i haven't been to sleep yet. we get tonight off, so maybe i'll sleep eventually. i don't know. i don't want to think about it.
when i was 11, my dog scampy died. she and i were close; one night i went to a slumber party and when i got home they told me she'd sat by my bed all night. the night before she died (of heart failure), she was very restless. she climbed on my bed, chewed on my blanket, rocked back and forth on a metal dustpan that was on the floor. it was as if she knew it was her last night and wanted to make it count.
so tonight i talked to my stepbrother on the phone (first time in about 12 years). he told me more about how my stepmother died. it's haunting me, and the image i keep seeing is my dog rocking on the dustpan, clang.
apparently she realized toward the end of her life that she was an alcoholic, even went through charter's program (it didn't take). so her sons, concerned about her health and the possibility that she had cirrhosis of the liver, talked her into going to the hospital. the day of the appointment, she told them she was afraid that if she went into the hospital she'd never come back, and could she have one more night at home? they agreed. my father went to work that morning, and when he came home, she was lying in bed, dead of internal hemorrhaging.
i keep wondering if she knew, like my dog knew. and i picture her lying there waiting to die, wonder why she didn't call for help. i wonder if she felt any remorse at the end, if she wanted to make things better. maybe that's a fabrication i use to make it less painful.
hearing this story, though, made me cry for her again.
i also cried when my stepbrother was talking offhandedly about how he visited my father three weeks ago and they talked about all kinds of intimate stuff. "you have my father," i said. he has my daddy, the person i wanted to love me.
so those two things have been chasing around in my head all night, those two and an incredible anger at all the adults (my stepbrothers included) who *knew* what was going on all those years and did nothing. i'm pondering calling people and asking unpleasant questions.
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sine | deb
if you didn't see my earlier posts about this, basically my stepmother
beat the living shit out of me every other day for seven years while my
father pretended i deserved it and finally disowned me in 1982.