We finally received word yesterday that my uncle had been in the VA hospital up in Los Angeles for about a month now. We drove up there to find him conscious and awake in a hospital bed that his wrists were tied to. Stuck in isolation due to a Staff infection, both of his hands were in padded mitts to keep him from pulling out all of the tubes that were running from every orifice of his body.
Sixty-nine years of age, and my mother's brother has spent half of his life living as a transient, predominantly on the streets of Beverly Hills. I was 12-years-old when he showed up, his long feet hanging out the back door of his brown van, on my parent's driveway. He moved into my bedroom that year. Meanwhile, I was transferred to my parent's room, and I resented him for it.
My neighborhood classmates became accustomed to my uncle's visage. On the bus on the way to school, they would spy him walking across the Emerald Drive bridge and they'd sing out, "Hey, Cara! There's your uncle." I would slink below the window frame, my knees brushing the front of the pleather seat in front of me as a rosy red color spread across my face.
As the years passed, he came and went back and forth between my parent's home and the streets. Quickly growing bored of domesticated life, he typically returns to his ways of scooping change out of payphone return slots, digging through ashtrays for the remaining butts of cigarettes and more, once the rain has passed and his own ailments have subsided. Perhaps, it was an early childhood filled with fear, control, and emotional and physical abuse that led to his alcoholism. Whatever it was, schizophrenia has become the result all of it.
Whenever I catch him speaking loudly to the faces inside of his head, as his face twists and turns into various features of expression, I loudly declare, "Who you talkin' to, old man?" This small bit of acknowledgment never fails to produce a smile on his lips and a return back into this moment, now. Perhaps, it's my way of saying, "Hey, it's me. Remember, your little niece? The one you'd picked up into your arms and passionately kiss as your grisly mustache tickled my innocent cheek."
Resistance may bee futile and it is certainly self-defeating. Because there he was alone in that sterile hospital room, whispering to get him out of there as his muscles sat taught and pulling at the restrictions on his wrists. His shoulders were hunched up and towards his ears. I placed my hand on his heart, "Please, just relax - it's the only way you will heal." And, yet, what is the option here? Healing for what purpose - to leave the hospital and return to the streets? My parents feel that this may bee a final call on my uncle's life, yet I recognize the tenacity and resilience of my familial lineage. With resistance as an ancestral trait, our resilient lives are unfortunately made longer by the suffering and pain that we are choosing to endure. I, however, am choosing to surrender this time around.
What do you choose?
