Many of us have lost our mother's, and this discussion is for those who wish to tell their mother's story.
____________________
My mom's tragic life, dedicated to her family, cut short by long term Alzheimer's and a broken heart.
I wrote the story; "THE ROLL-TOP (This Day is Done) " so my mother's story could be told after it was muted by years of servitude to a cruel and violent patriarch and Alzheimer's disease.
I became the man I am, in spite of my father's abuse, BECAUSE of my mother instilling values in me while exposing me to the arts and sports. As years go by, I am forever grateful for my mother's love and strength.
______________
THE ROLL-TOP
This Day is Done
by Bruce Dean
J. Bruce Day bought a second hand Beaver Hall roll-top desk while employed as a teacher, principal, inspector or superintendent for the Manitoba School Board somewhere around Flinflon, or Dauphin, back about 1920 or 1930. He was a well-respected educator who studied and achieved his B.A. and Masters, all the while working and devoting his life to education. An illness overwhelmed Grandpa Day during the summer of 1955, taking him from his family at the age of fifty-three. There's not much more than this I can tell you as he died before I was born and, when the time came, my mother was unable to relate the facts without the aide of the unbreakable Alzheimer’s code. One can only imagine the hours my grandfather spent studying at the roll-top desk. Over the years, this once modern piece of furniture transformed into a neglected antique. If the desk could speak, the path it traveled would have made an intriguing story that would include such interesting sights covering at least six provinces, as many states and many more marriages and divorces, a few of them mine.
When I sold the desk there was a sense of failure - lost forever, the status of family heirloom, and more, the opportunity for some form of substance to indicate a history of bloodline, of pride in heritage. The offensive incidents that preceded and demanded it's disposal did not lessen the blow of the sale but made its passing even more tragic, its purpose futile, my intentions for not.
Baba, Polio and Bleach Cocktails
I am a slow learner. Over a dozen years ago I purchased our family home from my financially strained mother for an over-inflated price, hoping to instill family pride through the preservation of the Homestead and hoping to help my mother’s après divorce finances. My father (an engineer and asshole extraordinaire) and my mother (an interior designer and master victim) had designed our humble abode with their bare minds and willingly suffered through its conceptualization, construction and transformations over the years. Eventually, disillusioned over my families barbarically immoral and consciously bankrupt behavior, I sold the property and was promptly financially molested by my family, lost everything I owned and retired to a lifestyle of poverty, smiles and play.
Never can I recall family tales of love and admiration; only lawsuits, suicide and exile. To say our family has never been close is like saying Hitler wasn’t nice.
My sweet grandmother in Saskatoon was your typical Ukrainian baba, with the exception of her camouflaged cold heart and cunning business sense. Darth Vader would cry like a babe should he encounter this villain, for only time and the hunger for love were able to bring her down – not before she raised a pod of cruel apprentices; killers of love and decency. Dysfunction was not the hidden family shame but the driving force behind the pursuit of power and other people’s funds.
I was touched by Aunt Mary; the wife of my father’s polio stricken brother – before she chose an unfortunate and obscenely sick exit from the clan of dysfunction. I can imagine many more painless ways to avoid my family’s reality than the rumored Javex Jugular Rinse, but Mary was cool and one of the few Palynchuk's I respected. Perhaps a quiet and non-corrosive exit would not have had the same effect that she desired to impart upon those her troubled mind left behind. I will never know.
The roll-top desk originated from the other side of the family, a cool and distant lot, the Day clan. My grandfather and namesake gave the oak office equipment to my mother who packed it around Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Alberta; eventually awarding me with its custody. The desk and the captain's chair had survived the upbringing of her five children; subjected to such horrors as family pets, model glues and engine fuels – almost succumbing to her second eldest's neglectful care; which demolished the chair and weakened the doomed desk.
With my mother’s blessing, I kidnapped the roll-top and displayed this battle scared antique in our family's homestead – until alleviated of all my financial resources by my younger brother and father. They meant well I suppose, perpetuating another family tradition of inbred lawsuits – and for that extra special touch, they broke into and looted my home while I was on my honeymoon. My brother and father feared my departure from the fold for I was being courted by Revenue Canada and the Department of Justice to testify against my "alleged" crooked kin. In an attempt at retrieving incriminating documents I was "alleged" to possess, Mark sued our mother, in her early stages of Alzheimers, and so, under the threat of an expensive lawsuit and allegations that she forged documents, she caved – fearing for her nest egg. This was only the first time I was called to sacrifice everything I owned so that my mother would not go without, while another son of hers violated the bond of trust. Years of hard work and long hours lost to the greed of control freaks, my remaining possessions and I rented a U-Haul and escaped to the beaches of California, commencing the American leg of the roll-tops journey.
