Tonight, I watched the movie Blow...again... and it's made me introspective. Thinking about things I'd rather not remember. I'm not sure if it has something to do with the movie's soundtrack, or if it has to do with the sorrow, the regrets, the pure shit that just happens because life is hard; and then you die.
How my uncle returned from Vietnam a shell of his former self and shot himself in the head in my grandparents' farmhouse just after my cousin had been sent upstairs to let him know dinner was ready. He told her, "okay, I'll be down in a minute." That's it, that's her last memory of him alive. The bloodstains are still on the old hardwood floor up there in that bedroom. How her brother is still emotionally scarred now that we are all adults because he idolized his father. How people said suicides go to hell. And how that made me not believe in God because that can't be right.
How my grandfather used to get on the floor and wrestle with my brother and I when we were very small and then he had a massive heart attack, had open heart surgery, and was never the same man. Not ever. He felt bad. He lost weight. He could never get warm again. And, I think he wished he had died that day.
How I refused to use the toilet at my maternal grandmother's house because it was so filthy. The entire house was filthy. My mother and her siblings used to go over there and clean before letting us children loose in there...and it was still dirty. In the summer, we never were in the house. We all peed outside, no matter the weather. No matter who else was around. And upstairs, there were always those bloodstains.
How one of my uncles was born with cerebral palsy due to a doctor's error and lived his own personal hell of knowing exactly what was happening around him, but being unable to interact, trapped inside his own body and was trapped in there for 49 years before he died.
How my maternal grandfather was an abusive drunk. He's still alive to this day, and wonders why no one wants to visit. He's still a raging asshole. Respect for my mother drove me there to say hello to him last Christmas even though it was the very last place I wanted to be. She thought, as she always does, it will be his last Christmas. I don't know. I'm not sure that man will ever die. I don't know how she and my aunts and uncles survived living in that nightmare dirty house with THAT man.
There are good memories.
Fourth of July family gatherings where illegal bottle rockets were fired into the sky as my Aunt Nita and her band played country songs. They were so good. She's the only person I've ever met that can really sing.
Creedence Clearwater Revival playing on the record player along with Charley Pride, Hank Williams, Sr., Herman's Hermits, the Beetles; and other records my dad had from when he was a kid.
But, tonight, I can only remember the things that hurt.
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