she stepped off the edge of the world
03.10.05 (3:06 pm) [edit]
so dee cleaned my father's blood off of his pickup truck. i can't imagine how traumatizing that must have been. she knew my dad and had visited him in the hospital during one of his many sojourns there. she came by my mom's house the evening before we had the memorial service. it was the first time i'd seen her in years. she was working at a bookstore and she'd been training to join the police force, but she'd injured her leg somehow. she hung around for about 45 minutes and we agreed we'd have lunch before i left town.
she was supposed to come by the day after the memorial service and we'd decide then where to go for lunch. well, she didn't come at the agreed upon time. finally she showed up very late--much too late for lunch--with her husband, her baby son and her daughter. i assumed we wouldn't be lunching. that was fine with me. i became quite entranced with her little girl, but i noticed dee had little patience for her and little understanding of why the little girl was trying to be the center of attention. they all left at some point without her ever even acknowledging the lunch date. i was too emotionally devastated to care.
after i left my mom's house and came back to the city where i live, i sent dee a letter. i told her that i was profoundly grateful for her help with the truck. i think i talked a bit about my father and the difficulties of being his daughter. she wrote me a letter back, telling me that at first she was afraid to open the letter. i have always thought she was afraid i was going to mention something about my pedophile uncle. she told me that she had contemplated suicide many times. i didn't want to hear about anyone else killing themselves. i wrote her back, but i no longer know exactly what i said.
shortly after that, she left her husband, but not before he attempted to make me the reason why his marriage was breaking up. screw him. i had no interest whatsoever in getting involved in any psychodrama. i never contacted dee again.
she had gotten involved with some guy who worked in the bookstore with her. she moved in with him in a scary part of town, in the midst of some ongoing illegal drug enterprises. at the same time, she was required (by law, apparently) to go to some kind of marriage counseling before she could get a divorce. i'm still floored that the state has that kind of power. she ended up in a classroom with her soon-to-be-ex over the period of a couple of months. dee reported to her mom that her husband, steve, frightened her.
later on, she found out that steve was regularly entertaining some other woman at dee's marital home. what comes next is just crazy and trashy. she and her boyfriend went over to the house and broke the door in, just in time for steve to show up. there was a confrontation, of course and the police showed up. (just a parenthetical note here: i've always been afraid to watch shows like "the jerry springer show" for fear that i'll see some of my relatives on it.)
after the divorce, the dee and the boyfriend were staying in the backroom of a convenience store that steve managed. of course, that inevitably ended. the boyfriend took up residence in a storage facility. dee and her children moved into her mom's house. that worked out great for a while, because when dee walked over to visit the boyfriend, her mom could babysit the kids. unfortunately, grandma wasn't much better with the kids than dee. the little girl was in the second grade and still sucked a pacifier when she wasn't in school. she also needed help cleaning up after she went to the bathroom and, since no one would wipe her little butt at school, she just left everything as it was. i don't know what the hell they were thinking, allowing that to go on.
i guess the boyfriend was ultimately not able to pay the rent on the storage facility where he was living and moved into dee's mom's house. the tiny house had two bedrooms. i can't imagine having to live there. thinkgs went downhill rapidly. some big conflagration occurred between dee and her boyfriend. mom tried to intervene and ended up barricaded in her bedroom. my mom called over there a couple of times while this was going on and was told that my aunt couldn't come to the phone.
the day after the meltdown, dee cleaned out her mom's bank account and left town with the the boyfriend and her kids. my aunt died several months later of brain cancer and her daughter didn't attend the funeral.
i sometimes wonder if the trauma of my dad's suicide had something to do with her meltdown. she and her mom had always been really close. i'll never know. i include dee and her kids in my prayers. i hope they're all still alive. i hope her children are being loved and taken care of. neither parent had much interest in them. i think the best thing that could happen for them is intervention by the state. i would try to do something for them, but i have no idea where they are.
here's the quote of the day:
"The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers." ~ M. Scott Peck
america held hostage day 1884
bushism of the day:
"I mean, these good folks are revolutionizing how businesses conduct their business. And, like them, I am very optimistic about our position in the world and about its influence on the United States.
We're concerned about the short-term economic news, but long-term I'm optimistic.