While in California, the desk’s primary function was a leaning post for my surfboard, and a storage spot for surf wax. I could see the roll-top from the pool deck where I'd have some smoke and race my radio controlled dune buggies around the water's edge. The desk also doubled as a workstation for my second wife to unsuccessfully manage our meager finances.
When I married Renee I assumed that she was a wiz with money; discovering all too late that she had been totally and completely supported by her indulging family and arrived with a dowry totaling well over negative $20,000.00. Renee immediately proceeded to max out numerous charge cards, unbeknownst to Mr. Denial: me. Renee was unhappy with my inability to imitate a sugar daddy, since my recent incestuous fiscal enema, and she quickly became despondent and 'distant'. Renee worked part time, I worked at least two jobs and sought out counseling for the two of us to no avail, attending on my own.
After three years of a debt ridden and emotionally dry marriage I presented her with an ultimatum. I had booked a counseling appointment for Renee and stated that if she refused to attend this or one of her own choosing by the upcoming Friday, we were thru. Saturday morning the landlord knocked on my door with the news that our rent check had bounced, initiating the discovery that Renee had cleaned out "our" savings and, it would seem, failed to utilize marriage counseling; confirmed later in the day through a long distant phone call from my "better half" who had relocated from Santa Barbara to San Francisco on Friday while I was at work and college. Renee was staying with an Aunt – it was only fair, she had stayed with us whenever her husband gave her black eyes and almost enough spine to leave him. Now it was my turn to grow a spine. The tough oak desk and I had survived the 7.3 earthquake in 'Frisco back in 1989 and now, survived the fallout from divorce in 1991. The roll-top and I hit the road again.
Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump
The roll-top had never looked more aerodynamic, mounted on the roof of the pickup truck, loaded like a surfers rendition of the Beverly Hillbillies, towing my Alfa Romeo Spider, adorned with my surfboard. A showy and defiant exit from Santa Barbara for one who'd been Californicated and wished to part the seas of failure with style – a desperate display of a salvaged but soggy pride.
The parade float crossed the border with the lone California surfer being granted a reprieve from customs – in spite of only providing bleached hair and a suntan for credentials to the sympathetic all female staff guarding this final exit across the American out-of-bounds line. Unable to locate any ownership or insurance documents, the kind and pretty women posing as customs agents provided me with all the paper work that permitted re-entry into Canada with all of my American acquired possessions.
The herniated and clutchless pickup limped across the border, delivering the now expatriate surf guy and his roll-top desk to their new home, Vancouver, British Columbia. Of course it was raining and my reprieve from the elements fell through. My first ex-wife reneged on her promise of shelter from the storm and forced me to live one more night under the cover of my surfboard and the leaky canvas roof of my Alfa Romeo Spider. Huddled in my sleeping bag with my knees crammed under the steering wheel and my feet contorted between the clutch, brake and gas pedals, I tangled with mixed feelings over my Canadian repatriation and the countless other opportunities I turned my back on south of the border. The roll-top sat atop the pickup wondering where the hell it was, and was going, while worrying about the coastal downpours effect upon its complexion and if it would ever see its approaching 100th birthday.
The roll-top and I eventually settled into the top floor of a rooming house with an obscenely filthy, shared, two-room bathroom. The suite was adorned with a hot plate. The walk down the street out front was beautifully scented with the aroma of anise, reason enough to take an extra slow walk among the character houses in this lovely neighborhood and keep me away from “home”. Unfortunately my disgustingly dirty and drunken neighbors left such rude stains in our moldy bathtub that I was unable to not imagine what contagious diseases their spotted bottoms with festering sores left upon our toilet seat.
The roll-top and I immediately moved into Vancouver’s flamboyant west end. We settled into the lovely Starlite Manor, with its partial views of English Bay. Often I would catch the ferry across to Granville Island's public market and return for a picnic of pate', cheese, baguette and red wine, atop the roll-top. Together we'd enjoy our partial view of the harbor, a full frontal view of a multitude of exhibitionists’ apartment windows and an alley that proved to be a combination dump and endless source of potentially wonderful discarded furnishings for the financially embarrassed such as myself.
