I visited my father's gravesite today - I think it's the first time I've been in about 10 years. As of July 16, it had been 12 years since he died. He was an aeronautical test engineer for the airforce, and had been completing some flight tests over Alabama on cargo helicopters when for what is still a largely unknown reason, his plane went down. Unfortunately, it wasn't the first tragedy my family had experienced. What follows is a brief history of our family's trials, tribulations and triumphs, which I've been meaning to write down for about a decade now - I'm not writing it as a plea for sympathy, but just as something concrete that I can look back on as my memory fades. PLEASE BE ADVISED OF THIS DISCLAIMER - my family and I are actually quite upbeat people - we laugh (frequently and histerically), love, and eat a lot. We're not all that dark - I'm just in the mood to write this down and put it out there, that's all. Thanks.
My mom was 12 when her mother committed suicide. My grandmother was a beautiful, athletic woman. She had married fairly young to my strapping grandfather, who had his own carpentry business. I don't know why, but throughout my mother's life, my grandparents marraige and happiness fell into disrepair. My grandfather saw other women, my grandmother drank constantly. Her drinking begat liver and kidney failure, and she was given 5 years to live, if that. During this time, my mother and she were going through the usual requisite mother/daughter bickering that sets in for most of the teenage years. One day, after a particularly bad morning fight, my mom had a sudden urge to embrace her mother and tell her that she loved her - it was an impulse she didn't follow, and later that day, my grandmother blew her head off with a shotgun, leaving the body for the paperboy to discover.
Years later, my father was leaving for his last trip to Alabama, when he came out back (where I was playing with a weekender-girl named Alex - one of my first crushes) to give me a hug goodbye. At first, I refused to hug him, too embarassed to be affectionate in front of a girl that would never play a major role in my life, and finally, after compulsion from my mom, gave into the embrace. That was the last time I saw him - the sad poetry of this situation is not lost on me. My father spent his last days with the memory of his son being to embarassed and stubborn to give him a hug goodbye.
Not only that, but we had seriously grown apart that year. I was in 4th grade, and I think I was starting to wrestle with my sexuality. This probably was most apparant to my father when, on our yearly ski trip, I shakingly asked him if I could quit T-ball and join Jr. Jazzercise. In my dad's defense, he seemed to deal fine with the whole situation - he was in the front row for the recital, during which I performed a stellar routine to M.C. Hammer's "2 Legit 2 Quit" - complete with hand signs.
Back to my mom - she continued to grow up under my grandfather, whose alcoholism grew on a daily basis, and her two grandmothers, who begrudgingly took up the task of mothering her. They dressed her in awful old-lady clothing from "Dee's Discount Duds" - a story which never fails to send me and my sister into hysterical laughing fits. Somewhere in her teenage years, she discovered the Mormon church, with their gleamingly perfect and large families... she was (and continues to be) completely smitten by this world of potlucks, family reunions, and sober parenthood. When she married my father, years later, it was under strict condition that he give up his bachelor ways and be willing to give her the large family of her dreams.
My father hadn't come from a perfect family himself. His father killed himself by locking himself in the garage with the car on when my dad was 3. His mother immediately spiraled into alcohol and drug abuse, and from what I can tell, my dad raised himself from that point on. Somewhere in childhood, he developed a stuttering problem that lead him to be a bit on the quiet side - so there's still a lot that my family doesn't know about his life. When he was 17 or 18, my grandmother overdosed just as he was heading off to college - aside from their grisly deaths, I know nothing about either of my grandparents on that side. In fact, I don't know that much about my father - but here are some of the scraps I've been able to gather over the years:
Things my father liked:
1. Southern Methodist University
2. Nudity
3. Beautiful women
4. Smart women
5. Women in general
6. Tennis
7. Carpentry
8. Getting to stay home alone while my family went to church
9. Airplanes, helicopters, and flying in general
10. Teasing my mom about religion, herself, and the futility of romance
11. Amusement park rides - especially those that seem most death-defying
12. Pot (in college and grad school - of course...)
13. Cooking
14. Jewelery making (it's a little weird, I know - but I think he took a class in college and just randomly really dug it)
15. Janis Joplin
16. Anything that involved excess cabling and wiring
17. My mom - they were best friends - sometimes I think my mom doesn't realize how much it was apparant that he loved her.
18. Electric train sets
When my mom and dad got married and started raising a family in Wrightwood - I think they probably thought that their troubles were over... Sure, I was a little weirder than all the other kids around, and my sister and I fought like prison inmates with nothing to lose, but in general, we were pretty happy and complete.
On November 1st, a day after my dad's birthday, my little brother Samuel Scott Abbott was born. A month later, on December 2nd, he died of SIDS. I was too young and self-involved to realize how much it took out of my parents, but in looking back, I realize how it devestated everyone in my family. Sam's gravestone sits next to my dad's at Forest Lawn in Covina Hills now... I was in 1st grade, and it was only 3 years before we would lose my dad.
After my father died - our whole family dynamic shifted abruptly. My mom was now the breadwinner and caretaker. I was the peace-maker and counselor. My sister was a weird combination of instigator and comforter. All of the stress of the last few years had taken a HUGE toll on my mother's mental stability, and she started lashing out uncontrolably at me and my sister - ranging from exorcist-like throwing fits to crying outbursts, to the time that she took a knife to the Christmas lights and then drove away for 3 hours. Aware that she was out of control, she undertook a massive research project on mental health, and it's hereditary qualities. Realizing that her family's suicidal and substance-abusing history had her CLEARLY marked for depression disorders, she sought counceling and medication, which, in addition to providing us with an endless supply of Prozac jokes, have helped considerably.
Ugh... I'm exhausted - I'll write more on this later...
