Grabs a fistful of the infidel's hair,
And shaking him says: "You shall know the rule!
(For I am your good angel, do you hear?) You shall!
Know that you must love without making a wry face
The pauper, the scoundrel, the hunchback, the dullard,
So that you can make for Jesus when he passes
A triumphal carpet of your love.
Such is love! Before your heart becomes indifferent,
Relight your ecstasy before the glory of God;
That is the true Voluptuousness with the lasting charms!"
The Angel who gives punishment equal to his love
Beats the anathema with his giant fists;
But the damned one still answers: I shall not!"
-- Charles Baudelaire
Why as children do we believe that parents know everything, can cope with all life’s challenges, and do all the right things? Because: we need them and depend on their skills and blanket of protection. I remember thinking that as I grew older some magical force would instill life’s wisdom in me. Reality check. I know that parents are no smarter or capable or enlightened, just seasoned. I still harbor resentment and anger and frustration and sorrow over my relationships with my parents, how they morphed, unraveled, crossed, were human. Who was I before now? I don’t remember. Trauma is a changeling. This shouldn’t be news to anyone unless you think you’re sane.
Photographs are amazing thieves. They capture a moment in perfect unreality. They shock your senses and send them reeling to a time passed. Comments, people, places, memories return with the clarity of a DVD, and you watch your movie of life in replay. My albums contain stolen pictures of my parent’s secret lives before children, childhood portraits, friends gathered in intoxicated merriment, and pets long since resting under the lilacs in the back yard; all episodes of my comedy, drama, and horror life. One in particular was taken at my parents’ 28th wedding anniversary.
My father sits center surrounded by his girls and wife. We are smiling and casual: a family. What the picture actually says to me is another more graphic truth. I focus on my mother to my father’s left. His arm is draped around her shoulders, but she does not sink into his embrace; her arms are in her lap and her body language is stoic. The reason for my venom returns – her spite is evident.
“Mother! What the hell is your problem?! You’re so inconsiderate to dad?!” I barked following her around the kitchen as she darted from my fire.
“What do you mean?” she replied, hoping to get away with a ‘what-innocent-old-me?’ act.
“You’re treating him like shit!”
“How am I doing that?”
“You procrastinate with his needs, and practically ignore his very existence!”
“I do NOT!”
“Don’t give me that crap! I’m tired of this whole thing! I’m in the middle of both of you!”
“You don’t get it, Renee, do you?! For the past twenty seven years I’ve put up with his attitude and inconsiderate actions. I can’t do it any more. I really don’t care!”
“Shut up, Mom!...like I haven’t lived in this house too? I know that he hasn’t been the model father or husband, but he needs his family now. He needs us to forgive him and help him. He’s trying to reach out, but you’re being too much of a bitch to see it!”
“Renee! Just back off! I don’t want to hear it anymore,” she said as she conveniently disappeared into the noisy laundry room.
In 1994 my father went for surgery at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. He was going to have the valve in his esophagus removed because of severe damage done to it by what most people think little of, Acid Reflux Disease. He had recently undergone several blood tests, cat scans, and MRI’s to make sure there was nothing else wrong; they all came up negative. For some unknown reason I decided to take the day off from work to keep my mother company in the waiting room. Both my parents tried to talk me out of it, saying that the doctors assured them that the surgery was standard, and they didn’t predict any complications. But I was going with them.
We were up and out the door by 5:30 am. The sun was just barely peeking out, and the morning dew rested heavily on everything outside. My father insisted on driving, exclaiming, “I’m not an invalid! I’m just going for surgery.” So we let him drive. I sat in the back seat beginning to dread my decision to spend the next five hours in the hospital waiting room. I looked out the windows, watching the few other cars on the Schuylkill drive by on their way to work.
Occupying my misery with watching the travelers on their way to city offices, I was presented with the stomach-in-throat view of witnessing an accident: a little grey compact passing a bunch of cars, weaving in and out of lanes, well over the speed limit, then three-sixties, crash, crumple, bang and whew…we were too far ahead.
“Dad, someone’s watching over us today. We just missed that accident.”
“See, that was a good sign,” he said and drove on.
Once checked into the hospital we sat silently in a waiting room, passing the wee dawn hours, not wanting to speak our anxieties. My parents sat down next to each other in a closeness that must have reflected their pre-marital affections; ones that I had never seen or known, and grown to disbelieve the existence of. I could feel the tension and the fear in their closeness and solemn silence. I knew I had made the right decision to come. My mother needed me; though we fought sometimes we were always close, and today maybe I could offer her some of the comfort that she had given me all these years. She was my best friend and comrade in schemes, allowing me to be an American girl, not a silent, restricted, traditional child.
