enough education to enlist in the army. But he had no choice.

The work was back breaking and seemed never to stop from dawn to dusk with short breaks. He learned how to replace roof tiles and broken pipes, paint and repair windows, fix squeaky doors and leaky toilets and threaten unruly drunks and sweep everything that needed sweeping all day long.

to be continued

Vanity

I got news today I was long-listed in a short story competition in Ireland. Something like 100 of us in the long list from submissions of around 2000. Stuff like this is a validation. A nudge from the universe to say:

"Yeah, baby, you can write. Keep at it."

We never fully believe in our own talents do we? What is wrong with saying:

"Yeah, I'm really good at this music-writing-painting biz, you wanna see it?"

I'm getting better at blowing my own horn. And what is wrong with that, pray tell?

I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It is the Catholic upbringing. VANITY was a sin. PRIDE was a sin. BOASTING was a sin. BRAGGING was a sin. PRIMPING was a sin. PREENING was a sin. One had to be HUMBLE with one's talents. As they all belonged to the ICH* anyway, who dealt them out carefully and usually to those MOST UNWORTHY of them. Proof of this unworthiness being one's VANITY. Circular thinking at its very finest.

I've been writing since I could read. Writing about everything. There was a long, long pause in there while I became an accountant and proceeded to earn a living with that and explore my nascent alcoholism which quenched my creativity and steamrollered me into semi-oblivion. I was out of touch with my innate artistry for nearly two decades. I never thought I was any good. And that was reinforced when I was younger.

Why would I want to waste my time writing when if I crunched numbers I could actually house and feed myself? Even though I was published as a teenager and winning major writing competitions. Misdirection much? Frustration with one's life's path can create many demons. And sometimes we don't live long enough to set aside the addictions and forge a new path.

I feel truly fortunate that my life took a positive turn some 25 years ago and I was able to slowly rediscover who I truly was.

And I honestly don't care about the Short List. The Long List is a huge big thrill.





*ICH=Invisible Cosmic Housekeeper.