that explains so much

I hesitate to share this, I'm not usually the sharing kind, but I made a passing reference a while ago to some felonies that afflicted my family and then declined, somewhat unfairly, to elaborate, and a recent conversation with a friend reminded me that whenever I do elaborate, however haltingly, the response is usually “that explains so much” so I’ve decided to do that. Elaborate. Haltingly. Personally, I don’t know what these things “explain” – after all these years they remain mysterious to me, but here they are. Cue the violins.

When I was 5 or 7 (I don't remember which) I was molested by a stranger and testified about it. I think the testifying was worse than the assault. I have had PTSD for almost 50 years and have only recently begun to realize, first, that I have it, and second, the many ways that it has truncated and compromised my life.

When I was a freshman in college, my youngest aunt was in a bad marriage and wanted a divorce. Her husband had a different idea. While she and a friend were packing so she could leave the marriage, the husband came in and shot them both. She died, he survived. And, insult to woeful injury, the husband used my aunt’s credit card to buy the gun he killed her with so, of course, her estate — i.e., the family — received the bill for it. Tacky, tacky.

On Columbus Day weekend in 1976, my brother died in a drowning accident.

Sometime between my aunt being murdered and my brother’s inexplicable death, one of my cousins was beaten to death and no one was ever identified, arrested, or tried as the perpetrator.

In 1980, our tenant, a friend of the family for almost my entire life, was gang-raped, beaten with rocks, and left to die in the street. She somehow managed to crawl home and — after several hours of delay — my parents got the police to take her to a hospital, where she didn't die. The first thing she remembers about it is hearing “Let’s get the white bitch;” the last thing is “Let’s get out of here, man, she’s dead.” She didn't press charges, and she also has PTSD.

From about the time that I was 16 until Iwas 32 I had endometriosis, which meant that I spent 3 to 5 days out of every 28 on the floor waiting for the pain to stop. I had three surgeries for it. The third and last, a hysterectomy when I was 32, let me know what it was to be without physical pain or the constant anxiety of "how bad will it be this time?" I sent the surgeon flowers a year after the surgery. I have never been so grateful to anyone (outside of my family) in my life.

And generational things happened – in the 1980s many of my friends died of AIDS. So many that when one friend died of a simple heart attack I wasn't sure I’d heard correctly. But many people lost many people in the 80s.

An old friend was on the first plane that hit the World Trade Center. But, again, many people lost many people in the events of 9/11.

In 2007, as my father was dying, finally of his third cancer,
I took him off life support and stayed with him until he passed. This past spring, as my mother was dying of grief and age, I tried, but mostly failed, to give her a safe and comfortable passing.

People ask how I go on. I don’t know. Moment by moment, I suppose, like anyone else, and often not very well. I wake up. I’m not dead. So far, so good. I put on clothes. Feed the cats. Feed the birds. Go to work. Come home. Do it again the next day. Try, always try, to practice forgiveness and compassion. Forgiveness and compassion are difficult practices. Have a sense of proportion -- mine is still a middle-class American life, not subsistence (at best) in a Darfuri refugee camp.

I sometimes say, jokingly, that my family is like the Kennedys but without money or influence. Money and influence are, obviously, no safeguard against woe, but
I imagine they do assuage some aspects of this coarse and bumpy thing called living.

I don’t usually hold with dripping this all over people. It makes you feel bad and makes me feel no better. But there you have it. The things that explain so much.

Moving on, now.