About a half an hour passed and the nurse called us to our next stop. We went to my father’s room and were told that we only had a few minutes before they started his IV and pre-surgery meds. I kissed my father and said I loved him, wishing him well during the surgery. Then my mother walked over to him, shaking slightly, double checking that he had everything, and that he was ok.
“Ok, George, we’ll be in the waiting room,” she said to him, giving him a kiss on the cheek and holding his hand.
“Don’t worry Maria. I just wish you didn’t have to wait around so long.”
“I brought my crocheting with me. I’ll be fine. If you need anything have the nurse get me.”
“I’ll be fine. They know what they’re doing.”
Another kiss and “Bye, daddy,” and we were out the door.
The waiting room was somewhat comfortable with carpeting and cushioned seats. The pictures on the wall offered relaxing tones of blue and grey, an escape from the sanitary hospital decor. We sat for about an hour and a half, shifting in our seats, trading magazines, and exchanging small talk. A nurse came in and told us that they were prepping dad for the surgery, which would last about four hours, and then she disappeared from the room.
Hungry and already stir crazy we wandered down the maze of bright, sterile halls, looking for the cafeteria. It was high morning now, and the hospital was buzzing with movement: pagers echoing down the corridors, medical staff power walking from room to room. When we finally found the cafeteria we surveyed the fare offered us; hospital food…less than yum. We sat down across from each other and picked at our so-called food – burnt toast - and sipped our watered-down coffee.
“Mom, is everything going to be ok?”
“I think so. The doctors are really positive.”
“Are you going to be ok?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. You just seem weird.”
“I guess I never thought about your father and I getting older and having medical problems, that’s all.”
“I’m glad you and dad are getting along these days.”
“Me too…me too,” she said as if drowned in the milky darkness of her coffee.
On our way back up to the waiting room I picked out a book—a five hundred pager, Judith McNaught’s Whitney, my love (a brainless beach book to keep my fears at bay) —and some snacks. The eternity of waiting before us, we shifted in our seats and moved around for different perspectives of the four walls caging us, reading and crocheting the hours away.
Four hours came and went. My mother leaned back and closed her eyes. I noticed worry lines crossing her face. She looked drawn and tired. When she opened her eyes again she stretched and asked how much time had passed. We asked the nurses’ station for information, but they sent us away with nothing.
“Mrs. Pappas…I just found out that your husband is still in surgery. I don’t think that there are any complications, just that it is taking longer than expected,” a nurse explained finally attending to us.
“Well, do you know how much longer it will be?”
“No, they didn’t say. But the doctor assured me that he would call on you as soon as they are through.”
My mother busied herself again to avoid being overly concerned. I went and sat down next to her while I read my book. After a while I realized that I only had a handful of pages left, and my mother was asleep again. Another three hours had passed without a peep. As I finished the last page of my book the nurse came in, my mother woke up, and we were directed to the doctor’s office without another word.
Once seated in the doctor’s office, I leaned over and held my mother’s trembling hand.
“Maria, the surgery went fine, George is in recovery now…but…we did find a malignant tumor. We removed it as well as a few lymph nodes in the surrounding area. Now, I don’t want you to get too upset. Since all his tests were clear we believe that the cancer was very isolated, and we feel strongly that we removed all of the bad tissue.”
“But…how…what happens next?”
“We’ll talk to your husband tomorrow once he has more of his strength back. There will be chemo and radiation, but that is just to be sure that there are no renegade cells.”
“When can I see him?”
“I have to warn you that he is attached to machines and IVs, and isn’t very coherent.”
“I don’t care. I want to see him.”
My mother stood next to his bed and rubbed his hand; a few tears trickled down her face. I tried to do the same, but blackness crept and my ears echoed. I moved towards the doorway only 5 feet away, but seeming a thousand steps, just as the eerie abyss took control – losing the lights I began to pass out. A nurse realized what was happening and offered water and smelling salts.
“Is that your mother and father?”
“Yes, I don’t know what happened to me. I was prepared…I…I…”
“Don’t worry, dear. Take a few deep breaths, and don’t let them on to your surprise. It will be ok.”
At his bedside, I held on to the rail with one hand and rested my other on his shoulder. He turned bleary eyed towards me and nodded his head in recognition. “I love you,” I said to him. Then the nurse took my arm and led me back out of the room. This time I dropped. Weakness, profound fear, incomprehendable emotions took a hold, and I couldn’t return to his side.
