My phone shows me you died today. How many years ago was that?
You burned, or suffocated, or chocked . . . no one will ever know what happened in those last minutes of your life when “your boyfriend” bailed, jumped out of the window and left you to die, while he lived.
I found the place where it happened; the lawn strewn with furniture and random objects. It was not your stuff, just the things from the place he took you, to take advantage of you . . . again. This time it was the last, not because you would say “no” the next time, but because you said “yes” this time.
Were you scared? Did you scream? Were you drunk? Had you passed out? Did you wake up?
Free booze always overrode any choices you might have had. Your mind had long ago succumbed to your body, or was it your body which had succumbed to your mind? Either way, even longer ago both had given way to your heart, which had decided it was best to obliterate the past and drown the present, and now the future is no more.
It took months before there was a funeral and the internment was much later yet.
You were in the morgue, for it seemed like, forever. Your sister, a recovered alcoholic, kept me up to date, “No, she is still in the freezer . . . she has been there for three weeks now.”
The welfare system could not decide if they would fund your funeral.
At last they thawed you out and you had a no-name funeral. It literally was that, the officiating clergy kept hesitating when he came to the fill-in-the-name blank in the script. There was no emotion, no personal reference to your life, no space for a eulogy, no one spoke except the droning dude finishing his third or fourth—so it appeared—rote ceremony for the day, and it was only 1:00 p.m.
Your sister arranged everything. She had always been there for you, but she had become resentful, felt revulsion, hatred. She carried you in a locket around her neck, just hanging around, indifferent, silent at last.
“All you did was take advantage of me, even now I am still working for you, trying to arrange your funeral. I hate you, even when you’re dead you’re wasting my time.” She does not feel this way anymore and misses you, she says.
Months later we stood at your graveside—I offered to officiate to avoid a no-frills repeat. None of the invitees showed up and the director placed your ashes in the ground to let bygones be bygones and move on.
But this time we needed to say good-bye to you and fill in the blanks that were overlooked at the funeral.
We laughed, we cried; I read those well-known words from Ecclesiastes 3,
“There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
. . . a time to weep and a time to laugh,
. . . a time to mourn and a time to dance
. . . a time to love and a time to hate, . . .”
We threw the dirt, a scoop each, and the flowers were placed.
Then we dined at Boston Pizza because your sister asked, and, because you would have wanted to do the same.
That was the end.
***
I never knew the details of the beginning—of your life—only bits and pieces; just knew you were smelly and smart, a drunk—for all the good reasons one becomes a drunk.
We met about fifteen years ago. You were hitchhiking and I was driving along Highway 89. That is how relationships start sometimes.
You were an alcoholic and I, so necessarily, had to save you.
From what?
Yourself?
I should have saved you from me, my naivety, my self-righteous feelings of having to contribute to the human cause. I realized much later that it was too late for that.
Your traumas were entrenched in a life-style—a mode of survival—so well-established it had worn a rut deep in your soul and you just trudged along the trail towards your ultimate destiny. It was no longer the original events that guided you, but the person you had to become—believed yourself to be as a result of the events—that shaped your life. There had been no one to tell you it was not your fault . . .
And so, you lived your life as best you could with the self-image your mind had created from a very young age, growing up with two alcoholic parents.
When I first dropped you off, you lived in a house which your husband had left you—when he left. You had shared it with your son until he moved out, and then your dad moved in.
The bathtub and yard soon filled up with empties until the bank liquidated your assets.
After five years—your dad spilled the beans—I was told you had no son, it was a fabrication of your constant inebriation. The consistency of your stories and witty mind were brilliant.
You disliked most people, yet used them all, although mostly, you were (ab)used.
Sex in exchange for booze. Your bright red fingernails were always chipped and lined with dirt, food stuck in your hair, stale alcohol emitted from your pores. But you had a vagina, and therefore you qualified as a good candidate for those who didn’t feel qualified themselves—for all their own “good” reasons.
Later you were confined to a retirement home, for safety—they caught you up-town with your pants down in an alcoholic stupor—but you were not old enough to drool away your days in front of a big-screen television. You escaped from your “prison” but were immediately imprisoned—once again—by your addiction.
I go online and find the “story.” You died in that fire while taking a nap with “your boyfriend of three months,” so the paper said.
It sounds so clean and simple, and everything and nothing about you was that way . . .
***
You showed me things in life one can only learn from experience.
You taught me to give unconditionally, or did you? You taught me to give, but unconditionally means without expecting result or return. I didn’t master that skill in your lifetime.
Looking at us—me, looking like I had it all together, and you, the overripe-fruity-alcoholic-smelling ragamuffin—an observer would have thought I was a saint helping you, but all this time you were helping me to become less of a controlling bitch.
Like the time I picked you up and we went thrift-shopping at Value Village. When I called to arrange our date you asked me if I was going to bring “that plastic card?”
After we went our own way in the store you had someone page me to the front when you were tired, and added your $60-worth of purchases to my $12.95.
The drugstore was next. I picked up what I needed and ran for the check-out in order to avoid a repetition.
You were right there beside me as I put my card on the counter.
“They have ice cream bars here for $1.99, I haven’t had ice cream for a while. . . .” Your voice trailed off. I responded vaguely, pretending to be absorbed in signing the receipt with a signature requiring zero brain activity—back in the day when we signed.
I was embarrassed to have you beg me for a $1.99 ice cream bar and justified myself thinking, these people behind me don’t know I just spent $60 on you at Value Village! I felt the uneasiness of the girl at the cash and interpreted it as condemnation.
I walked out. You followed. I held the door open for you and was excessively friendly to convince everyone I was not the heartless bitch I appeared to be.
It did not take long to realize I actually was.
$1.99?
I really could not spend $1.99 on an ice cream bar? The thought of you having to grovel for it in front of others and my subsequent lack of response bewildered me.
Ultimately, it was not so much the impression I left on the others which got to me, but the humiliation I put you through; to have the courage to beg for such a gift in public, to ask and not receive, to be ignored.
You were used to it, I am sure, but I was not.
I am not used to having to beg for anything. I don’t even think I could. I am convinced it is a weakness in my character, my pride a controlling power along with self-righteousness, creating hierarchy. I, the giver, and you, the receiver.
And yet you, the chronic receiver, were much stronger than I, the reluctant giver, will ever be . . .
***
P.S. Death put an end to your disturbing life but I am still learning—from you.