Stuck in the middle with Uncle Ritchie August 20, 1985

 

My uncle Ritchie is coming home.

At least that’s what is being suggested when I saw him yesterday. Yet, he seems out of touch, abandoned, worse than ever – a dying man in the midst of the hospital committed to saving him.

They keep trying to wean him off attention, when he needs it more than ever.

Institutions like this seem to need to get rid of what they consider “dead weight,” and are determined to push him and others like him back out onto the street, demanding that they pick themselves up by their boot straps – whatever that means.

Ritchie had already done that as a carpenter. But he also lied and cheated Uncle Sam, denying the government its hard-earned tax revenues, leaving him in constant fear of the IRS.

He stashed boxes of cash with every living relative (except Uncle Frank who refused to keep the cash in his house), getting ready for something he never fully explained that might happen.

Ritchie constantly wanted to prove Grandpa wrong about his demise, only to actually prove him right in the end, using the tax system to replace Grandpa he had to constantly look over his shoulder to see.

Grandpa used to lecture him about how he would end up no good, a habit Ritchie then repeated on me. Only these days, unable to deal with his clinical depression, I have replaced Grandpa, and sometimes find myself lecturing Ritchie – which is pointless. He’s too far gone to pick up anything by its foot straps, least of all himself.

Ritchie’s future can be nothing short of a disaster without understanding and care. He seeks to bring out the worst in me in order to punish himself, and I struggle to find ways to avoid this. The kind of care he needs must come out of love, the kind of love Alice had for him, and I desperately seek to find in myself.

Frank sees Ritchie as a leech, someone who sucks up love, but never returns it – a point of view I don’t agree with.

In the old house, Ritchie defended himself by giving money.

“I give more to Grandma than any body else in this house,” he said more than once.

Yet nearly all of the conflicts he had with his brothers came down to cash.

My problem in taking him back is my inability to really care for him and locking myself back up into the emotional cycle that drove me from the old house when I was a kid.

And yet, I can’t abandon Ritchie, even though he is something of a millstone, and I do not see how I can pursue my own dreams with him weighing me down.

Will I be trapped in Passaic forever?  Will I ever find true independence?

Or am I more scared of being alone, and I take him back even though I know I am incapable of taking care of him properly?

Perhaps, he is my punishment for crimes I have committed in the past and might commit in the future?

 

 1985 Menu

 


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