“And you let him do that?”
She merely shrugged.
“What were you thinking?” I asked. “He threw out the last letter from his dying sister? Your daughter. Did you read it? Or did he? Is that why he threw it out? Because you didn’t like what it said?”
She shrugged again, and all my training and education as a psychologist sailed out the window. All I wanted to do was throttle her. I couldn’t think of what I would say if she were one of my patients and this were a therapy session. I had no desire to unravel her as a person or help her reach a deeper level of understanding about herself and the roots of her choices and behaviors. I just wanted to get out of there, go back to New York, and never, ever return.
But something in me fell to pieces, and I couldn’t leave. All I could do was crumple onto the sofa and bury my head in my hands. “I can’t believe he threw it out. I can’t believe I didn’t get to see her.”
“It’s your own fault. You should have come sooner,” she said cruelly.
My eyes lifted, and I gaped at her. “I would have come if someone had called me.”
“Oh, stop whining. Don’t be such a baby. Go and get me a drink, and get one for yourself too. You look like you need a stiff one.”
My grandmother had never been a warm or loving person in the past, but this was too much. I couldn’t bear to look at her. I couldn’t even be in the same room with her. I felt like I was choking.
“I need some air.” I pushed myself off the sofa and got to my feet. “I’m going for a walk.”
She tapped the ashes off her cigarette again and said nothing as I turned and left the room.
I stayed long enough to view Auntie Lynn’s remains at the funeral home before she was cremated. The sight of her in the temporary wooden box nearly broke me. She was emaciated after her long illness and looked much older than the youthful woman I remembered.
I requested a few moments alone with her to tell her how much I loved her, but it wasn’t enough. I derived no closure or comfort from it because I knew she couldn’t hear me. It was too late. She was truly gone from this world, and she would never know how much she had meant to me. I had failed to show her my love in the end.
My regret was immeasurable. My guilt was immense, and I knew it would never leave me. It would burrow deep into my bones and stay there forever.
After the cremation, my grandmother insisted on keeping the ashes in an urn at the house, again defying Auntie Lynn’s final wishes to be scattered in the wind. I tried to argue on her behalf, but I was outnumbered, so I said goodbye and called a cab to take me to the airport.
Naturally, my father was drunk as I was leaving, and he shoved me up against the wall. “You think you’re too good for us? Is that it?” he shouted.
He was a large man, taller than me, and I was lucky that he was drunk because when I pushed him away, he staggered sideways and fell into the stairs.
“If you walk out of here, don’t you ever come back!” he bellowed as I picked up my bag and made for the door.
My grandmother simply watched all of this with indifference, from that ratty old chair in the darkened living room, smoking her cigarette.
I slept for over an hour on the flight out of Wisconsin. When I woke, I was groggy. I sat with my forehead resting against the window while I looked down at the fluffy white clouds below the aircraft.
In those moments, I wondered if heaven existed. If it did, I hoped Auntie Lynn was enjoying herself in some way. She loved to paint. Maybe she was standing at an easel with a colorful palette. The thought brought me some comfort, but then, in a flash, an image of her unkempt bedroom, the smell of the dirty sheets, hit me like a cold, hard wind. I imagined her final days with my father and grandmother, who were cruel and hateful with their words. What comfort or love had they offered her in her final hours? None, most assuredly. They would not have been kind. My heart ached for Auntie Lynn. I could barely breathe through my sorrow.
Then guilt launched into me again like a brutal punch, and I shuddered agonizingly. I should have been there. She must have thought I didn’t care. That I had deserted her. I had. That’s exactly what I had done, and I hated myself for it. I kept my head turned toward the glass so no one would see me weeping.
Later, after the meal, I was in a daze and found myself staring at the clouds again and thinking of Melanie Brown and her project about airplanes that vanished over the Bermuda Triangle. Where did they go?
I thought of our many conversations about her life in Oklahoma and her feelings of guilt about the death of her mother. How ridiculous it was for me to sit in that chair in my office and tell her how to cope with her emotions when I was completely wrecked over the death of my aunt and could barely cope with my own abandonment issues.
Who was I to offer advice? I was a fraud.
When I arrived back at my apartment, there was no food in the refrigerator or cupboards, so I used my credit card to purchase a few essentials at the supermarket. When I reached the cash register, I let out a breath of relief when the card wasn’t declined, because I’d been certain the balance must be over the lending limit, considering the cost of that plane ticket home.
That evening, I couldn’t bear to sit alone in my apartment, so I went for a long walk. I strolled for hours and thought of Auntie Lynn and the idyllic life she had given me in Arizona. We’d never had much money. It was a middle-class existence, but to me it was paradise compared to my life with an abusive, alcoholic father, a drug addict for a brother, and a bitter, apathetic grandmother who said cruel things.
I tried to remind myself that it hadn’t always been so terrible. Not when my mother was alive. Wistfully, I recalled a day when she had wrapped two plastic garbage bags around my winter boots to keep my feet dry because we couldn’t afford a new pair. She had secured them with an elastic band. Then she kissed me on the top of my head. I felt loved that day.
But then she died, and no one cared if my feet got wet. Until Auntie Lynn arrived.
As I walked with my head down, farther west, away from the industrial sector where I lived, I stepped on some broken glass and was shaken out of my depressing reveries. Looking around, I found myself in a derelict neighborhood. Everywhere I looked, I saw graffiti. Parked cars were stripped of their tires, and apartment buildings had broken or boarded-up windows. I heard angry voices from people inside those deteriorated buildings and quickly turned around and retraced my steps back toward my own neighborhood.
Afterward, the sight of that poverty and social misery left me distressed and disheartened for hours, especially after my trip home—seeing how little had changed. My father was still an angry alcoholic who had killed my mother in a drunk driving accident and gone to jail for it. My grandmother was still cold and uncaring, and though my aunt had tried to help them, she had been swallowed up too. Just like my mother.
How many patients came to me because they couldn’t bear the stress of their difficult upbringings or their money troubles? My grandmother always dismissed my father’s drinking. She blamed it on the fact that we were poor.
That never made sense to me. Wouldn’t we have been less poor if he spent less money on booze?
My brother went to prison for burglary. Again, my grandmother blamed his criminal behavior on the fact that we were poor and he was desperate. I blamed it on the drugs, but I also understood that it was a vicious cycle. He did drugs because he was depressed and had no hope. No dreams of anything better that might be attainable for him. The only life he knew was a life of poverty and neglect, while I had been rescued from all that.