My father received numerous treatments after his return home, and was given a clean bill of health. Over the next five years my parents reverted back to their miserable selves – though in a deeper and more complex way - as my father alternated between succumbing to and triumphing over his cancer.
My father’s temper veered towards ruthless and irate in speech and action. Time was eroding my mother’s patience and movie-esque vision of marriage; she had enough of his almighty ego and bad attitude.
“George, I’m busy too.”
“God damn this house and the people in it! Can’t you do anything?!”
“Oh, shut up. You have no idea…”
“Don’t tell me to shut up! When I’m dead you’ll see…you’ll see…”
Most arguments mimicked this scene, including banging on walls and tables and stair stomping. Dishes would clang and doors would slam all along with their murmured words of resentment - their self-made, miserable lives together. My father wasn’t the knight-in-shining-armor that she dreamed him to be, and my mother wasn’t the perfect-suzie-homemaker or the good-little-Greek wife that he wanted her to be. The bitterness kept growing inside them, consumed them.
The sicker my father became the more my mother’s anger grew. The more dependent on her he became the more she purposely ignored him: she’d forget to call in and pick up his prescriptions; she wouldn’t make phone calls for him when the paralysis of his vocal chords left him no voice; she stopped cleaning the house and doing his wash. She never spent time with him, not even to periodically check on him to offer assistance. Little by little, my sisters and I took on various responsibilities. Our mother faded into the background: a shadow of a mother and wife, sulking, lurking around, embittered and raging inside.
By the spring of 1998 my father had taken a turn for the worse. My mother at this point couldn’t be bothered; the simplest, humane action was a chore. I had become my father’s aide, taking care of phone calls, wash, bills, doctors, letters, preparing him for bed, including dressing him, calling in nurses to bath and prep him, filling his feeding bag with his nourishment, being his daughter and friend, and then collapsing myself.
My mother, once my best friend, I resented. My father, once my mortal enemy, I tried to save. I realized that my father did love us; he just didn’t know how. I forgave him, the man who never let us want for anything, who worked 70 hours a week to give his daughters and wife the world, but failed emotionally. I’d spend my nights tossing and turning, trying to make sense of this life turned upside down and inside out. My mother and father had somehow traded places in every way imaginable. It hurt, made no sense, and created a chaos that still does not rest.
One cold morning my father rang his bedside bell for me to come up; he was cold maybe or looking for some companionship to warm his spirits. He was three days into a new experimental chemo that made death more appealing. I found him in his oversized armchair, looking frail and ashen. He pointed me towards the edge of his bed, motioning me to sit. As I did I saw something I had never before, a well of tears in his eyes. Overwrought with emotion I knelt down in front of him to hear his trembling, raspy voice.
“Am I such a burden on my family…Do I ask too much…Do I ruin all your lives with my sickness…Do I disgust every one so much…”
“No, dad, no! Don’t ever think that…”
“Why, why do I feel like this…”
“Please, dad…”
“I can’t go on like this any more…I can’t take the pain.”
“Dad, please…we love you…don’t feel that way…I know it’s hard…that’s what a family is for…don’t ever think anything else…”
“What have I done to my family?” What…what…what have I done to my wife…she...sh…”
“No, dad…it’s just too hard on her…she’s trying to figure it all out…please dad, don’t take it that way…we don’t want you to be like this…”
“I can’t…I can’t…have…I done this…oh…God…what has happened…”
“Dad I love you, we all do, please, we want you to be better…just…know that we love you…”
I tried to hug him, to hug all his tears and pain away. A torrent flooded down his face, his eyes swollen and red, and he just cried and shook and cried and shook.
“Thank you, Renee…I’m sorry…I’m…” he hugged me then pushed me away.
I left his room and ran down the steps with my own tears threatening to drown me. I found my mother in the kitchen and spewed venom. I hated her at that moment. Each time she tried to dodge me I hated her more. I chased her around the kitchen until she hid in the laundry room. I ran outside for air, begging for answers, understanding, comfort.
“Why…why…why?!” I cried out the sky.
I understand that I couldn’t understand anything. And struggle with the fact that I will never understand, merely learn to cope. I don’t remember those days anymore, the ones where my mother and I were inseparable, friends, partners in youthful energy. I don’t even remember the girl I used to be. The change I experienced was the great Pangaea separating, and I live in a new world with new boundaries and landscapes that I battle to survive to find my place and make sense.
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