We lined the trailer with friends, family and relatives. The room was divided between the four children of my grandma: Roland aka Willie; Debbie; Mike and my mom. My mom and Mike are from the same father and Willie and Debbie from my grandma's first husband, but it's odd as to how one child out of each marriage had managed to connect and disconnect from her so.
My mother didn't receive the type of attention she probably should have had growing up. She was the youngest and trapped in the midst of my grandma's fourth marriage which would ultimately be my grandma's fifth and final marriage. The type where you divorce only to realize that you want to be back together and then only to realize your first instinct was correct not to be together at all.
My Uncle Mike wouldn't have known grandpa Don, because he was in and out of juvi through the majority of his teens. Grandma always wanted to reach out to him, but it never seemed to take much of a hold on him. He went from town to town panhandling as a clown and using his amazing artistic skills as a tattoo artist a trade he learned more about when he was locked up for paralyzing a man in a bar fight. I found him on the stoop of grandma's trailer crying and regretting the things that didn't seem to go right between them and the things that had. I ended up walking towards my mom to notify her that someone should probably talk to him.
The house was sold and split four ways, but it was only supposed to be split in two. Grandma originally didn't want Debbie or Mike to receive anything. I believe after watching the bloodletting that was my grandma on my dad's side's death, she knew that writing someone off or out of the will would end messy and would be more trouble than the message it intended to say.
Debbie was always on the move or so I was told. I looked at many pictures of her from her youth and she was a gorgeous girl. She could have been a model if she wanted, beautiful hair, skin and smile. She looked almost angelic, but somewhere beneath the brown eyes harbored a wild side of gambling and addiction that held with her all through her days.
She's been missing for about two years now and no one really knows where she is.
She had aged after she had jumped out of a two-story window do to a fire that was consuming the building. She was terribly broken and lost some of her teeth from it. I feel that it probably drove her to drink more. She handed her boys Gabe & Jerry to their father and barely saw them while they grew up on the other side of the country. She kept her daughter who was two years younger than me, Amy.
There were several times that I'd wake up and hear my mom on the phone with Debbie. She'd go for months without phoning only to pop up with some form of ailment or problem that she wanted her little sister to send some money to help alleviate. My mom has since stopped with the aid knowing full well that any form of income she garnished for her big sister would surely end up in the casino.
My Uncle Willie was the oldest and always took the blame if something happened with the kids. He was the watchdog, the protector and never moved away from grandma. They were only 15-years apart and I often thought that they probably raised each other much to the same extent that my mother and I had.
Uncle Willie had always intimidated me from the first memory I had of him. He told my mom that if I had ever gotten out of line to use a paddle on my butt and he handed my mom the biggest wooden paddle I had ever seen and it was painted a bright red. Since that day probably more than twenty-years-ago I've always been scared and anxious around him.
I walked into the craft room where my mom was going through all of the fabric that was neatly organized against the wall. She told me that grandma had asked us to give a great deal of the fabric to a woman in need that would use it properly. That was when my aunt Debbie walked in and started to go through all the fabric and declare what her fair share was. This set my mother off, which is a very hard thing to do. She knew that Debbie was just going to sell it and go against grandma's wishes and she said what I thought was the worst and most horrid thing she had ever said to someone.
"You know Debbie, mom didn't even want you in the will," my mother remarked.
With emotions on high I retreated to grandma's room and went through the one artifact that I knew I could find comfort in, her cedar chest. Each of the woman in my family owned a cedar chest that we kept our secrets, papers, memories and trinkets in. I'd often go through her cedar chest looking for old pictures that I had drawn as a child.
I stumbled across a plethora of holiday gift cards, each one kept hidden after she had taken them off the mantle. There were ones that had my chicken scratch penmanship from the age of five and ones from recent years as well. There were birth certificates for each of the children as well as one for my uncle who died as a child. There were old clippings from articles published by friends and ribbons from state fairs. If ever there was a more cheerful way to express the life of someone this was it, not the rustling of properties out in the other rooms, or the tears of memories past on the stoop.
