My mother-in-law, Penny, and I were friends, not just inadvertent relatives. I was drawn to her immediately because she was young and vibrant. And funny too. Stepping out of my family into a new one felt like a little escape from our rattling skeletons in the closet. Holiday celebrations were a bit livelier than I was used to since Penny decorated every inch of her house and invited all the aunts and uncles and cousins on her side—quite a few, with names like Ray-Ray or Little Ray, or Aunt Teensie.
In our many talks over coffee, coffee I only drank with Penny at the time, I heard stories of her own secrets she tried to keep hidden since the age of 18 when she ran away from home and never looked back. And these secrets were fierce monsters she constantly ran from. The kind producers chase down to sell a blockbuster movie, but you only watch as a gawker because you can’t help yourself. Penny did her best to keep her past boxed and covered so that her two grown sons never had to face what she did from her abusive, mentally ill mother. Slowly, she unfolded her story for me, her confidant, and I kept it as safe as I could since she did not like to talk about it in any other company, though most had a vague sense of a dark past and always referred to Penny’s mother as “Mad Martha.” I think Penny’s parties were an effort to live a life she only dreamed of as a child.
Penny’s mother’s brother, Uncle Ray and his wife, Aunt Bea, were staples at all the house parties, so I got to know them quite well as they became my own relatives by marriage. Uncle Ray was quiet. He usually came in and sat on the couch in the basement in front of the television. His wife or daughter might bring him a plate of Honey-baked Ham and baked beans, and he might nod a thank you here and there. His six adult children and several grandkids milled around him or played a game nearby with no expectation of him joining in the conversations. Aunt Bea was a talker, so we figured she did the necessary talking for him.
Soon, no matter what the event, Uncle Ray would get up from the couch and slip out the door on a quiet breeze; no explanation left in his wake. If you were otherwise engaged, you would miss the abrupt disappearing act. Once in a while, at least at the beginning of my grafting into this family, I might say, “What happened to Uncle Ray?” Aunt Bea would wave her hand nonchalantly: “Oh he just does that. He gets tired, I guess. That’s why I always drive my own car.” Got it. He just leaves when he feels like it. I supposed that took a certain amount of confidence. No one questioned the rather honored patriarch. I was surprised his family did not curtsy as he walked out the door. Years went by, and this was Uncle Ray’s MO; it became as routine to me as it already was to his family. I chuckled along with the cousins about their dad.
Aunt Bea put up with a lot over the years. I would say she suffered, but I think when Uncle Ray disappeared more permanently from their home, she may have felt relief. She did not care much where he was; he was just gone. Living somewhere else but still sending checks home to pay their mortgage. That’s the only way she knew he was still alive. I know from my own mom that such an arrangement was not the worst thing in Aunt Bea’s mind. She shrugged it off and maybe enjoyed the freedom to come and go as she pleased. She never had to make excuses for the man anymore, and she came to all the parties without him. A genuine smile on her face.
As time has a way of fast-forwarding, we found ourselves thirty years later. We heard that Uncle Ray lay dying in a nearby hospital, and the cousins, his children, were making plans to visit his bedside after many years of silence. They were apt to forgive his disappearance because that’s what you do when someone is on his deathbed.
The Hospice nurse, with all of her practiced gentleness, welcomed Ray’s eldest son, Raymond Jr., and directed him to the bedside. “If your siblings are planning to come to say their goodbyes, could you let me know the time? I need to do a little arranging so that I can let the others know when they might get some privacy too.” Ray Jr. blinked at this nurse, trying to compute. “He has a lot of loved ones who need their time with him,” she said as she fluffed up his pillow. Ray Jr, and his sister, Carol, who arrived shortly after he did, looked at this nurse befuddled.
“What do you mean, ‘the others’? We have our four other siblings on their way.”
“Oh no,” she said, “I mean his others. The six additional children who have called and are making their way here now too. Your dad doesn’t have much time. It’s imperative you all see him today.”
Carol couldn’t speak for a few moments as she sort of fell into a cold, leather chair next to the metal railings keeping her dad safe. Ray Jr. carried on with the nurse. “You mean my dad has six other children coming to say goodbye? Another whole family?” He attempted to shake this knowledge into the proper segment of his brain. “We never knew this. Obviously, we never met them.” Sure enough, a little later, the nurse ushered in two groups of adults for a proper send-off, Ray never the wiser as to how his two families passed in the halls, getting only a quick glimpse of each other.
Ray Jr. and Carol stayed back and waited for an appropriate time to approach the other group. After all, they had to plan a funeral. And the ritual went off without much of a hitch. Turns out owners of funeral homes are not totally in the dark about strange family arrangements. The directors accommodated all of the guests by providing two different times for family viewings and two different services.
This new-found view of their father was undoubtedly traumatic for the cousins, but knowing where Ray came from shed some light. At least, they thought, he was not like his sister, Mad Martha, who physically abused her children so terribly, like their poor Aunt Penny. After the initial shock, Uncle Ray’s families made a sort of peace with each other. All twelve adult children met and exchanged polite pleasantries.
Penny thought she did a fine job hiding all of the family skeletons, just as we all strive to do at times, but she was no longer with us when six fresh ones showed up, bobbing their boney arms and legs right in front of us. Sometimes they catch us unawares, don’t they?
even when telling the toughest time, you show great empathy for others
Oh my Shell. I have a friend who, at his dad's deathbed, had five or six adults, who looked a little like him and a little like his dying father. He then learned that he had some "half-siblings." It was a shock. And no one spit into a vial.