Trigger warning: Dear Reader, this post contains descriptions of mild animal cruelty, emotional abuse, child emotional abuse, death, and suicide that some might find distressing.
My uncle was already showing his true colors when he was 5 years old. My mother, his sister, who was 12 at the time, was in bed with whooping cough, when she heard her brother calling her name from outside. She looked out the window in time to see him lifting her kittens up by their tails and dipping them, one by one, in a can of green paint. (She did get back at him, though. Once she was well enough to go out to the barn, she trimmed all the longest hair off his pony’s tail.)
He might have outgrown his nasty little pranks, though. Many boys do, eventually. But when he was 10 years old, and my mother was 17, the family got one of those horrific World War II telegrams. “We regret to inform you…” and just like that, their father, the family’s only breadwinner, was lost somewhere in the North Atlantic, his ship having been sunk by a German U-boat.
Some of my most heartbreaking possessions include photocopies of that telegram, along with a note that was written in a ten-year-old’s scrawl, declaring that his dad was “a real swell guy.”
Maybe if, after that emotional bomb detonated in the family, someone had taken the time to really care for and nurture that little boy, lead him by example, and give him a place where he felt safe, he might have grown up to be a loving uncle like his much older brother did. I sure would have liked that. But there’s no point in speculating. It didn’t happen.
Instead, by the time I came on the scene, I was presented with a man who was never sober from the day I was born to the day he died. His was a tragic life full of the same types of cruel pranks he had pulled when he was a child. In retrospect, I think his ability to mature was arrested on the day he read that telegram when he was 10. It was as if his soul were trapped in amber and he thought only alcohol could dissolve that amber and set him free.
When I was 13, I was very self-conscious. That’s typical of girls that age, but now I realize that that feeling was magnified about 1000 times due to my undiagnosed autism. But back then I just thought I was weird, and that something was terribly wrong with me that must be my fault. So it didn’t help to have an uncle that would burst on the scene, shouting, “Babsy!” (As soon as he discovered I hated to be called Babsy, that’s all he ever called me.) “Have you grown your tits yet?”
I’m sure he thought this was hilarious. It made me want to crawl under a rock. I learned to disappear the moment I saw him coming. My mother, during moments like that, would just roll her eyes and sigh. She’d be the first of many who did not have my back.
Then, on the eve of my oldest sister’s wedding, in those days before the internet, it’s a good thing that someone thought to call and confirm the church, because it seemed that someone had called, pretending to be our never-present father, and cancelled the venue a week prior. If that confirmation phone call hadn’t been made, we’d have all shown up to a locked, pastor-less, unlit church on the big day. Ha, ha, ha! What a card you are, uncle! What a card!
These are just a few of the never-ending stream of cruel tricks my uncle played on everyone around him. He seemed to like it best when he could make people cry. Apparently I was the only person who thought this was unacceptable.
When I was 19, I brought a foreign student home from college with me on spring break. One evening, the phone rang. I picked up, and was met with a man who spoke with a very strange accent. (I wasn’t familiar with Dutch accents back then.) He asked to speak to his daughter, and said it was an emergency. When I called her from the other side of the house, she arrived in a panic, because it would have been around 3 am in Holland, so it must have been an emergency, indeed.
Of course, it wasn’t her father. It was my uncle. I hung up on him. Naturally, my friend was really upset. This scare made her feel even more homesick, which was something I was attempting to alleviate by inviting her to my home in the first place.
The next day, after we had done some shopping therapy, we returned to the house to find my uncle’s car in our driveway. Dear Reader, I have had to suffer quite a few fools in my lifetime, but I have never done so gladly. Before my mother could even turn off the engine, I leapt out of the car and burst into the house. He was sitting in the living room looking smug. I shouted, “Get out! Get out of this house! How dare you? Get out!”
Naturally, all holy hell broke loose, right in front of my friend, but by then I was well past the point of comprehending why anyone included this cruel man in anything at all. I certainly wasn’t going to introduce him to her and act like everything was fine. I mean, seriously, this was not love. All he had ever meted out was pain and humiliation. Why did anyone accommodate that? It baffled me.
He never stepped foot in our house again, at least while I was there. I honestly have no idea whether my mother talked to him much after that. I don’t know and I don’t care. She made her own decisions. But, to my astonishment, when my middle sister got married, he was invited to her ceremony, too. He was just not given the precise details until the last possible moment.