Vancouver proved to be a wild ride that aged this holdout from premature maturity and so the desk and I vamoosed to Vancouver Island, home for Deadheads, Newlyweds and Nearlydeads. The surfboard returned to its familiar resting spot against the desk until I left to teach skiing up in Whistler for the '96-'97 season. The desk was unceremoniously stored in a garden shed and I was brutally relieved of functioning knees while up in the mountains. As the Oak veneer succumbed to the humid shed's disastrous effects, a plump ex-patriot Cuban socialite and her Twinkie and Pina Colada swollen frame conspired with a barbarically antique ski tow to allow me to experience new found depths of pain and unnatural flexibility. While attending a Workers' Constipation Board's vindictively applied fiscal enema, a bottle of wine and an ex-wife combined to produce an offspring for this now near-kneeless unable-to-ski instructor. I moved to North Vancouver.
Now invisibly partially handicapped and forced to explore alternate forms of recreation, I toyed with fly-fishing through our pregnancy and even had my daughter in a back pack in her first month of life – fishing with Papa in North Van's wondrous outdoor playground.
The roll-top remained on its side in a garden shed, waiting for my eventual return to the island in October of '98. My Ex and I felt the slow island lifestyle more appropriate for our child's upbringing and so we moved immediately, after finding a perfect little townhouse and garden. The water logged desk emerged from the shed and sat proudly across the living room from the fireplace, looking as noble as its weathered appearance would permit.
God's Rude Practical Jokes
(Kick Me Signs from Heaven)
My Mom had long since forgotten about the roll-top, her memory evaporated as sure as a hot August puddle after a west Texas rainstorm. Slowly but surely the desk’s existence, like my name, were erased from her reality, unlike the impact that she had upon my life; a firmly cemented belief in the pursuit of smiles and one's dreams.
We first noticed problems with Mom’s cranial wiring when she bought airline tickets to my second wedding – for the wrong coast and country in North America. As the nineties commenced she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, some cruel trick thrust upon a woman who I thought had enough shit dealt her way already. Eventually the lack of memory would prove to be a threat upon her well-being and those who resided in a proximity that could be affected by fire and gas explosions. We moved my mom into an Alzheimer’s Centre.
The look of fear, betrayal and confusion on my mother’s face when she asked why I was making her move to this place is an experience I wish upon no one. I would've given my life if I could bring back Mom’s memory and let her live out the life she carved out in her "cave by the river"; her little condo over-looking the river valley and its wondrous prairie sunsets.
One of the saddest things I will ever remember, I discovered while going through my Mom’s things. I was visiting her in Edmonton and stayed at her vacant condo. All over her home, in every one of her many address and notebooks, on scraps of paper, beside the phone, in her pockets and on the back of pictures were little reminders – reminders of her children’s names.
I try to imagine the horror, a living nightmare where you remember that you can't remember, that void between cognizant and oblivion. A time when your memory becomes your enemy for it reminds you that you're losing your mind and are locked up and nobody visits you.
Unfortunately it wasn't over; god was saving one more "Kick Me" sign. By the late nineties, my mother's court appointed Guardian and Trustee, her second oldest child, developed a hankering for her funds – he alleviated her of all her financial resources and left her neglected and destitute.
When the money ran out, so did the family. Nobody was visiting her, a woman with five children. She became one of the many elderly who are abandoned by their children.
My daughter, my ex-wife and myself had returned for the '98 Xmas visit to Deadmonton, only to discover my mom’s predicament. Over $150,000.00 was unaccounted for; my mother's entire savings were gone and she didn't even have any clothes to wear. There sat an abandoned mother of five, with her money all spent, no funds left to pay for her laundry, and nobody to replace the clothes taken by her guardian. I found Mom, who always valued her appearance, wearing a soiled hospital gown – the old underwear and socks she wore were items that were borrowed from residents who had died. There was no dignity. She was depressed and wheel chair bound.
The roll-top was soon to hit the road again. Life in Victoria was cool – good friends, a fly fisher's nirvana; mountain biking, sailing – it was a hard place in time to leave – but when your mothers muted screams for help tweak at your auditory canal, you answer, or leave your conscience at the entrance to Scumville.
