 |
Some years ago, not long before my husband and I were married, my stepmother
left my dad. Without preamble, she picked up their daughters and
moved in with another man, also married.
Ever after that events ensued of which I have nothing but hearsay and rumor, so I'll not bother with it here, but there has beeen great contention and strife between them, and no peace nor forgiveness. For months and months after she left, my father was bordering on suicidal. In fact, his brother removed all guns from the house. Dad lost a lot of weight, having desire neither to cook nor eat. What hurt him so much more than her leaving was the fact that the girls, old enough to decide where to live, chose to stay with their mother rather than with him. He took that as an endorsement of her adultery, as well as a demonstration of their lack of love for him. Rejection begets rejection. And so he rejected them. Over the past year, the barriers were starting to softne a bit. The girls were coming to visit once in a long while, and he allowed them to. Now this. One daughter is dead. My father's rage is not against the likely psycopathic boy, but against the lover, now husband, of his ex-wife. If not for him, Lyddie would have been here, in Yazoo, and not in Pearl. Old wounds. Old festering wounds. However, I was proud of my dad during the funeral. There were several moments that could easily have exploded nastily, but he showed great restraint, and the whole thing progressed peaceably. Eighteen and a half years they were married. Five years she's been gone. Five days my sister has been dead. We mark time, when we should be living. |