The person I blame the most, of course, is my dead father. If he wouldn’t have been such a rotten, mean, drunken bastard, things wouldn’t have gone this way—maybe. But they did.
I imagine all of us survivors feel guilty about Bobby. Before I knew it, at 22, he was in prison. He was in Walla Walla for twenty years. When he got out, he contacted me. I was too scared of him to respond. I was scared of the violent part of him that was reminiscent of my father. I didn’t know him as an adult. I knew him only as a sweet nine year old that I couldn’t save and in trying to save might lose myself. It wasn’t a bargain I was willing to make. I’ve worked hard on my mental health and achieving something resembling equilibrium. It’s not something I would jeopardize on a bet. A bet I most likely couldn’t win. Still, I mourn his passing.
I know my brother, mother, and his twin sister are also now feeling like they failed him. He was a man now. The man had free will. How free is will when you’ve been set up to fail? Much of the set up was out of his control. Yet, my brother, Bobby’s twin sister, and I persevered with out killing anyone. In my case the difference was I had grandparents, outside the family unit, that saved me. He had a drunken father, a drunken mother, and a drunken step mother. His mother was characterized by her extreme ignorance. I don’t know if he ever met an adult that was on his side other than drunken and/or crazy family members. My mother fit into the latter category.
The person I blame the most again is my father. In my mind, I hear, “You can’t dig up people just for that.” I would if I could if it would matter. Since he’s ashes, even that fantasy is smoke. Although, how one dead man could help another dead man is beyond me. I might as well dig up my father’s father while I’m at it and put them both on trial.
Maybe that’s the whole thing, it’s an illusion. It’s a mirage of hope that I can help or fix another person. That I could tilt them in a certain way. Guilt is a fantasy that something I could have done would have mattered. The fetal alcohol syndrome, the uncontrolled rage, the ease of drugs and crime, and finally the murder are the reality that dispel the dream. If only, if only….
I heard when he got out of prison he was determined not to go back. He won’t be. He’s transformed himself into a pine box, metaphorically speaking. That’s not prison, folks.
At nine, if I accidentally raised my voice, he flinched or froze. I knew it was my father’s handiwork. I had to decide on trying to intervene or withdraw. After much soul searching and counseling sessions, I withdrew. Therein lies the guilt.
As a young child, he was sweet and loving. My lover at the time remembers him running around our house looking for peanut butter. I dimly remember that too. My strongest memory is him talking to someone on the phone when visiting us. Looking at two women being affectionate, he was asked what he was doing. He said, “I’m just watching them give each other care.” That was forty years ago. It was a perfect way to describe it. No judgment. I’ve never forgotten it.
I remember him wanting to sleep with me when I visited my father’s house in Yakima for the weekend. I remember him and his twin sister at three running in from playing in their bedroom when commercials came on the television. They had no interest whatsoever in the actual show. My father said, “The commercials are just the right length for them.”
I remember there was lots of booze but no food in my father’s house and how excited they were at eight years old when I went and got food for us. I introduced them to peanut butter toast. I could make Spaghetti-Os.
I always got a headache at my dad’s. I thought it was because the television was on all the time. My therapist asked if the television gave me a headache anywhere else. When I said no, she suggested maybe it wasn’t the television. As I worked in therapy, it became more and more obvious it was a tremendous strain to be around my father. I visited because I wanted to see the kids. I thought somehow I could make a difference by being there for them like my grandparents were for me. Be a resource at some point in their hour of need.
My father and his third wife, their step mother, drank constantly just as he and their mother had. My father drank bourbon and water. There was never a moment when he didn’t have a drink in his hand. He hardly ate. It didn’t matter the time of day. I could ignore his wife but I finally determined I couldn’t be around my father. My brother was living with him at the time. My brother agreed to meet me at White Pass for either Bobby or his sister to come visit me for the weekend. It was then that I began to see Bobby flinch when my voice got loud.
When the family moved back to Western Washington, my father stopped working for produce companies and started a business in King County as a produce middle man. He, his wife, my brother for a while, and I assume Bobby before he went to jail the first time, repacked tomatoes. Thousands and thousands of boxes sorted to pull out the rotten tomatoes, creating a box of healthy tomatoes for produce companies. They were paid by the box. I went there a few times. Most notably, other than the endless, drabness of the job, was the little glass sized makeshift shelves by each workstation for their drinks so they could drink all day without a break. I marveled at the inventiveness of alcoholics. The last time I was there I saw a sign in their break room. It said, “Clean up your mess. Your mother doesn’t work here.” I found a marker and added, “If she did, I’d have to quit.” My own private joke about my mom who was my father’s first wife.
Soon after high school, Bobby was arrested for robbery and drug possession. He ended up at the Shelton correctional center for two years. After his release, he apparently moved back to Yakima where his mother lived. I didn’t hear anything until the next call from my brother. Bobby had killed his infant son while his girlfriend, the mother, was running errands. He was convicted and sentenced to twenty years in Walla Walla State Penitentiary. The next thing I heard was that he was put in with the sex offenders. I was told the general population wasn’t keen on baby killers. Every population has their hierarchy. I cringed at the affect on Bobby.
Bobby got out five years ago and was released in King County. My brother told me Bobby had to keep his nose clean during probation. He didn’t want to go back to prison. During probation, he had to stay in the county. Initially, he had an apartment. In prison, they trained him to be a flagger in an imaginary effort to make him employable. Employable is not the same as finding an employer willing to employ him.
He lost the apartment. By then, my dad was dead. His mother died in Yakima while he was on probation. He asked for permission to leave the county to attend her funeral. He had gravitated toward my mother who lives in a single wide, two bedroom mobile home in SeaTac. Working under the table for cash, he began staying with my mother. Eventually, it morphed into him living with her. My mother lives on minimum social security with no financial resources. My brother said she and Bobby had stunning fights and my mother gave Bobby any extra money my brother gave her.
This brings me to the present when I got an email from my brother last night reporting the Seattle medical examiner had reached out to his twin sister in Yakima saying they had her brother’s body. Apparently, he had smoked Methamphetamine and died. My brother said he and my father’s widow were making arrangements to have Bobby’s body and personal effects picked up from the ME with the intent to have him cremated. Today, the funeral director has advised my brother, sister, and I that we all need to give permission for him to be cremated. Really, my last act on behalf of Bobby in the last 40 years is to give permission for his cremation?
Friends and coworkers tell me about doing DNA tests to learn their family origin and accidentally identifying extraneous family members. I have hundreds of family members I don’t know in Washington, Oregon, and other parts of the country. My people scare me. I don’t need any DNA test to draw any more of them out. I’ve had enough of my biological family to last several lifetimes. Family of my own choosing is all I need for the rest of this earthbound showstopper.
If death gives you any peace, Bobby, take it. Go with my love. I sure couldn’t do a damn thing for you here.
Joceile
2.16.22
[Picture: To the right on lake, sun rising through fog that looks like smoke and skeleton trees with a distant Mt. Rainer on the left.]