As a slightly disabled youth counselor, my income was, at best, approaching the poverty line, from below. Phone calls to family members proved fruitless while searching for funds to support my mother’s plight. My motivation to help must have come from a recessive gene of my great grandfather, Frank Harvey, a survivor of the, now politically incorrect, Northwest Rebellion of 1885 and a trooper until his passing in 1944 at the age of ninety-four years.
No Place Like Home
My ex-wife arranged for temporary accommodation upon our arrival in Deadmonton, house sitting for her mother who was away in New Zealand for a few months. The plan was for me to move out, shortly after her return, into a small writer's retreat while Donna stayed on at her Moms, with our daughter to float between, staying primarily with Donna.
The best-laid plans can never account for Murphy’s Law, or in this case, former-brother-in-law, Dougy's law. It would seem that the ex-in-laws viewed my temporary residence at G-ma's as an intolerable intrusion. I was promptly turfed out into the street, with minimal financial resources, and was left with the attractive option of residing in my compact truck. How refreshing to discover that my family did not have the monopoly on kicking people when they're down. The rolltop now sat in the basement of another former family of mine. I had become a thorn in the side of not only my blood, but my daughter’s kin as well. Strangely enough, the desk was still one thing I adamantly wished to hang on to; somehow surpassing its original intent of symbolizing family and heritage; transforming into a connection to a mother disconnected from reality, as we know it, for a son disconnected from the world, as he doesn't know it.
Even though I was the only relative to visit her, I was unable to even take my Mother outside for a walk or to see the sunset – her guardian refused to grant permission. In spite of being taken to court and being removed as trustee of my mother’s estate, her second-eldest and most void of a conscience, remained Mom’s legal guardian. Ignoring my requests to be allowed to take my Mom outside for walks, we were sentenced to wander the short hallway of her hospital ward, never permitted to view another sunset or feel a cool summer breeze together again. For three years, my Mom, my Daughter, and I wandered the halls – never able to open the doors she wished to open – looking at me, maybe wondering why I don’t help.
Gods bottomless pocket of "Kick Me" signs produced another chuckle for the all-mighty. The mother of my daughter, monopolizing off my circumstance and Alberta's archaic custody laws, proceeded to exercise her "rights" and reneged on our shared parenting philosophy and agreement we had made with our child. I was no longer her father: demoted to glorified nanny, I now had to battle in Alberta's courts for any semblance of rights as far as my daughter was concerned. As hard as I tried, a "Kick Me" sign remained firmly tattooed upon my back. Another strange connection with my mother
Bills and obligations to my daughter and mother cut at the thin threads of my meager financial resources, threatening to cast me off into an abyss absent of adequate means. Finally, a little too late, I stumbled upon work that would provide for my needs, if I could survive through the Catch 22 phase, that time between earning and collecting my first paycheck. I had already sold off many personal belongings to bridge the gap between homeless and have-not, there was little left of value to others.
There was a need and with all options other than selling body organs explored, there was but one answer. Many parties were interested in the roll-top, in spite of its ragged condition, which spoke volumes of its trials and tribulations. I rationalized and guilt ruled the day – the sale of the roll-top saved my ass and allowed me to continue my inexplicably misunderstood and unpopular mission. I hadn't expected a ticker tape parade for sacrificing my wonderful life in British Columbia and returning to Deadmonton to help my mother in her hour of need; but you could bet I wouldn't have placed money on my being ostracized by family and thrust into homelessness and extreme poverty.
Now, the roll-top desk is history, I possess nothing from my family's past, my mother has no memory from her past while I wish to forget much of my past. Life is funny. I have to laugh.
Last Chance For...
I never expected the bad jokes to stop, but...
When I was a boy, my mother and I would venture out to a park or our backyard and paint with oils. One of my Mother's pride and joys was her paintings and oil paint set. She always encouraged my artistic side and nurtured the need to seize the day. All I wanted was the old oil paint set to remember my Mom.
After two years of nagging the Police, the Public Guardian, and the Public Trustee to do something about the financial destitution imposed upon my Mother, they finally did something, but not before I lobbied Members of Parliament to put a little fire under their ass. Without consideration for her family members, who didn't steal from her, the Public Trustee, without warning, stormed my brother’s house, seized my mother's belongings and sold them off at public auction, in less than two days. The oil paint set was sold off to strangers, and again, I must laugh.
