August 17th

It kind of reads like a bad horror story, but really it isn’t. Its just my life, and for me its pretty much normal now. Not normal as in average, I know it is creepy. I still have a visceral reaction if I notice the date. I don’t always notice the date… some years it slips by without notice. Is it brain block out, or busy Mom life not to notice the calender?

Anyway, someday when I’m gone, I figure my son will want to know more about me, and look up all this babble. If he really wants to know who I am, he has to hear the tale of August 17th.

Lets start with February 2nd first.

Both of my Grandmothers were born on February 2nd, as was I, the youngest of 5 children. I never knew either of them, one died long before my birth, the other 2 years prior to my February 2nd arrival.  My Fathers mother was the latter, and, a devout Catholic walked to Mass every day. She always said she wanted to die in Church.  She died on February 2nd at 7:30 AM on the steps of St.Peter & Paul’s in Warrendale on the way out of 6:30 morning Mass. Not IN there, but damned close, eh?

I was born 4 years later than my next eldest sibling. My Mom was worried about her age, the money and went to talk to the Priest she was so upset about my pregnancy. The priest told her (and my Father often bragged as I was his sole caretaker his last 5 years of debilitating illness prior to his death) “Sometimes God’s biggest surprises are his best gifts.”  That felt better than her wanting to know if she could abort me and not go to hell. Heh.

So anyway. I came in on 2 birthdays and a deathday.

I remember my oldest sister Terry as this grown-up type wonder. She was 12 years older than me. We slept in one room, my sister Joanie and I in trundle beds, and Terry in a corner bed by herself, while the 2 boys had their room across the hall.

We were sound asleep when my Dad came in, and woke us up. I was six.  He said, bluntly, “Honey, Terry’s dead.” I told him it wasn’t nice to joke about stuff like that. He started to cry and we realized it was real. I know we got up and went in the living room, but I don’t remember much other than his one whisper to me, hugging me on the way out.

“It will be easiest on you, you won’t remember her.” Grief-stricken harmless words I could be angry at, but actually I am forever grateful.  I went to bed every night, and with my kneeling prayers, I asked God to help me remember her, and lied down and tried to memorize everything we ever did together.  He saved my memories by accident.

Losing Terry devastated my Mom, it broke her. It was the first time my Mom gave her an extra half hour on curfew… and the guy that ran the red light wouldn’t have been there earlier, she thought. She thought it her fault, even though the guy had killed people before drunk driving, ran from the accident, got caught, ran on bail, was extradited and ended up getting away with it. It was 1969.  

I get MADD, for asswipes like that, but they go overboard.

Anyway…In my immature mind, I had wished it was me, not Terry God took.  You see, my Mom only had 6 years to get attached to me, and 18 to get attached to Terry. It was folly. I just didn’t understand why my Mom wasn’t really there anymore, not understanding that she was a functioning alcoholic prior, and this was the tipping point that made her drink constantly.  Now, she still produced: clean house, food, but something became empty.

Its weird, she recovered somewhat for a while. Yeah, she never made a sporting event I was in, nor even my graduation…. Couldn’t leave home and the booze that long, but she really was a kind friend in between. My friends adored her, and would come over and talk with her even when I wasn’t home. (NO, she never let us touch a drop!) Even in my teen angst years, when I would come home, she would ask, “Whats wrong?” I would answer snottily, “NOTHING!” and she would say, well if you don’t need a hug, I do… and the next thing you know I was spilling my guts and getting loving advice.

By senior year, that started to change.

She no longer was a maintenance drinker, she started being DRUNK. I would come home early, and she would swear, looking right at the clock I was late, cry, scream and tell me she thought I was “Dead like Terry.”  I started begging my friends to bring me home early, not to weather that storm.

It got bad.  She would say I made her so upset she drank and threw up, even going so far as to shove my face in a toilet of blood-laced puke… “Look what you did to me.”

Finally I stood up to her.

I told her I didn’t pour it down her throat, I wasn’t Terry and I was not going to pay for her sins. I told her she needed help, she couldn’t even read a clock. Back then, she talked about shame, and about not being able to talk to the Priests and I told her about AA.

We talked at that table for hours, the very first time as adult to adult and she confided how bad it was… promised to get help.

Three days later she was dead.

August 17th, I was sleeping after working a double shift waitressing, and I woke to a blood curdling cry of “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” My father was standing in the hall outside our room screaming. My sister & I jumped up, the light was on in their room and there was my Mom with her eyes glazed and her lips curled open. I rushed in, got her on her side and thumped her back, she gurgled and started breathing again. She had wet herself. She was cool already to the touch.

Now my sister and my Dad were standing in the hall screaming… and I yelled to call 911. They were frozen. I ran down the hall, through the kitchen and grabbed the phone in the dining room, dialing the rotary and then stretching the long cord halfway down the hall back to my Mom. I gave the address, told them heart attack and dropped the phone.

I went back to her and she was kind of choking on her tongue, so I reached in and pulled it out, and  kept thinking how long it was taking.

They came, and I don’t remember much after that.

My sister said she got to ride in the ambulance and that I drove my Dad to the hospital. I do remember the doctor coming to us and pulling us in “The Room”; you know what that means when they pull you in the room, rather than give you the news there.

I guess they revived her a few time in the ambulance and it didn’t stick.

I felt like shit for years for not giving her CPR, not knowing CPR, until I ran into an EMS guy who told me you can’t CPR someone whose heart was still beating.  Crazy how you beat yourself up for nothing.

So the next morning, we were sitting there, and the time of death was 1 AM August 17th… about 15 minutes later then Terry’s years before.

Joanie and Dad started to freak and cry… I just looked at them and said in my little Catholic girl faith “They waited YEARS for this reunion, lets not mess it up for them feeling sorry for ourselves.”

Then we started to laugh.

Epilogue:

On August 17th, 13 years later, my sister and I were at my Dad’s house, (I can’t remember why) and and the next morning, we toasted coffee hungover… saying “God takes another ____ female every 15 years, and somehow we made it through the night!”  We both had spent the night terrified. My Dad rolled his eyes and laughed.

“That was last year Dupiashes(asses in Polish)… do the math!”

We were off by a whole year, both of us!

Still, the date creeps me.

That is the story of August 17th, more or less.