The last time he messed up around me before I cut him out of my life, about 8/9 years ago. His girlfriend, former Hell’s Angels wife who he philandered with against my mom, kicked him out of the house in Vancouver. He was already smashed drunk unable to handle himself. He taxi’d down to Fort Langley to our place, which was the time when my sister got divorced and moved back in with us and her three kids.
En route, he finished another 2/3rds of a mickey of fireball. He was in terrible condition. After some theatrics in arriving with luggage — thought he’d stay (?), and trying to drunk punch my mom, he barged in and tried to go upstairs. One niece was out with friends. Another was home, now awake. Nephew was asleep, and stayed asleep.
So, I was comforting my awoken niece while they paused him on the stairs because this was not okay, to spend the night drunk in front of grandchildren. A prior boundary had been set. Next, all I hear is several thuds followed by a crash. My sister screamed a bloodcurdling tone never heard before or since, “Dad! Dad!”
He had fallen down the stairs. My mother was lying by his side when I went out, pardoning myself from my niece. My sister was crying on the phone with the police. My dad looked up over the railing when I looked down and said, “Fuck you — .” [My absent brother] My mother said, “That’s not — . And you don’t mean that.” He responded, “Fuck you too, Scott.”
They were unsure if he had broken anything, so encouraged him to stay lying down while police came. He was indignant on the floor, wailing repeatedly while squirming back and forth on his back, “Let me die, let me die, please let me die!”
My earliest memory, ironically — same house, was my parents fighting when I was about 8 at the top of the stairs. I ran downstairs and cried — memory blank. Now, he’s at the bottom, wailing into the abyss for death’s hand to end him.
Life can be dark poetry, cryptic.
Ambulance eventually came. Cleared him, police came. He refused to leave. He wanted to go to the bathroom. Police walked him to the downstairs bathroom. He shit and pissed himself on the way there. He had one shoe on, like alcoholic Cinderella. He refused to leave. I walked him to the vehicle. Police said to get in. He accosted the officer. It was a charge. He went to the ‘drunk tank.’ One nightmare over.
That’s life.
As my cousin said that my dad said to his brother, my uncle, “You stole my life.” Because he had everything my dad destroyed by his choices from age 8 onward, for me, at least. It took time to realize these consecutive flashpoint experiences are, in fact, abnormal.
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Photo credit: Scott Douglas Jacobsen.