Laughter is something my Mother gave me that can't be taken away.
____________________
My mom's tragic life, dedicated to her family, cut short by long term Alzheimer's and a broken heart.
I wrote the story; "THE ROLL-TOP (This Day is Done) " so my mother's story could be told after it was muted by years of servitude to a cruel and violent patriarch and Alzheimer's disease.
I became the man I am, in spite of my father's abuse, BECAUSE of my mother instilling values in me while exposing me to the arts and sports. As years go by, I am forever grateful for my mother's love and strength.
______________
THE ROLL-TOP
This Day is Done
by Bruce Dean
J. Bruce Day bought a second hand Beaver Hall roll-top desk while employed as a teacher, principal, inspector or superintendent for the Manitoba School Board somewhere around Flinflon, or Dauphin, back about 1920 or 1930. He was a well-respected educator who studied and achieved his B.A. and Masters, all the while working and devoting his life to education. An illness overwhelmed Grandpa Day during the summer of 1955, taking him from his family at the age of fifty-three. There's not much more than this I can tell you as he died before I was born and, when the time came, my mother was unable to relate the facts without the aide of the unbreakable Alzheimer’s code. One can only imagine the hours my grandfather spent studying at the roll-top desk. Over the years, this once modern piece of furniture transformed into a neglected antique. If the desk could speak, the path it traveled would have made an intriguing story that would include such interesting sights covering at least six provinces, as many states and many more marriages and divorces, a few of them mine.
When I sold the desk there was a sense of failure - lost forever, the status of family heirloom, and more, the opportunity for some form of substance to indicate a history of bloodline, of pride in heritage. The offensive incidents that preceded and demanded it's disposal did not lessen the blow of the sale but made its passing even more tragic, its purpose futile, my intentions for not.
Baba, Polio and Bleach Cocktails
I am a slow learner. Over a dozen years ago I purchased our family home from my financially strained mother for an over-inflated price, hoping to instill family pride through the preservation of the Homestead and hoping to help my mother’s après divorce finances. My father (an engineer and asshole extraordinaire) and my mother (an interior designer and master victim) had designed our humble abode with their bare minds and willingly suffered through its conceptualization, construction and transformations over the years. Eventually, disillusioned over my families barbarically immoral and consciously bankrupt behavior, I sold the property and was promptly financially molested by my family, lost everything I owned and retired to a lifestyle of poverty, smiles and play.
Never can I recall family tales of love and admiration; only lawsuits, suicide and exile. To say our family has never been close is like saying Hitler wasn’t nice.
My sweet grandmother in Saskatoon was your typical Ukrainian baba, with the exception of her camouflaged cold heart and cunning business sense. Darth Vader would cry like a babe should he encounter this villain, for only time and the hunger for love were able to bring her down – not before she raised a pod of cruel apprentices; killers of love and decency. Dysfunction was not the hidden family shame but the driving force behind the pursuit of power and other people’s funds.
I was touched by Aunt Mary; the wife of my father’s polio stricken brother – before she chose an unfortunate and obscenely sick exit from the clan of dysfunction. I can imagine many more painless ways to avoid my family’s reality than the rumored Javex Jugular Rinse, but Mary was cool and one of the few Palynchuk's I respected. Perhaps a quiet and non-corrosive exit would not have had the same effect that she desired to impart upon those her troubled mind left behind. I will never know.
The roll-top desk originated from the other side of the family, a cool and distant lot, the Day clan. My grandfather and namesake gave the oak office equipment to my mother who packed it around Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Alberta; eventually awarding me with its custody. The desk and the captain's chair had survived the upbringing of her five children; subjected to such horrors as family pets, model glues and engine fuels – almost succumbing to her second eldest's neglectful care; which demolished the chair and weakened the doomed desk.
With my mother’s blessing, I kidnapped the roll-top and displayed this battle scared antique in our family's homestead – until alleviated of all my financial resources by my younger brother and father. They meant well I suppose, perpetuating another family tradition of inbred lawsuits – and for that extra special touch, they broke into and looted my home while I was on my honeymoon. My brother and father feared my departure from the fold for I was being courted by Revenue Canada and the Department of Justice to testify against my "alleged" crooked kin. In an attempt at retrieving incriminating documents I was "alleged" to possess, Mark sued our mother, in her early stages of Alzheimers, and so, under the threat of an expensive lawsuit and allegations that she forged documents, she caved – fearing for her nest egg. This was only the first time I was called to sacrifice everything I owned so that my mother would not go without, while another son of hers violated the bond of trust. Years of hard work and long hours lost to the greed of control freaks, my remaining possessions and I rented a U-Haul and escaped to the beaches of California, commencing the American leg of the roll-tops journey.
