Everybody Has One

Everyone of us has one -- A member of the family that isn't particularly liked, loved, or understood by the other members. Some are victims of their own childhoods. Some are mentally ill. Moreover, some are the way they are by choice. We had one of our own, and here is her story:

We stood in the doorway of a spotless nursing home located in Phoenix. Her bedroom was devoid of any personal possessions usually representative of a woman her age. I had not seen in her in twenty-three years. Although, now eighty-nine years old, she had changed little in our years of separation.

Sure, she'd grown smaller in statue. Her features, especially her nose, were more pronounced than I remembered. Both her arms were ghastly bruised from IVs, causing me to quickly focus on her face. It was a face swallowed by illuminated blue eyes that gave no sign of recognition, even after she was told my name.

A single raspy statement met all my attempts at conversation, "They are trying to kill me!" Lost in the envelope of awkward silence that followed, I thought about the sum total of all I knew about her. If I were to write it down, would it even fill a page?

She was the youngest child in her family. Born to Irish immigrants in a Colorado mining town on Christmas day, a "change of life baby," they said. When an infant, her mother entered a state mental institution, never to return except for short lived visits. Rumors were, that her beloved older brother had tragically died as a boy (as did another brother), but there was no one alive who could confirm how he died to me. Some said he died in a mining accident, others said he drown.

She was unquestionably a homely woman, who didn't marry until she was thirty-two. Her husband came with a ready-made family from a previous marriage. She dutifully raised his mentally disabled son, as well as their own two sons. The family lived in their car, traveling from town to town looking for work. He was a miner, a blacksmith, a sharecropper, a steel worker and most importantly, an alcoholic. Her second husband was a cook, a Merchant Marine, and another alcoholic. She never drank.

I occupied the silence of our remaining visit, by trying to remember all that I could about her. I felt helpless and uncomfortable. Surely, I knew something more about her? After all, I had known her all my life. Part of my childhood was sharing my bed with her, whenever she visited.

I tried to picture the woman she once was. A tall angular woman, with big feet, heavily rouged cheeks and brilliant red lipstick smeared upon her ample lips. Her henna-dyed red hair peeked from beneath a turban. She never went outside without the turban. I couldn't recall ever seeing her in a dress.

Except for her eyes, her face was absent of any sign of ever having held any beauty. My younger brother, had often joked she had more wrinkles and lines, than that of a big city map. Even now at her advanced age, that fact seemed no different that it had always been.

Recalling all this, I could almost smell the past essence of her, a faint whiff of the incense, mixed with a heavy perfume and the cigarettes she chained-smoked. I remembered her hands. Hands that had never concerned themselves with any normal physical activity usually identified with a woman of her generation.

She could not cook, she did not sew, she was no domestic goddess. As far as anyone recall, her sole culinary accomplishments were baloney sandwiches, unless you counted the time she froze the watermelon.

Memories were strongest of her fingers, long yellowed ones capped by well-manicured nails. Fingers that were every busy doing nothing. Fingers forever shuffling decks of cards, while she played one life-long game of solitaire after another.

I thought about all the times I had spent with her in my childhood, while struggling to ignore her moaning and mumbling. Surely, my reminiscence must be lacking? Don't all human beings have some special talent or accomplishment to mark their lives? I could remember no such accomplishments.

I made my list. She had perfect penmanship. She knew how to crochet (but never made anything). Moreover, she always immediately rinsed out any dish she used when visiting. Somehow, these facts didn't seem to mean much. These memories were mixed of her as a gambler who frequented Las Vegas and the horse races. Every thought of her, included her ever-ready-to-go suitcase. Married or widowed, she always lived a nomadic life, wandering from relative to friend, and back again.

The only remaining fragments of past conversations with her, were her own peculiar idioms. These always seemed to somehow fit only in conversations in her mind. She punctuated virtually every conversation with a cackle and frequently exclaimed such phrases as, "Black as the ace's spade," or "It's colder than a witch's tit."

Our time together came to an uneasy close. As we stood to leave, her son bid her good-bye. I silently followed him to the door. It was only then that she met my eyes and softly said,"It was nice to see you again, Jerilee."

The old woman died alone in her room that night. The cause of death was self-imposed starvation. She had spent the last two years of her life in that room, which was in one of the most highly recommended nursing homes in the state. She received the best of medical care and her family who lived close by, visited her whenever they could.

