11. Going Home

My middle brother, Bill, died of cancer on May 9, 2016, nine months after our father’s passing. The loss of my parents, Mom in 2012, and Dad in July of 2015, was rough. The loss of Bill was something altogether different. Perhaps it was because he had so many vibrant years still ahead, or maybe because his passing came so quickly after his diagnosis. Or maybe it’s because Bill and I left words unspoken, words of healing and reconciliation. 

Bill was the chosen child in our family, groomed and destined for success. Unlike his little sister, Bill thrived in high school. He was a member of the glee club, had a large circle of friends who hung out at our house on weekends, and his school grades were admirable. It was in high school where Bill met a blond-haired, pretty, and gregarious girl named Sue. Bill and Sue made the perfect high school couple. 

Upon their graduation, Bill and Sue went to different colleges, Sue to Ohio Wesleyan, Bill to the University of Pennsylvania to advance his business education. These two kids stayed on the road of the American tradition. They got married after college, Bill went on to secure an MBA at the Wharton School of Finance, Sue taught school, and two years later, the first of their 3 daughters were born. Everything about Bill and Sue was correct. They were doing everything right, as was expected of them. We lived on the North Shore of Chicago. Bill and Sue had certain requirements to meet.

By the mid-1970s, the family was reunited. Mom and Dad moved from Illinois to Colorado Springs, David and his wife, Kay, settled north of Denver, Bill and Sue lived in a well-to-do Colorado mountain town, I had remarried, and with my husband, Daulton lived south of Denver. With our young children and their cousins in tow, the family was together once more. For a brief few years, we seemed to be doing fine. Mom and Dad’s alcoholism still posed issues, but we maneuvered well enough, or at least as well as could be expected. A great humorist, Bill once said to our parents after their 3rd or 4th drink, “It’s a good thing martinis don’t cause cavities.” Our parents thought that was the funniest comment ever made and would repeat it for years thereafter, particularly at their frequent cocktail parties. The irony was lost on mom and dad, but I thought the comment was brilliantly sad. In any case, the family was together, and everything seemed to be going okay. Silly me.

Bill and Sue’s youngest daughter was the same age as my daughter, Diana, and the two cousins were great pals. It was routine that when Bill and Sue were going away for a few days or Daulton, and I had similar plans, we’d drop our respective 5-year-olds off at one or the other’s home. One day I called Sue asking if we could drop Diana off at their house while we took a quick mountain weekend trip. Her response was unexpected and out of character.

“No, Bonnie, you cannot bring Diana here, and she can’t ever come again.”

“Uh, Sue,” I stumbled, “I’m not sure what’s going on here.”

Sue cynically laughed, “Oh, no one’s told you. Ha! Isn’t this typical of your family?”

“Sue, told me what?”

“Your dear brother walked out on the girls and me 4 days ago. That’s what your great family never told you. Your brother is gone. He has another woman.”

Things were no longer okay.

I never fully grasped why Bill chose another woman; I never knew enough about Bill and Sue’s marriage to understand what prompted Bill to look outside his life for someone else. All I know is Sue and the three girls, my nieces, were effectively gone from our lives, and Bill and Sue became Bill and Lis. Mom was distraught over the situation, and for months I’d hear her say, “This cannot happen” as though her words alone had the power to repair the rending of my brother’s marriage. During his marriage with Sue, Bill became a devout Christian, a leader of his church fellowship. I had difficulty reconciling his public persona with his private reality. The church rallied around Sue and tried to “restore” Bill, but he would have nothing to do with it. He was no longer the pillar of Christian leadership and eventually fell from the grace of his church. He would later tell me that his Christian friends were hypocrites, and henceforth he had a “special agreement with God,” which I took to mean that God and Bill had agreed to leave each other alone.

Whatever the truth of this divine agreement, Bill had changed. Lis was his wife now, the woman who stole my brother’s heart away from Sue and their three young children, so everyone adapted to the new life as best we could, from shock to acceptance.

I often reflect on how difficult it must have been for Lis to meld into our family. We weren’t an easy family, to be sure, yet the situation was awkward for everyone. She and Bill had made their decisions. If there’s one important thing I’ve learned in my life through the subsequent repercussions of Bill’s action and my own, every decision we make will affect others. It’s the proverbial tossing a rock into a pond. Sometimes we must seek our happiness or remove ourselves from a situation that threatens our safety and our children’s safety. Sometimes we need just to let the ripples flow where they may. Still, the effects of what we do and the words we speak may last a lifetime. Decisions made today will always determine how well tomorrow pans out. 

Our revised family muddled through the next several years. Dave and Bill had a relational break, and, coupled with the fact that Dad was still dad, Dave and Kay left Colorado for California. In a candid moment, Dave once told me he “bailed out.” I figured David was the smart one of the family because he made his escape first. Without Dave and Kay, a light went out, and it left Bill, Lis, Daulton, our daughter Diana and me plodding our way through holidays with our rapidly aging parents. With each successive year,  however, Bill and Lis began to withdraw from holiday gatherings. Thanksgiving was their seasonal vacation time; on Christmas day, Bill and Lis would open their home to those “who were alone for the holiday” so they couldn’t visit us for Christmas. Their consideration for others left the celebrations with my parents in the care of Daulton, Diana, and me. Guilt would overtake Bill, though, and he’d arrive alone for a 90 minute Christmas visit, uncomfortable and eager to leave.

