Reflection on My Deathbed

      TW/CW: This story does mention sexual violence, infidelity, domestic problems, manipulation, death being mentioned, and some strong language. You have been warned.

My room is mostly silent. Silence punctuated with the sound of the EKG machine, oxygen, and my own labored breathing. Outside of my room I can hear the hospice staff, moving about and talking with each other and other patients. If you’re lucky you get to hear a room full of people, murmurs of loved ones gathering to provide some measure of companionship before a patient passes away.

              My room does not have those kinds of noises filling it. My children have not come to see me; grandchildren I should have do not gather around me to see me one last time. Evan, my only son and eldest of two, only ever talked to me when he wanted something. It was always money or a roof over his head when the rest of the family couldn’t deal with his willful laziness and ignorance. Whenever this happened, they always shipped him back to me. I always tried my best but often sent him to my ex-husband to deal with, though they don’t share the same blood. Our daughter, Olivia, my youngest, cut me out her life when she turned 27. She was also willful, but had all the ambition my son didn’t; she was keen on being as independent as possible. I tried to push her to be a doctor or lawyer, even to go into politics. Instead she chose psychology and worked with special needs kids and junkies. Not a very lucrative profession.

              I mentioned my ex-husband. Well, the second one, anyway. Olivia took care of him when he got sick. Lots of medical issues related to his heart and blood sugar. By the time that happened we were long separated but not divorced until almost twenty years after I took her and left him. The man was a terrible hoarder who never wanted to spend time with us. Never hit the kids or the dog. Didn’t hit me either. But the verbal fights were pretty nasty. We accused each other of cheating, and he accused me of using him for his money; I was even accused of forging his name on credit card applications. He seemed to have forgotten that when we married we shared everything. We divorced, which he wouldn’t do because he loved me too much to let go, I was supposed to get half.

              Unfortunately I had nothing in writing stating that fact when it came time for the child support hearing.

              Thomas, the ex piece of shit, was paying about two grand a month to care for our daughter. I was working full time at one of the one-stop-shop places that had everything you needed; specifically, I worked the deli. Our rent wasn’t too high: $700 a month. Olivia was content with books as her primary method of entertainment, sometimes she’d draw or listen to music; most of her hobbies weren’t all that expensive and she was an introvert, so I hardly ever worried about her causing issues. We didn’t eat too heavy and were able to afford groceries thanks to the employee discount and him giving the money to raise my daughter.

Most of the time we were in the black, not the red. Even with that extra two thousand dollars it still didn’t feel like enough for me; I wanted to be taken care of too. After all, we were still married. I also tried to get him for alimony and tried to get food stamps too. The judge made me pick one or I’d get nothing. So I chose the child support because thagt should be more, right? Big mistake. Why? Because though the court garnished his checks by two-thirds, which is a lot of money for someone who works a union job at a nuclear powerplant, they of course have to take their cut. I was getting maybe $1200 a month now. Still enough to keep things covered, and maybe a little bit for fun stuff from time to time. Even after that, her father made sure she had her own spending money and made sure we had food; he even got her a laptop so she could do her homework.

Remember when I said I was in the black when I had my daughter in my care? Yeah, that changed when my son moved in.

Before we moved out of my ex-husband’s, my son went to see his dad and his stepmom who lived out of state. They hadn’t seen each other in over ten years and wanted to work on developing the child/parent bond that my son missed out on. (Husband #2 and my son never quite got along; my son called him “Dad” only when he wanted something, and always used my daughter to be the middle man in asking.) My son and his dad worked out the details, from moving to helping him get a stable job.

That didn’t work out. My son kept riding his dad’s coattails, his stepmom helped her own kids get the job that was promised, refused to step up and be an adult in general. This led him to getting bounced around amongst his paternal grandparents and his aunts. The last straw was an unsettling event, to say the least.

The story I was told was that his aunt had a dog that my son was not fond of. (Evan was not much one for animals.) Dog was fine before everyone went to bed. In the morning said dog was lying dead outside his bedroom door. I wasn’t given any more specifics about it. The dog likely got into something it shouldn’t have and likely collapsed outside his door. Weird shit like that happens.

After my son moved in, we started having problems. My daughter and I had a fight maybe once very couple of months, mostly centering around the men I brought home and how she didn’t like most of them; she even told me how mad she got when I used the laptop her father got her specifically for school to meet them. When he moved in, we got a tv so he could keep himself entertained with video games. Which he played all day and night. He even snuck into our rooms to take our laptops and play on them while we slept. I even woke up once to him sitting on my bed while I slept playing games.

My daughter was a smartass. She started taking it to school with her and changed the password on a weekly basis. She even put it between her mattress and the spring box; if he tried to take it while she slept she would know. He isn’t much of one to fight, but her? My daughter may have looked like her passive father and she may have been shorter than him, but had a quick temper like mine; my son learned early that she will not hesitate to hit you where it hurts.

Well, back to my son.

My son repeated his behavior with us like he did with everyone else. He refused to work and bitched every time we told him to get a job. In a three year span he got fired from five jobs for being “slow”. (He was in the special ed class. He doesn’t have special needs;he just refused to do anything in school. The schoolboard and I agreed that being special ed would be best for him.) He tried getting out of housework by saying he wasn’t on the lease. If we could get him to do anything he’d do it wrong and would leave a bigger mess than when he started. Eventually my daughter and I stopped asking him to do anything. Eventually we kicked him out because he was getting too handsy with my daughter’s friends; even after he was gone she stopped inviting friends over.