While in California, the desk’s primary function was a leaning post for my surfboard, and a storage spot for surf wax. I could see the roll-top from the pool deck where I'd have some smoke and race my radio controlled dune buggies around the water's edge. The desk also doubled as a workstation for my second wife to unsuccessfully manage our meager finances.
When I married Renee I assumed that she was a wiz with money; discovering all too late that she had been totally and completely supported by her indulging family and arrived with a dowry totaling well over negative $20,000.00. Renee immediately proceeded to max out numerous charge cards, unbeknownst to Mr. Denial: me. Renee was unhappy with my inability to imitate a sugar daddy, since my recent incestuous fiscal enema, and she quickly became despondent and 'distant'. Renee worked part time, I worked at least two jobs and sought out counseling for the two of us to no avail, attending on my own.
After three years of a debt ridden and emotionally dry marriage I presented her with an ultimatum. I had booked a counseling appointment for Renee and stated that if she refused to attend this or one of her own choosing by the upcoming Friday, we were thru. Saturday morning the landlord knocked on my door with the news that our rent check had bounced, initiating the discovery that Renee had cleaned out "our" savings and, it would seem, failed to utilize marriage counseling; confirmed later in the day through a long distant phone call from my "better half" who had relocated from Santa Barbara to San Francisco on Friday while I was at work and college. Renee was staying with an Aunt – it was only fair, she had stayed with us whenever her husband gave her black eyes and almost enough spine to leave him. Now it was my turn to grow a spine. The tough oak desk and I had survived the 7.3 earthquake in 'Frisco back in 1989 and now, survived the fallout from divorce in 1991. The roll-top and I hit the road again.
Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump
The roll-top had never looked more aerodynamic, mounted on the roof of the pickup truck, loaded like a surfers rendition of the Beverly Hillbillies, towing my Alfa Romeo Spider, adorned with my surfboard. A showy and defiant exit from Santa Barbara for one who'd been Californicated and wished to part the seas of failure with style – a desperate display of a salvaged but soggy pride.
The parade float crossed the border with the lone California surfer being granted a reprieve from customs – in spite of only providing bleached hair and a suntan for credentials to the sympathetic all female staff guarding this final exit across the American out-of-bounds line. Unable to locate any ownership or insurance documents, the kind and pretty women posing as customs agents provided me with all the paper work that permitted re-entry into Canada with all of my American acquired possessions.
The herniated and clutchless pickup limped across the border, delivering the now expatriate surf guy and his roll-top desk to their new home, Vancouver, British Columbia. Of course it was raining and my reprieve from the elements fell through. My first ex-wife reneged on her promise of shelter from the storm and forced me to live one more night under the cover of my surfboard and the leaky canvas roof of my Alfa Romeo Spider. Huddled in my sleeping bag with my knees crammed under the steering wheel and my feet contorted between the clutch, brake and gas pedals, I tangled with mixed feelings over my Canadian repatriation and the countless other opportunities I turned my back on south of the border. The roll-top sat atop the pickup wondering where the hell it was, and was going, while worrying about the coastal downpours effect upon its complexion and if it would ever see its approaching 100th birthday.
The roll-top and I eventually settled into the top floor of a rooming house with an obscenely filthy, shared, two-room bathroom. The suite was adorned with a hot plate. The walk down the street out front was beautifully scented with the aroma of anise, reason enough to take an extra slow walk among the character houses in this lovely neighborhood and keep me away from “home”. Unfortunately my disgustingly dirty and drunken neighbors left such rude stains in our moldy bathtub that I was unable to not imagine what contagious diseases their spotted bottoms with festering sores left upon our toilet seat.
The roll-top and I immediately moved into Vancouver’s flamboyant west end. We settled into the lovely Starlite Manor, with its partial views of English Bay. Often I would catch the ferry across to Granville Island's public market and return for a picnic of pate', cheese, baguette and red wine, atop the roll-top. Together we'd enjoy our partial view of the harbor, a full frontal view of a multitude of exhibitionists’ apartment windows and an alley that proved to be a combination dump and endless source of potentially wonderful discarded furnishings for the financially embarrassed such as myself.
