When I Remember Daphne

 

Gano is a friend I met years ago through my prison ministry. He has a sincere Christian testimony and a lively, graphic and colorful method of articulating his faith.

    Not long after I was released from prison my wife died. The marriage died long before we buried her but, it seems, I was to continue to walk through the grief of a dead marriage by bruisings that I came to accept as part of our relationship.
  

 When I moved home I fantasized I would be greeted by the blaring of Tom Petty singing "Free Falling," a song I alone remembered as a family song. I envisioned a party atmosphere, a welcome home meal.  Instead I got, "S'up Pops," from the 22 year old. From her boyfriend who was carrying a bong behind her, a sneering, silent glance. And, a motion of Daphne's hand acknowledging my arrival with a "Shhh!" I could see the back of her head and beyond, Alex Trebeck reading the Final Jeopardy question.
   

I was directed to my room. There I found little space to plant my feet. It was a storage room. A junk room. The blinds were askew and unrepairable. The ceiling was teen-ager blue and the walls beneath the grime were a shade of off-white. I saw little that a self-respecting Goodwill Center would put a price tag on. Nevertheless, I was instructed to throw nothing away. I enlisted a daughter to help me move stuff out so I could move my little bit of stuff in. I managed to paint, replace blinds, put up shelves clean and set up home in my corner of this foreign place.

When I went to the bathroom I would find and flush cigarette butts and other trash. I carried my dock kit and towel to the bathroom like a boarder. When finished I would carry them out to my little room. I enlisted my friend, a plumber, to fix the shower. We replaced the rusted  pair of vise grips with a proper hot water valve kit and repaired the headless pipe that served as a shower.

I lived there eight months before Daphne died. I recall only one sit-down meal in all that time.

After my wife died my children turned on me. The anger was scary. I had no other place to live due to the limitations of my probation. They were insistent I be booted out. Grief is a hard sister to live with. And, Daphne's daughters were eaten up with grief driven guilt over the way they disrespected their mother. Death shuts the door to acts of penance. 
After years of alcoholism and living openly with her boyfriend Daphne had returned to her recovery program. Her DUI slammed her into the point of no return. She lost her nursing license. Her final embrace of recover lasted until her death. However, she worked her program alone. She had no family support. Nevertheless, she had begun presenting herself as a regular church going Christian and tried to enforce a moral code in the home. It was too late. The old patterns were too comfortable. 
   

The two youngest, who still lived with her, regularly brought their boyfriends home for the  night against Mom's wishes. They partied often and drank hundreds of dollars of alcohol weekly in what Daphne's sponsor referred to as orgies. One stored stolen hand guns for her ex-con boyfriends and smoked blunts openly in the back patio. Daphne once complained to me that she would sometimes get scared on running into intimidating young strangers as she walked through the house around 2:00 a.m. to go the bathroom. Her children always insisted that their Mom was over reacting and demanded their mother respect their friends.

Now their Mom was dead and they surely realized how miserable they had made her.  They rattled in paroxysms of shame. And, writhed in denial. My thoughts were they were projecting their shame and guilt towards me in anger.  

I recall Daphne once daydreaming about selling everything she had and moving into an extended stay motel. It was her escapist dream to abscond and be free of having to care for grown up children who burdened her so deeply.

Once she was gone I became Mr. Ugly. Mr. Ugly with a target on his back. As the only grown up in the house I found I could not endure the house culture as she did. And, so they turned on me.  The attacks were ferocious. Bricks through my window. Graffiti keyed into my car. My tire slashed. All night parties where I was awakened at 2:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. on a work nights.  Never ending cussing and disrespect. Eventually, I got a restraining order and changed the locks on my home. I then moved all their personal property to a self-storage unit which I paid for.

All this took place over the stretch of a year. As I look back I still feel the shudders of grief, terror, hatred and animosity. I feel a guilt that I had to protect myself with such strong legal means against my own children. Strangely, it helps when I remember Daphne's response when I would call from prison and ask about the children. About the two youngest she would sigh, "Your evil children." It was comic phrase imbued with painful truth for her.

Today I was rummaging through an old desk which I've yet to dispose of. There I found about eight cards I sent my two youngest and Daphne. It was nostalgic to see them. At first I felt good that she had saved them. They must have meant something to her. Then I found a letter to Daphne and one to the 22 year old who was 17 at the time. They were sealed. Neither opened. Why save those? So, I may find them once I was free? How else to interpret? Letters I had ached and prayed over and send out on wings of hope and expectation. Unopened.

All these steps I have walked since my incarceration in the grace and hope of God's presence. I have endured no bruising where my Lord has not assured me he endured the pain with me. There is no way on God's green earth or the Department of Corrections institutionalized dreariness that I could have survived without the presence of God's Holy Spirit. And, today that same Spirit helped me to toss my unopened letters in the garbage.
Tomorrow I will attend mass at Resurrection Catholic Church. There I will find the body of Christ, the Spirit of Christ waiting for me. It is not just a ritual for me. It is an encounter.

I don't know why time is so filled with pain but I do know the God who is familiar with pain. And, I know I cannot live without him. And, sometimes I can be thankful for my difficulties when I realize they motivate me to slow down, breathe and reach for him.