I’m sure he was very disappointed about that. It forced him to improvise. It was a beautiful wedding and reception. Everyone was having a wonderful time. I made sure I gave my uncle a wide berth. By then, my oldest sister had a 3-year-old daughter who was really enjoying showing off the dress my mother had made for her. She was feeling like a princess. Her little brother, still an infant, slept through the entire event.
From a distance, I was keeping close track of my uncle out of the corner of my eye. No one else was. But I knew the other shoe would drop sooner or later. I just didn’t know when or how. But he wouldn’t be satisfied until he ruined things for at least one person. That was who he was.
He waited for a quiet moment, and then lured my little niece over to a large balloon arrangement. Naturally she went, thinking she was going to be given a balloon of her very own. I headed that way as quickly as I could.
Oh, she got a balloon alright. My uncle picked one out “just for her”. She was overjoyed as she watched it bob on it’s string. He then proceeded to pop it with his lit cigarette, right in her face, before I could intervene. Her wails drew the attention of 200 people.
“You are such an asshole,” I hissed, as I snatched up my howling niece, took her into another room, and did not emerge until he was gone. Had I come back out, I would have attempted to kill him with my bare hands. That would have increased both the drama and his satisfaction. This was supposed to be my sister’s day, not his. It was a much better idea for all concerned if I just sat in a quiet room and rocked my niece until she fell asleep.
He also used to think it was funny to stand over his wife and glare at her as she slept. She’d open her eyes, see a face full of rage, and quite understandably let out a shriek. He would laugh and laugh, and brag to others about it later. Honestly, who does that?
The years rolled by, and my uncle had an experience which a more redeemable human being might have taken as a sign to change his ways. To describe what happened will require a map. Please pardon my horrible drawing skills. (There’s a reason I’m a writer.)
Anyway, my uncle was sitting in his living room, drinking (naturally) and watching his big screen TV, when a bolt of lightning came through his screened front door, down the hall toward the living room, hit the mirror that was on the partly open closet door, ricocheted across the room and over his lap, hitting his mini bar and shattering every bottle of alcohol on it, bounced off the mirror that had been behind those bottles, and ricocheted back across the room to explode his large screen TV.
Both mirrors were melted, and TVs were NOT flat screened at the time, so its inner workings caught fire and had to be put out by his wife. (At the sound of the various booms and crashes, she had come running in.) He just sat there on the recliner, in a state of shock.
All of this happened in the blink of an eye. If it were me, I’d have taken it as the clearest possible sign from God or the Universe that I should quit drinking (and maybe watch a little less television). But no. Not my uncle. Instead, he said, “Jesus Christ, I need a drink.”
Okay, yeah, I know it’s funny. But it’s also not funny. It’s kind of sad.
I vaguely remember him showing up drunk at my mother’s memorial service a few years after that. I was in a fog of grief, though, so the details are a little fuzzy. Afterward, everyone gathered at my oldest sister’s house. I remember getting up and walking into the kitchen at one point, to get away from people. I was leaning over the counter with my eyes closed when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It startled me.
It was my uncle. I turned and we stared at each other for a beat. Then I said, “Too little, too late,” and walked away. I never saw him again.
His life revolved around drinking until his dying day. And he managed to make that day, too, his own self-orchestrated bad joke. It was years later, and he was 78 years old. (Alcohol is a great preservative, apparently.) He finally had gotten into one drunken accident too many. As per usual, he emerged unscathed, but others were badly injured. This time his driver’s license was revoked. He couldn’t handle that.
Soon afterward, when his wife went out shopping with a friend, he wrote his name, his social security number, and the address of a good funeral home on a slip of paper, and pinned it to his shirt. Then he went into the garage and blew his brains out. He did this, knowing full well that when his wife came home, she’d raise the garage door remotely and drive inside, all excited and looking forward to showing him her purchases, only to find what was left of him splattered everywhere.
I’m quite sure my uncle was in despair over the loss of control in his life, although to me it’s obvious that he never had control of it in the first place. But on some level, he probably also thought that his final act would be a really funny way to get the last laugh. Did he really see himself as a comic? At best, his life was actually a poorly written farce.
Things could have turned out so much differently. He could have had such a positive impact in the world. He might have even been the father figure that I never had. The circumstances of his childhood were not his fault, but we all have traumas to overcome as we grow to adulthood. His poor choices and his refusal to even try to work on his many issues meant that he wasted every opportunity he had to be a force for good. Whenever I think of him, my primary emotions are anger and disappointment.
But I can say this: Thank you, uncle, for being one of a long line of people who taught me exactly the kind of person I did not want to become. I guess you had a positive impact on someone after all. Congratulations.
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