During the later years of my parent’s lives, Lis arranged the monthly delivery of prepared food for mom and dad, and Bill would buy them TVs and pay their cell phone bills and give my father cash. Despite the generosity, Dad seethed with resentment over the cash offerings, and mom was too infirm to figure out what to do with all the food. Bill and Lis’ physical presence decreased on such a noticeable level that Mom finally told me not to invite them any longer for holidays. “Bill and Lis don’t want to be here, so let’s not force the issue.” Like David, Bill suffered the damaging temperament of our father, and after years of emotional abuse, I can imagine that Bill and Lis were fine with Mom’s assessment. Sooner or later, you just have to stop putting yourself through a meat grinder.

Not long after Mom died, Bill and Lis did their own bail-out like David and fled to Reno, NV.  I was profoundly disappointed with Bill as he knew exactly what he dropped in my lap. To paraphrase an old movie, “Frankly, Bonnie, neither Lis nor I give a damn.” I understood their reasons for leaving, for as Bill said, “I’m tired of my father ruling my life. I’m tired of him and my sist…” I appreciated his incomplete sentence. Enough had already passed between us. There was no reason to harp on it. 

For the next 3 years, I visited my recalcitrant and miserable father in his luxury nursing home at least 3 times a week. Bill would fly in from Reno a few times, but he stopped seeing his father once the cancer treatments began. Bill didn’t miss much. Dad complained, he moaned, he shouted and threw things at the nurses. He disrespected almost every resident, finding them beneath his dignity. On the other hand, dad proposed marriage to every nurse under the age of 30, promising her the full possession of his home if only she would get him out of the nursing home and care for him until he died. Not one nurse took him up on the offer, at least none of whom I was aware of. Dad was wearing me out, sucking the life out of me and I began to pray that God would take him home. 

It was in May of 2015 when Bill was diagnosed with gall bladder cancer. My father knew of Bill’s illness. In his last conversation with his son, not long before his death, his final words to Bill were, “Oh, my beloved son.”  Bill shrugged off the comment. Yet I believe my father, facing his son’s death and his own, meant every word of the epitaph. I loved these two men, echoes of one another, I loved their humor and innate goodness and suffered with them in their guilt and shame. In July of 2015, our father died. When the 6-month probate was completed for Dad, I told Daulton I needed to go away, alone, for a month. I was exhausted and wounded to the bone. I made plans for late May of 2016. 

On May 8th of 2016, barely one year past his diagnosis, David and I were called to Reno because Bill was dying. My older brother and I held hands as we entered the darkened hospital room where our brother Bill lay. His three daughters, who fought so hard, prayed so hard for his life, were kneeling at their father’s bedside, laying hands on his comatose body. Dave knelt, took the hand of his younger brother into his own, and prayed. I knelt by Bill and whispered, “I have always loved you. When you go home, and your soul rises into the arms of Christ, I pray we’ll forgive one another, and you will learn to love me there.” My brother died the next morning. That night my three nieces and Lis gathered in the Lake Tahoe home of my youngest niece, and it was there with what I perceived as a hint of satisfaction, Lis told me Bill was quite relieved when my father died. I staggered my way to the sink and couldn’t seem to wash my hands enough.

I asked David if I should cancel my travel plans as I would miss Bill’s funeral. David responded, “Sweetie, do you think if Bill had an overseas trip planned, he’d come back for your funeral?” 

I replied sadly, “No, I don’t suppose he would.”

Dave said, “No, he wouldn’t have, Bon. Go on your trip.”

A few days later, I sat on our moonlit deck and railed against these three people who had left me a wreck. My stoic mother judged me and waited until her last breath to share her love for me, my father suffocated me and taught me the shame of personal failure, and my brother would not bend to love but would stand in his disdain of me. I raged in my love for them; I resented the mess of me they left behind. How dare they leave me without words of hope, forgiveness, and restoration?

Two weeks after my brother’s death and barely nine months after my father’s, Daulton dropped me off at the departure level of Denver International Airport. I checked my bag with the United skycap at the curb.

“And what is your final destination, uh, Mrs. Mackenzie-Smith?”

“Inverness, Scotland,” I replied

“Ah…how long will you be in that lovely country?”

“A month.”

“Have you been there before, or is this your first trip.”

“I went to Scotland years ago with my father and brother, Bill, searching for our ancestors. I felt like I belonged to Scotland. It was the 3 of us back then. Now it’s just me.”

“Well, you have a lovely time.”

I walked through the airport’s heavy retracting glass doors, and as I heard the clicking of my boot heels on the concourse floor’s shining concrete, I took a deep breath and whispered, “I’m going to the homeland of my ancestors, and perhaps there will I find peace and regain my soul.”

I was going home.