The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, or so I’m told.
Why is it so often the case that it takes a terminal illness to bring people together? I realized today that more than once over the last few days, I’d spent more consecutive hours in my sister’s company than I have at any one time in my whole life. It was fine, deeply fine, in spite of everything else. As I told her, “The situation makes focusing on the present moment even more compelling…”
She understood completely. She is giving me so much.
Driving away today was very, very hard. Almost as hard as driving up to her house (for the first time in years) after the diagnosis. I don’t know how I did it. I don’t know how I’m doing any of this, except perhaps by giving in to simply “being” when it counts. You also have to do some things. You just do. You have to go to the bathroom, pee, wash your hands, push your hair behind your ears, walk out and say goodbye. I didn’t say “I love you” because I couldn’t without breaking up right there, but I had to pull off South Lamar a few blocks away and lose it–then I called her on the phone and told her so. She was sweet and laughed like an angel. (Oops!)
And then we have my brother–thank God–whom I was driving off to visit a few miles away. My younger brother, doing better with his pedicab business now than he did with a regular job. How many of us can say that? We share a lot of traits, except he’s much more sane, or was. I don’t know, take a look, what do you think?
I used to say to anyone who would hear me out that “I don’t have a family.” That’s how much they hurt me, those poor incomplete American souls who raised me, that I felt that way. When you see the patterns, when you identify the skeletons, when you realize that other people grew up differently and realize my God, of course, that’s how it all went down, you have to kick the props away. You have to stand alone, no matter how much it hurts, because that’s the truth, and then you’re sort of all right. Alone, but on your own.
And now my sister’s going to die, so I finally come to Austin again. For the last 10 years, I’ve struggled with every godforsaken evil thing that anyone could feel–consequently living poor to boot–and never got it together to come back to where I have an actual brother and a sister…not to mention my own cultural heritage of Austin in the ’60s. You can’t buy this stuff, you have to live it. I do have a family, in other words: my siblings!
My brother- and sister-in-law, too. The Freak Bros. comic books at Oat Willie’s. Boat-tailed grackles sailing in the sun. Clear-running Hill Country creeks. Giant live oaks. U.T. The music. Friends and lovers and all we did. My generation. My wife’s family. The people I love in Maryland, and my excellent “new” friends in Taos.
It may not seem so huge to you, but this is what I did yesterday with my sister and brother-in-law: we sat and talked. That’s it. We sat and talked, drank coffee, ate snacks, and talked some more. Finally my brother-in-law suggested heating up the leftover chicken and noodles my sister-in-law had dropped off the day before, and we all had dinner together. FAMILY stuff. You sit around, you talk, you eat.
Jesus Christ, I’m okay. That’s good, because I need to be.
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Hey! Don’t forget your overseas friends!!!
Oh, you’re in there!
I see some common denominators in the Farr clan, the members of which have been depicted over the years in your blog. You all seem to have turned out as free and independent spirits, more or less out of step with the mainstream, with a penchant for art and a distaste for bourgeois life American style. Your mother and father must have had something to do with all this. We don’t spring full-blown from nothing. I know how you see your parents. However, I, as someone with no skin in this game, look at your depictions of yourself and your siblings and have to think you all got to be the way you are because you came from two unique people and shared a certain sort of tumultuous and vexed life together. Without that background you might now be Kiwanians back in Abilene. You wouldn’t want that life. You want vexation and drama, and I reckon you owe that predilection to your parents.
Just the way it seems to me as an earnest reader of your collected papers. Your sister seems a gallant and brave soul. I wish her well.
Once again John….the synchronicity I find in your posts is just amazing….it was only yesterday I was advising my youngest son….(23 yoa) about the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and their saying which we all knew and loved ‘back in the daze’……..Something to do with something that would get one through times of no money….etc etc…..better than etc etc….I think we all know the quote…..but it just floored me to read you mention them (Once again) almost immediately after I advised my son about them…..WHEW! Wild and Weird………
Ken, you really nailed it there. Mom and Dad lived for drama and vexation.
Oh, THERE you are!
They sure did. It’s still that way, except one of them is dead. There’s a surrogate, of course. Geez. Oh, and if I got anything wrong here, just have at it.