I would have rather us talk about her and her fascinating life instead of pawing through her possessions. That's the one thing that I always hated after death was the act of prying through ones things in the search for, "what you want..." It's a disgusting practice.
My mother didn't receive the type of attention she probably should have had growing up. She was the youngest and trapped in the midst of my grandma's fourth marriage which would ultimately be my grandma's fifth and final marriage. The type where you divorce only to realize that you want to be back together and then only to realize your first instinct was correct not to be together at all.
My Uncle Mike wouldn't have known grandpa Don, because he was in and out of juvi through the majority of his teens. Grandma always wanted to reach out to him, but it never seemed to take much of a hold on him. He went from town to town panhandling as a clown and using his amazing artistic skills as a tattoo artist a trade he learned more about when he was locked up for paralyzing a man in a bar fight. I found him on the stoop of grandma's trailer crying and regretting the things that didn't seem to go right between them and the things that had. I ended up walking towards my mom to notify her that someone should probably talk to him.
The house was sold and split four ways, but it was only supposed to be split in two. Grandma originally didn't want Debbie or Mike to receive anything. I believe after watching the bloodletting that was my grandma on my dad's side's death, she knew that writing someone off or out of the will would end messy and would be more trouble than the message it intended to say.
Debbie was always on the move or so I was told. I looked at many pictures of her from her youth and she was a gorgeous girl. She could have been a model if she wanted, beautiful hair, skin and smile. She looked almost angelic, but somewhere beneath the brown eyes harbored a wild side of gambling and addiction that held with her all through her days.
She's been missing for about two years now and no one really knows where she is.
She had aged after she had jumped out of a two-story window do to a fire that was consuming the building. She was terribly broken and lost some of her teeth from it. I feel that it probably drove her to drink more. She handed her boys Gabe & Jerry to their father and barely saw them while they grew up on the other side of the country. She kept her daughter who was two years younger than me, Amy.
There were several times that I'd wake up and hear my mom on the phone with Debbie. She'd go for months without phoning only to pop up with some form of ailment or problem that she wanted her little sister to send some money to help alleviate. My mom has since stopped with the aid knowing full well that any form of income she garnished for her big sister would surely end up in the casino.
My Uncle Willie was the oldest and always took the blame if something happened with the kids. He was the watchdog, the protector and never moved away from grandma. They were only 15-years apart and I often thought that they probably raised each other much to the same extent that my mother and I had.
Uncle Willie had always intimidated me from the first memory I had of him. He told my mom that if I had ever gotten out of line to use a paddle on my butt and he handed my mom the biggest wooden paddle I had ever seen and it was painted a bright red. Since that day probably more than twenty-years-ago I've always been scared and anxious around him.
I walked into the craft room where my mom was going through all of the fabric that was neatly organized against the wall. She told me that grandma had asked us to give a great deal of the fabric to a woman in need that would use it properly. That was when my aunt Debbie walked in and started to go through all the fabric and declare what her fair share was. This set my mother off, which is a very hard thing to do. She knew that Debbie was just going to sell it and go against grandma's wishes and she said what I thought was the worst and most horrid thing she had ever said to someone.
"You know Debbie, mom didn't even want you in the will," my mother remarked.
With emotions on high I retreated to grandma's room and went through the one artifact that I knew I could find comfort in, her cedar chest. Each of the woman in my family owned a cedar chest that we kept our secrets, papers, memories and trinkets in. I'd often go through her cedar chest looking for old pictures that I had drawn as a child.
I stumbled across a plethora of holiday gift cards, each one kept hidden after she had taken them off the mantle. There were ones that had my chicken scratch penmanship from the age of five and ones from recent years as well. There were birth certificates for each of the children as well as one for my uncle who died as a child. There were old clippings from articles published by friends and ribbons from state fairs. If ever there was a more cheerful way to express the life of someone this was it, not the rustling of properties out in the other rooms, or the tears of memories past on the stoop.
I would have rather us talk about her and her fascinating life instead of pawing through her possessions. That's the one thing that I always hated after death was the act of prying through ones things in the search for, "what you want..." It's a disgusting practice.
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