Sympathy for no one July 31, 1985
Toms River.
It’s been eight hard years since my mother moved here from
Paterson, of feeling trapped by her decision, a decision made for her, in spite
of her.
Now she has to make a decision for someone else and she’s
puzzled about it.
Grandma needs an operation on her eyes – cataracts – and my
mother is worried about the details, about the danger, about the money.
Ted, grandma’s youngest son, doesn’t want to hear anything
about it.
“It’s a simple operation,” he said matter-of-factly, unsympathetic
to a fault, and worse, insensitive to my mother’s feelings.
He’s always been one of the great non-caring, not-wanting to
hear about other people’s troubles kind of person, except on a very superficial
level.
He’s always managed to decide things for other people without
caring what impact those decisions had on the people he decided things for.
He was one of those (along with his brothers) who sent my mother
to Graystone Park mental institution when I was younger, reluctantly as it
turned out because they all worried over how much it would cost, refusing to
send her to a better hospital where she might actually have received – if not a
cure – then something other than electro-shock therapy.
I never saw her undergo the procedure, but once saw the
machine used in her doctor’s office when I was very small, something akin of a medieval
torture device.
Installing in Graystone was not enough, the family insisted I
accompany them every Saturday to visit her, unaware of just how much damage
this caused me, since there were times when she refused to believe I was her
son.
More advanced medication stabilized her. She went for her
shot every two weeks like clockwork and it kept quiet the voices she said she
heard, voices that told her to kill herself, which – in horror as I watched –
she tried to accomplish.
Later, when I was away on the West Coast and Ted made plans
to get married, he and others moved my mother in with my grandmother into an
apartment on Trenton Avenue in Paterson, where my mother served as room mate
and caregiver, washing and medicating the perpetual wounds on my grandmother’s
legs. The arrangement last for several
years even after I got back, until suddenly, my mother started hearing the voices
again.
Ted then decided I should be the one to sign her back into Graystone
because I did not make much money and so they could not charge me anything.
“Put her away,” he said. “You’re the only one of us they can’t
collect anything from.”
I refused. I was not going to be the one to sign my mother
into that hell hole. As it turned out, I didn’t have to. The problem was due to
the medication and her change metabolism, which had made the dose she took less
effective. They changed the dose and the voices ceased.
Then Ted decided to move his family to Toms River and could
not leave Grandma behind. He wanted me to move in with my mother, and again, I
refused. I had just turned 26 and started my own life, and the last thing I
needed was live with my mother – a very selfish act, I made up for later by
taking in Ted’s suicidal brother Ritchie, when I lived in Passaic.
Ted opted to take both Grandma and my other south with him –
a fortunate thing since it extended my grandmother’s life by at least a decade,
having my mother there to feed and care for her.
Talking to Ted is often difficult, since he is obsessed with
money, and so he doesn’t understand me or even his other perpetually unemployed
brother, Frank, who wanted something more than industrial slavery.
I remember trying to talk to Ted a few days after Louise
left me. He didn’t want to hear it, nor felt any sympathy about my losing my
baby as well as my wife.
I’m not saying Ted is unkind. He cares very much about his
wife and kids, but he’s remote, unable to grasp other people’s concerns.
He has not been ungenerous at times – since he did take my
mother with him if reluctantly, and later took in Frank for a short time, and
Ritchie for an even shorter time before I took him in.
Ted has a blind spot that won’t allow him to see or
understand some things. Maybe this is a result from his time in Vietnam, since
I recall him being more sympathetic prior to his going there in the mid-1960s.
Maybe he only has so much sympathy stored up inside him, and he needs to parcel
it out to those who had closest to him – such as his own kids. I don’t know.
Comments
Post a Comment