Vancouver proved to be a wild ride that aged this holdout from premature maturity and so the desk and I vamoosed to Vancouver Island, home for Deadheads, Newlyweds and Nearlydeads. The surfboard returned to its familiar resting spot against the desk until I left to teach skiing up in Whistler for the '96-'97 season. The desk was unceremoniously stored in a garden shed and I was brutally relieved of functioning knees while up in the mountains. As the Oak veneer succumbed to the humid shed's disastrous effects, a plump ex-patriot Cuban socialite and her Twinkie and Pina Colada swollen frame conspired with a barbarically antique ski tow to allow me to experience new found depths of pain and unnatural flexibility. While attending a Workers' Constipation Board's vindictively applied fiscal enema, a bottle of wine and an ex-wife combined to produce an offspring for this now near-kneeless unable-to-ski instructor. I moved to North Vancouver.
Now invisibly partially handicapped and forced to explore alternate forms of recreation, I toyed with fly-fishing through our pregnancy and even had my daughter in a back pack in her first month of life – fishing with Papa in North Van's wondrous outdoor playground.
The roll-top remained on its side in a garden shed, waiting for my eventual return to the island in October of '98. My Ex and I felt the slow island lifestyle more appropriate for our child's upbringing and so we moved immediately, after finding a perfect little townhouse and garden. The water logged desk emerged from the shed and sat proudly across the living room from the fireplace, looking as noble as its weathered appearance would permit.
God's Rude Practical Jokes
(Kick Me Signs from Heaven)
My Mom had long since forgotten about the roll-top, her memory evaporated as sure as a hot August puddle after a west Texas rainstorm. Slowly but surely the desk’s existence, like my name, were erased from her reality, unlike the impact that she had upon my life; a firmly cemented belief in the pursuit of smiles and one's dreams.
We first noticed problems with Mom’s cranial wiring when she bought airline tickets to my second wedding – for the wrong coast and country in North America. As the nineties commenced she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, some cruel trick thrust upon a woman who I thought had enough shit dealt her way already. Eventually the lack of memory would prove to be a threat upon her well-being and those who resided in a proximity that could be affected by fire and gas explosions. We moved my mom into an Alzheimer’s Centre.
The look of fear, betrayal and confusion on my mother’s face when she asked why I was making her move to this place is an experience I wish upon no one. I would've given my life if I could bring back Mom’s memory and let her live out the life she carved out in her "cave by the river"; her little condo over-looking the river valley and its wondrous prairie sunsets.
One of the saddest things I will ever remember, I discovered while going through my Mom’s things. I was visiting her in Edmonton and stayed at her vacant condo. All over her home, in every one of her many address and notebooks, on scraps of paper, beside the phone, in her pockets and on the back of pictures were little reminders – reminders of her children’s names.
I try to imagine the horror, a living nightmare where you remember that you can't remember, that void between cognizant and oblivion. A time when your memory becomes your enemy for it reminds you that you're losing your mind and are locked up and nobody visits you.
Unfortunately it wasn't over; god was saving one more "Kick Me" sign. By the late nineties, my mother's court appointed Guardian and Trustee, her second oldest child, developed a hankering for her funds – he alleviated her of all her financial resources and left her neglected and destitute.
When the money ran out, so did the family. Nobody was visiting her, a woman with five children. She became one of the many elderly who are abandoned by their children.
My daughter, my ex-wife and myself had returned for the '98 Xmas visit to Deadmonton, only to discover my mom’s predicament. Over $150,000.00 was unaccounted for; my mother's entire savings were gone and she didn't even have any clothes to wear. There sat an abandoned mother of five, with her money all spent, no funds left to pay for her laundry, and nobody to replace the clothes taken by her guardian. I found Mom, who always valued her appearance, wearing a soiled hospital gown – the old underwear and socks she wore were items that were borrowed from residents who had died. There was no dignity. She was depressed and wheel chair bound.
The roll-top was soon to hit the road again. Life in Victoria was cool – good friends, a fly fisher's nirvana; mountain biking, sailing – it was a hard place in time to leave – but when your mothers muted screams for help tweak at your auditory canal, you answer, or leave your conscience at the entrance to Scumville.