Eventually my daughter left for college. I wanted her to move with me to live with my sister, her daughter, and all five of her grandkids; there was no point staying in our apartment since there wasn’t a reason to keep me there. I told her that there was a school dedicated specifically to her field of study was in their city. She wasn’t having it. She said the school she got accepted to had a good program, and it was close to her dad; she claimed that she wanted to have a good relationship with both of us, even if we weren’t together anymore. Bullshit. During her time in school she was showing off some of the things she was doing, like going out with friends or seeing a new movie, things she did on my ex’s dime. Soemtimes she’d call and tell me she missed me. She had the opportunity to stay with me, but no, she wanted to be near her daddy. I even told her as much. Guess she didn’t like that since she talked to me less.

Over the years I did try to mend our relationship. Tried talking with her about things going on in my life like my job or a new guy I was seeing. The conversations would shut down when I brought up how annoyed I was by all the immigrants and black people I couldn’t understand at work, talking about trannies that would go into the women’s bathroom, or joking about asking her dad for money. She always got on me about how much I sound like a xenophobe. This little girl seriously couldn’t take a joke. I swear her going to college made her a bleeding heart liberal. She even started keeping secrets from me, like when my ex got sick. She didn’t tell me a damn thing for nearly a year; I had to learn what happened directly from him. I told her that I am entitled to know as I’m still his wife. She reminded me that I cheated and walked out on him, and that our marriage was only on paper at that point.

I didn’t hear much from them after that. I still kept in touch with my daughter but she didn’t tell me about the larger details of her life. Like the fact she moved several times, including two hours away from where I raised her. Didn’t tell me about people she dated after I found out she was dating girls and guys. I blame her father for her being gay, that crossdressing freak. I also blame her school for it, pushing all that liberal nonsense onto our kids. The last time we talked was when my sister-in-law died.

My son, his wife (that unshapely potato), and I went. I lived with my sister-in-law and her husband for about five years at that point and I fucking hated it. I moved in because and I were seeing each other. His wife knew he was a philanderer. She wasn’t happy about it but it was the accommodation that was made due to her medical issues, which leaft her pretty much unable to care for her. I knew it too and I still dated him. Until I realized just how many he had on the side. I told him I wasn’t happy about it and he needed to cut some of them out, to which he refused.

On top of that I got stuck taking care of his wife. I changed her and cleaned her up, made her food; I did a caregiver’s job on top of my fulltime job and not even getting paid to do it. I took off on the weekends to go out and have fun or else I’d likely kill both of them. Soemtimes he’d take me out to the casino and give me a couple of hundred to play away. Sometimes I lucked out and won a few here and there, but most of the time I didn’t get much. Oh well; wasn’t my money I lost.

Eventually his wife passed away; she had a panic attack so bad that she asphyxiated. I was there to try and help her, as was another sister-in-law. Honeslty it was a relief. I HATED taking care of her. I hated the smells of her waste and the way her voice sounded. I was glad she was dead. I was even more excited when my ex-husband and the bitch of a daughter showed up. She was likely still leeching from him and he was letting her. They stayed pretty far from us during the funeral until the end when she was gathering people up for the final service. I tried sitting near my then husband in the rows that were set up but he sat near one of the chair set up on the periphery of the room; the idea was for my son to try and sneak a picture of us, which he always objected to because hated having his picture taken. After the service we tried stopping them twice and they blew us off, saying they had a long way to drive and had lives they couldn’t pause. It’s not like we were gonna ask for money; we just wanted a damn picture with them.

It was one of the last times I heard from my daughter. We did go somewhat go toe-to-toe about something she posted about how parents need to put in effort to keep in touch with their kids outside of holidays and how you can’t be a parent when it’s convenient only for you. I took it personally and called her out on it. to which she called me out on using her as a wingman and guard dog, and allowing a predatory man to have a key to our place despite me knowing that he wanted to have sex with her. I called, which of fourse her cowardly ass didn’t pick up. I chewed her out and told her that if she wants to act all grown and talk shit behind a keyboard then she can be on her own. She blocked me on her next birthday. I have tried calling since then but she’s never picked up.

But I did hear from her almost a decade later, when I was served papers that stated I was single again.

Apparently, they had worked together on the divorce, which I tried doing in the beginning. But the bastard wouldn’t sign anything. I did find out why he wouldn’t do it; he didn’t want me to trap another man like I supposedly did to him by getting pregnant. Oh please, I was in my 40s. It wasn’t impossible for me to get pregnant but it was unliely; I did however have a few scares in the first couple of years after leaving him.

My daughter thoguht it was funny to send a “Sorry for your loss” card with the papers. Inside was her awful writing: “You could’ve had what you wanted if you had just put in the effort to be a decent mom and wife. You ruined other’s lives because you were greedy and selfish. You made your bed and now you need to lie in it.” This was my daughter’s way of a sick fucking joke. She was smart, too smart sometimes; she also had a messed up sense of “justice” and humor. I did try to appeal it but everyone denied it. Without the money I couldn’t do anything else. Even my job, despite working in asset protection for a major retailer, I couldn’t afford it. Eventually I had to give up.

I spent a few more years working until I couldn’t do it due to old age. I hoped my son would care for me. That shit admitted me to a nursing home and left me; not once did he come and visit. I tried having the staff call my daughter and ex, but neither of them would come see me. No one wanted to see me. The staff spent as little time as they could with me; there were too many immigrants and black people working here and I didn’t want them caring for me. I could almost hear a sigh of relief when they moved me to the hospice section as my health started declining.

Here I am, in my darkest hour, alone. Dying with no loved ones around me, or the comfort that I worked so hard for.

I grab a paper and pencil that the staff left next to my table, and leave a letter to my kids.

“I raised you and gave you everything, yet you left me here to rot and die. I pray that on the slim chances you ever have children, they’ll be ten times worse to you that you did to me. I hope you then realize you never knew how good a thing you had until you lost it.”