And so, I hope investors, you know—secondly, I hope investors hold investments for periods of time—that I've always found the best investments are those that you salt away based on economics."
—Austin, Texas, Jan. 4, 2001
website of the day:
Luci's Trust
she was supposed to come by the day after the memorial service and we'd decide then where to go for lunch. well, she didn't come at the agreed upon time. finally she showed up very late--much too late for lunch--with her husband, her baby son and her daughter. i assumed we wouldn't be lunching. that was fine with me. i became quite entranced with her little girl, but i noticed dee had little patience for her and little understanding of why the little girl was trying to be the center of attention. they all left at some point without her ever even acknowledging the lunch date. i was too emotionally devastated to care.
after i left my mom's house and came back to the city where i live, i sent dee a letter. i told her that i was profoundly grateful for her help with the truck. i think i talked a bit about my father and the difficulties of being his daughter. she wrote me a letter back, telling me that at first she was afraid to open the letter. i have always thought she was afraid i was going to mention something about my pedophile uncle. she told me that she had contemplated suicide many times. i didn't want to hear about anyone else killing themselves. i wrote her back, but i no longer know exactly what i said.
shortly after that, she left her husband, but not before he attempted to make me the reason why his marriage was breaking up. screw him. i had no interest whatsoever in getting involved in any psychodrama. i never contacted dee again.
she had gotten involved with some guy who worked in the bookstore with her. she moved in with him in a scary part of town, in the midst of some ongoing illegal drug enterprises. at the same time, she was required (by law, apparently) to go to some kind of marriage counseling before she could get a divorce. i'm still floored that the state has that kind of power. she ended up in a classroom with her soon-to-be-ex over the period of a couple of months. dee reported to her mom that her husband, steve, frightened her.
later on, she found out that steve was regularly entertaining some other woman at dee's marital home. what comes next is just crazy and trashy. she and her boyfriend went over to the house and broke the door in, just in time for steve to show up. there was a confrontation, of course and the police showed up. (just a parenthetical note here: i've always been afraid to watch shows like "the jerry springer show" for fear that i'll see some of my relatives on it.)
after the divorce, the dee and the boyfriend were staying in the backroom of a convenience store that steve managed. of course, that inevitably ended. the boyfriend took up residence in a storage facility. dee and her children moved into her mom's house. that worked out great for a while, because when dee walked over to visit the boyfriend, her mom could babysit the kids. unfortunately, grandma wasn't much better with the kids than dee. the little girl was in the second grade and still sucked a pacifier when she wasn't in school. she also needed help cleaning up after she went to the bathroom and, since no one would wipe her little butt at school, she just left everything as it was. i don't know what the hell they were thinking, allowing that to go on.
i guess the boyfriend was ultimately not able to pay the rent on the storage facility where he was living and moved into dee's mom's house. the tiny house had two bedrooms. i can't imagine having to live there. thinkgs went downhill rapidly. some big conflagration occurred between dee and her boyfriend. mom tried to intervene and ended up barricaded in her bedroom. my mom called over there a couple of times while this was going on and was told that my aunt couldn't come to the phone.
the day after the meltdown, dee cleaned out her mom's bank account and left town with the the boyfriend and her kids. my aunt died several months later of brain cancer and her daughter didn't attend the funeral.
i sometimes wonder if the trauma of my dad's suicide had something to do with her meltdown. she and her mom had always been really close. i'll never know. i include dee and her kids in my prayers. i hope they're all still alive. i hope her children are being loved and taken care of. neither parent had much interest in them. i think the best thing that could happen for them is intervention by the state. i would try to do something for them, but i have no idea where they are.
here's the quote of the day:
"The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers." ~ M. Scott Peck
america held hostage day 1884
bushism of the day:
"I mean, these good folks are revolutionizing how businesses conduct their business. And, like them, I am very optimistic about our position in the world and about its influence on the United States.
We're concerned about the short-term economic news, but long-term I'm optimistic.
And so, I hope investors, you know—secondly, I hope investors hold investments for periods of time—that I've always found the best investments are those that you salt away based on economics."
—Austin, Texas, Jan. 4, 2001
website of the day:
Luci's Trust
