Being home: Chapter 1 - Why having family is a really bad idea

Posted 9/18/11 - written 9/17/11

Well – here I am.  Five days later, trying to get home.  Unfortunately, the assholes at United Airlines had other ideas.

I’m currently on a flight from Omaha to Chicago, where I will then be required to find accommodations for the night.  I will also need to locate a toothbrush as my luggage won’t find me until tomorrow.

My originating flight didn’t leave until two hours later than the original departure time, making sure I missed the last flight out of Chicago to Albany by ANY airline.

Given this past week, this reminds me of the old adage, “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.”

You see, this has been a rather difficult and uncomfortable week.  My presence was required to fly in and help my parents deal with a cancer diagnosis for my father.  He was diagnosed with Stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma after a recent CAT scan.

For the last 20 years or so, he’s been plagued with myriad health problems including but not limited to two knee replacements that have gone bad, leaving him with no knee in his now-fused right leg; a hip replacement on the left leg that went bad – and not just with any old infection, mind you, but the flesh-eating bacteria kind.  He now has no left hip.  He also enjoys a completely destroyed immune system and has had a heart attack, pneumonia, bronchitis, a pacemaker, and a variety of other charming illnesses.

And just prior to the diagnosis, he broke his right leg.  The only one he could stand on.

So – in a hospital bed he lies, waiting to find out if he will ever stand again – should he beat the cancer, that is.

To make matters even more fun, my journey home requires me coming face to face with my long lost brother, who I haven’t seen in more than 25 years. 

I can’t quite remember our last face-to-face meeting, but I am sure it was right before I slapped him into jail for the first time after I found out he had been writing bad checks on my account.

Since that time, he stole my identity, sold my vintage comic book collection for drug money, ran up bad debts in my name, ripped my parents off for thousands of dollars, and – if that were not enough – spent three years as me in a Federal penitentiary in Louisiana.

As you might imagine, I was less than thrilled to see him again.

In fact, I think I conveyed my dismay to my parents quite eloquently some time back when I heard he had returned.  It was during a phone call where I wept, wailed, made strange keening noises and occasionally screamed out loud to Jesus for no reason in particular. This is particularly disturbing as my religious identity as an athiest-leaning-agnostic-but-I'll-try metaphysical-stuff-too person doesn't limit itself to one deity.

I have strategically avoided visiting over the past few years, hoping that my younger (and only) sibling would meet an unfortunate accident with a piece of farm machinery before I was recalled to the nest.

But it was not to be.  In just over a week since the happiest day of my life – my wedding to my life’s love of 20 years – I was on a plane heading west.

We had come to a family accord (meaning, I cleared it with Mom) where the miscreant sibling was to vacate the premises and abide with a friend for the length of my stay.

This, however, prompted a last minute decision by my father who – thanks to a combination of chemotherapy, methadone, a sense of the dramatic and mystical, and a heaping dose of martyrdom – decided I should not come out if it meant that my brother had to leave.

In response, * I informed him of my advanced age and accumulated wisdom, my general lack of interest in a teary reunion with the jerkling, my extreme distaste for the smell of burning martyr, and my driving impetus – to free my poor, retired mother from the bonds of indentured servitude to a man who was now about as much fun and useful to the rest of us as a pile of disgruntled meat with a major over-acting problem.

You may find this analysis a bit harsh, but let me assure you – I am coming to this from a place of love and forgiveness.  I have made my peace with my father and his foibles.  I have forgiven him his insanities and his abuses.  I have received his apologies with grace and have never taken him to task for anything he has attempted to make right.

Imagine what I though of the bastard before.

Anyhoo – my mother called me very early last Sunday morning - in tears - to tell me he said not to come.  I told her I would respond after some coffee, proceeded to pound down three cappuccinos and then dialed the asshat up.

I presented him with the above information (*see previous) and explained to him that if he didn’t care to see me, he could call the nurse, get himself lifted into a seated position and take a fucking flying jump at himself.

He backtracked, of course, said he had been misunderstood (as he climbed back up on his cross – they have phones up there.  Who knew?) and then began to lament that he was “fighting for his life”  (Yeah – when aren’t you fighting for your life?  Jesus on a cracker…) and that he could not cope with our family being in discord as he struggles to save his life (Cue:  dramatic music, dark clouds roll in from afar).

I basically said, “whatever” and hung up.

Next day – I’m on the goddamned plane.

(To be continued)

Stay tuned for Chapter Two where I tell you how Dad and Mom actually do and why being near and actually smelling my brother reminds me of the cigarette butt, pack and sad coffee cup littered cab floor of a 1972 Ford pickup with an exhaust issue.

Jesus.