Tacet No More
January 7. Mother escaped.
She stopped eating, and then she refused liquids. Bedridden since Thanksgiving, she must have surmised the terms of her imprisonment, that she would remain a captive within her own home. No one was coming to her rescue. Her captors had shooed away all visitors, and they controlled the mail, the telephone, even her conversation. It was up to her to rescue herself.
At least the doctor had been by, to hear her request for “no moss” – no feeding or breathing tubes or intravenous fluids. Her mind was set on going quickly. She looked at Lee, feebly declaring to him, “I’m out of here.” He managed to elicit from her a weak smile as he squeezed her hand one last time.
No doubt her other two daughters appreciated that she chose the least expensive way to go. I wonder: Did they become impatient with her languishing in bed to die; did they consider helping her along? Or did they abandon her to slip away, alone and forgotten in her deathbed, while they plotted to plunder her estate?
No funeral. No pastor. She was a member for over forty years at the Marthasburg First United Methodist Church, and yet the secretary registered surprise when I called to inquire about flowers for Sunday’s altar. No, they had not heard; the pastor’s schedule was empty; the sanctuary had not been requested for a service.
The local undertaker intoned solicitous condolences over the phone, coyly avoiding any details save for the visitation times. “I considered your mother my friend,” he cooed. Conveniently, he was running errands during the first two hours of calling, and therefore unaware of my sisters’ atrocious behavior at his funeral home.
The obituary he penned contained several errors. How exactly was Mother an “artesian?” She did not play the piano. She was certainly not “surrounded by family and friends” when she died.
Not two weeks prior to mother’s passing, Lee called on Christmas Day. He lamented that she had trapped herself back into complete dependency upon Tressie. We had seen this recurring pattern in our mother for many years. She would go through periods of raging about her ill-tempered eldest daughter and rant about being mistreated, only to abruptly reverse her attitude. This last about-face proved fatal. Mom had sustained injuries from various falls and quasi-seizures, one of which required hospitalization and then a short residency in a rehabilitation facility. She wanted to receive care at home rather than in an assisted care facility.
Although my mother felt certain that her three older children had dumped her into a nursing home, in fact she was free to return home whenever she wished. But because Lee had made these medical arrangements instead of Tressie, my mother’s mind set in play another old pattern of pitting the twins against each other. Prevailing upon Finch and Tressie to take her home, Mother returned, willingly and permanently, into their care.
The ephemeral alliances my mother made with her children forever ricocheted like a crazed pinball through our lives. Although I had long been resigned to this fact, I still dreaded its eventual endgame. Fear for the inevitability of her self-imposed imprisonment felt sadly familiar to what I’d predicted about my father’s fate – that he would commit suicide to be free of emphysema. Both of my parents had cornered themselves into intolerable circumstances. Their escapes were calculated, shrewd, and disastrous for the family left behind. And wholly unsurprising.
It’s all about control – the family credo.
So long as my mother remained alive, the threat of a lawsuit for libel/slander held me in a complicit role of self-censorship. I felt certain that Tressie harbored plans to file suit on our mother’s behalf if I dared speak to anyone about the incest. Conversely, the family worried that I planned to sue my mother. I never fancied any such intentions, most practically because the statute of limitations had long since passed. But it also seemed ridiculous to bestow authority upon a court to verify my experiences.
On the premise of controlling my own destiny, silence strengthened my resolve to endure, adapt, and rise above the chaos. I felt strong for squelching the screams, tears, rage, and realities percolating beneath my outwardly self-confident demeanor. Now, with mother dead, the final restraint of control gave way as I realized I could be silent no more.
My complicit silence ended when Finch assaulted me at the funeral home where we had gathered to receive visitors after Mom passed. It’s not every day that someone has to body block your sister at a funeral home. But that’s precisely what my sister-in-law Kathi did, leveraging between Finch and me to prevent a full-on physical assault.
I had been tricked into coming over to the chapel by a childhood friend calling out to me. A pleasant surprise to see her after all these years, I smiled as I went toward her standing in the chapel, leaving behind Dave and my friends. No sooner had I sensed that the chapel area seemed oddly darkened when my sister stepped quickly out from behind my long lost friend.
“Sadie, you are not welcome at this gathering…” Finch began. I recoiled from her and the darkness that seemed to emanate from her and fill the chapel. But she pursued me, grabbing my arm to stop me from returning to the brightly-lit packed reception area. She continued with well-rehearsed speech about my unforgivable sin of accusing my mother of incest. As she pressed in further to my personal space, I raised my hands in front of me, shielding myself from certain blows. In a firm, loud voice that all around could hear, I rebuked her.
“Stop. No More Bullying. Stop it Now. No More Bullying. Ever.”
These very words had been practiced during the drive to Ohio. Dave and I had talked through various scenarios if my sisters misbehaved. I had neither seen nor spoken to them in nearly ten years. Hoping that our practice in the car would turn out to be overzealous, I felt a familiar despair well up within me as Finch’s hatred came at me in full force.
Robotically, she persisted with her growling monologue through my rebuke, hell-bent on condemning me. She seemed possessed, oblivious to the attention she was drawing among the mourners who must have been shocked at the unfolding scene.
And then, in stepped Kathi.
I daresay Kathi surprised herself at the swiftness of her instincts to respond to my distress. God love this woman; my husband’s sister is my true sibling. Kathi is a diminutive older woman, physically a laughable opponent to Finch’s manly brutishness. She holds around a dozen world powerlifting championship titles. Beneath a heavy layer of foundation makeup, stubble on Finch’s chin hints at a lifetime of steroid injections. A few years ago, she underwent a double mastectomy and hysterectomy, which further emasculated her appearance. All of this was poured into a fashionable dress and heels; I marveled that she likely had no idea she looked as though she was presenting as a transgender man.
The element of surprise provided Kathi an unprecedented advantage over Finch, whose shocked expression confirmed she’d never considered failing to hurt me. She slithered back to the darkened chapel area where her posse of glowering muscle-bound goons (her weightlifting pals) enjoyed role-playing mafia bodyguards for the evening.
Finch’s assault offered a catalyst of freedom for me. No longer would I participate in my own victimization by remaining silent about the Family Secret in my hometown. Years of therapy restored my memories from their jumbled and fragmented state into a cohesive context of time, place, and action. Mother’s incestuous abuse permeates this book, its overarching effect framed as developmental points of my core self. There is no court on earth that can deny me this truth of being. I stood my ground at the funeral home, sensing the solemnity of remaining and refusing to cave in to bullying.
I donned a facade of appropriately social solicitousness as I milled about the funeral home greeting guests. At one point I gathered friends in a prayer circle in the middle of the main room. It wasn’t that I felt particularly prayerful, but rather that I wanted to further infuriate Finch. She had, after all, forbidden prayers and pastors and even a funeral for my mother. How delighted I was that Lee’s daughter unwittingly foiled these plans by inviting the local pastor to the funeral home. As we all bowed our heads in prayer, I secretly dared Finch to try and and intervene.
Resilient people tend to be masters of the long game, underestimated for their ability to withstand all sorts of malarkey. I think it’s my superpower, actually. My foolish sister grossly miscalculated me this regard. Where Finch expected to find a cowering baby sister of years past, she found instead a strong, self-confident, and healed warrior with the truth on her side.
And the dead can’t file lawsuits.
More than one tragedy surrounded my mother’s death. The first tells an all-too-common tale of elder abuse, of being sequestered in one’s own home by children and caretakers whose needs eclipsed hers. The greater tragic tale lay in the realization that my mother died unhealed, her memories untended, her story untold and unheard.
Mother had escaped. She was finally free.
And now, so was I.