Her oldest son's wife made the arbitrary decision for the family to have no funeral service, even though it was included in the price of the cremation. If anyone protested, it was done silently.

Therefore, her remains were delivered in a plastic box to be placed upon the spare bedroom shelf. Her few personal possessions were immediately given away. No relative seemed to grieve much. Perhaps, each concluded, she was better off now that she was no longer suffering.

Following her death, I journeyed through the small mountain town of Ouray, Colorado that spawned such a woman. It was The town that she lived in for the first three decades of her life. By contrast, its incredibly beautiful settled tranquility seemed to mock the homely wandering woman's very existence. It was there that I reflected further upon her life. What would others who knew her remember?

Her eldest son always claimed he could not remember his childhood. Years before, I had concluded he was ashamed or her. He certainly didn't look forward to her visits. He held considerable resentment about her keeping his younger brother home from school to be near her. Her kind of love had deprived his only sibling of an education, dooming him to a life of manual labor and illiteracy.

His was a childhood of hunger. His memories were laced with only having shredded wheat cereal and baloney sandwiches to eat. His strongest childhood image was the sight of the backs of his parents' heads, as they drove from one hope of a job to another, in the car that they called "home" during the Depression (and long after). He alone, could remember her letting their father drink away the money, he and his brother earned delivering newspapers. For that, he would never forgive her.

For many years, he bore the sole burden of having seen the words attached to her name in medical records, "schizophrenic and mental illness." Words that would forever scare him. Yet, he continued to try to do the best by her, because she was, after all, his mother.

His younger brother's memories were different. He remembered her undivided attention. He remembered her doting pride in showing off pictures of his children and grandchildren. Yet, he also could not help but wince, at her inability to show physical affection.

He was not privy to her medical diagnosis with respect to her probable mental illness. Nevertheless, he too, like anyone who had known her, privately accepted that she was never quite right in her mind

Her daughter-in-laws, past and present, only recalled her selfish ways and focused on the burden of her frequent visits. Her daughter-in-law of the present, resented having been the one stuck nursing her during her last days before the home. Her daughter-in-law of past, still felt the sting of being served with frivolous papers from a lawyer for "non-support."

One grandson would remember hating to be made to kiss her as a child. Another, would remember looking forward to her visits. Her three granddaughters seemed to take no notice of her life or her death. Two of her great-grandchildren she never met. Her other four great granddaughters and three great grandsons would fondly, but vaguely remember her.

The old woman whose life story I just shared, was my paternal grandmother and she had a name, (Sarah) Sadie. Sadie's life didn't fit the stereotype norms of what a mother or grandmother, were supposed to look like or act like. It was as difficult to know her, as it was to love her. Many questions have gone through my mind since her death. A human being can be endlessly complicated, even after death.

My questions are ones that will never be answered:

• Did any of us ever take the time to really know her?
• Was she ever happy or could she have been?
• What was important to her?
• Did she ever want more than what she had?
• Were we so afraid of her mental illness, that we forgot she was a human being, so desperate in need of our love and understanding?

Some would say her life was a living statement of a person getting exactly what they put into life. She never gave any of us, or the world in which we live, much of herself.

Yet, she never asked any of us for much in return. For eighty-nine years, she was just one of the many masses of individuals who just exist.

One of the many who live each day doing just the same as the day before. The tragedy of her life, if there is one, is that she was a prisoner of a life that was never able to reach out for its full potential. In the end, perhaps simply tired of life's game of solitaire, she exercised the only control she had over her life. She played out her last card in her refusal to eat or be fed in her final days.

Every family has their own Sadie. A member of the family that isn't particularly liked, loved, or understood by the other members. Some are victims of their own childhoods. Some are mentally ill. Moreover, some are the way they are by choice.

We can no longer reach out to know Sadie better or hold her hand. However, there is something we can give Sadie in death, that we failed to give her in life. We can take with us, the memory of Sadie and those like her and learn from our experience.

In addition, we can use her life image, to remind us and others to look a little harder at those placed by God in our lives. We can exercise more compassion, dig deeper into ourselves in order to reach out to them. Then, maybe, just for awhile, their lonely games of solitaire, can be replaced by a game of hearts with many players.

Make sure you are not one of the difficult family members that everyone is trying to cope with. If you are having a problem with a number of your family members, maybe you need to take a step back. Ask yourself, Am I the common denominator in this family equation?