As a slightly disabled youth counselor, my income was, at best, approaching the poverty line, from below. Phone calls to family members proved fruitless while searching for funds to support my mother’s plight. My motivation to help must have come from a recessive gene of my great grandfather, Frank Harvey, a survivor of the, now politically incorrect, Northwest Rebellion of 1885 and a trooper until his passing in 1944 at the age of ninety-four years.
No Place Like Home
My ex-wife arranged for temporary accommodation upon our arrival in Deadmonton, house sitting for her mother who was away in New Zealand for a few months. The plan was for me to move out, shortly after her return, into a small writer's retreat while Donna stayed on at her Moms, with our daughter to float between, staying primarily with Donna.
The best-laid plans can never account for Murphy’s Law, or in this case, former-brother-in-law, Dougy's law. It would seem that the ex-in-laws viewed my temporary residence at G-ma's as an intolerable intrusion. I was promptly turfed out into the street, with minimal financial resources, and was left with the attractive option of residing in my compact truck. How refreshing to discover that my family did not have the monopoly on kicking people when they're down. The rolltop now sat in the basement of another former family of mine. I had become a thorn in the side of not only my blood, but my daughter’s kin as well. Strangely enough, the desk was still one thing I adamantly wished to hang on to; somehow surpassing its original intent of symbolizing family and heritage; transforming into a connection to a mother disconnected from reality, as we know it, for a son disconnected from the world, as he doesn't know it.
Even though I was the only relative to visit her, I was unable to even take my Mother outside for a walk or to see the sunset – her guardian refused to grant permission. In spite of being taken to court and being removed as trustee of my mother’s estate, her second-eldest and most void of a conscience, remained Mom’s legal guardian. Ignoring my requests to be allowed to take my Mom outside for walks, we were sentenced to wander the short hallway of her hospital ward, never permitted to view another sunset or feel a cool summer breeze together again. For three years, my Mom, my Daughter, and I wandered the halls – never able to open the doors she wished to open – looking at me, maybe wondering why I don’t help.
Gods bottomless pocket of "Kick Me" signs produced another chuckle for the all-mighty. The mother of my daughter, monopolizing off my circumstance and Alberta's archaic custody laws, proceeded to exercise her "rights" and reneged on our shared parenting philosophy and agreement we had made with our child. I was no longer her father: demoted to glorified nanny, I now had to battle in Alberta's courts for any semblance of rights as far as my daughter was concerned. As hard as I tried, a "Kick Me" sign remained firmly tattooed upon my back. Another strange connection with my mother
Bills and obligations to my daughter and mother cut at the thin threads of my meager financial resources, threatening to cast me off into an abyss absent of adequate means. Finally, a little too late, I stumbled upon work that would provide for my needs, if I could survive through the Catch 22 phase, that time between earning and collecting my first paycheck. I had already sold off many personal belongings to bridge the gap between homeless and have-not, there was little left of value to others.
There was a need and with all options other than selling body organs explored, there was but one answer. Many parties were interested in the roll-top, in spite of its ragged condition, which spoke volumes of its trials and tribulations. I rationalized and guilt ruled the day – the sale of the roll-top saved my ass and allowed me to continue my inexplicably misunderstood and unpopular mission. I hadn't expected a ticker tape parade for sacrificing my wonderful life in British Columbia and returning to Deadmonton to help my mother in her hour of need; but you could bet I wouldn't have placed money on my being ostracized by family and thrust into homelessness and extreme poverty.
Now, the roll-top desk is history, I possess nothing from my family's past, my mother has no memory from her past while I wish to forget much of my past. Life is funny. I have to laugh.
Last Chance For...
I never expected the bad jokes to stop, but...
When I was a boy, my mother and I would venture out to a park or our backyard and paint with oils. One of my Mother's pride and joys was her paintings and oil paint set. She always encouraged my artistic side and nurtured the need to seize the day. All I wanted was the old oil paint set to remember my Mom.
After two years of nagging the Police, the Public Guardian, and the Public Trustee to do something about the financial destitution imposed upon my Mother, they finally did something, but not before I lobbied Members of Parliament to put a little fire under their ass. Without consideration for her family members, who didn't steal from her, the Public Trustee, without warning, stormed my brother’s house, seized my mother's belongings and sold them off at public auction, in less than two days. The oil paint set was sold off to strangers, and again, I must laugh.
Laughter is something my Mother gave me that can't be taken away.