Hence, so many people make bad choices, and end up on drugs, in prison, etc. And some people seem to make good decisions and get an education, get a career, and seem to have it all.
But in between those extremes are the ordinary people like me, and like the members of my family, and probably of your family as well, who make decisions every day and can only see after many years what the outcome of those decisions was.
Such was the decision my Daddy made around 40 years ago or thereabout, to move to Louisiana with his second wife Minnie, who just passed away last Sunday. She and Daddy had been married around 45 years - we haven't dug through the paperwork yet, I can remember their anniversary was the 22nd of July, but not what year.
Daddy had been in the Canadian armed forces and took early retirement to go live in the deep south with his wife. He became a father to Minnie's four children by her previous marriage. They get married pretty young down in those parts, and Momma and Poppa have around 15 great-great-grandchildren by now, I'm not sure of the exact count! They didn't have any children together, so I'm the only child my father had before they got married.
But in the terms of the family discussions before my Daddy moved away for good, I ended up staying in Montreal with my grandparents. The reasons are complex and sad. I wanted to go with my father, but my grandmother used a bit of emotional blackmail on me, suggesting that a newly-married couple might prefer to be on their own without a youngster running around. So when Daddy asked me if I wanted to go with them, I said no, to give him a chance at happiness. That was my thinking, even if it broke my heart, and his.
Water under the bridge. Daddy loved the south, and not just the weather. He thoroughly embraced the republican politics and the fundamentalist religion. In fact, he and my stepmom left the Southern Baptist Church, because the Southern Baptist Church wasn't fundamentalist enough for them!
(So when you think maybe I'm a bit loopy sometimes, remember, I have had to claw and scratch for every shred of sanity I own!)
But I digress...
They came back to Canada often to visit Daddy's parents until the old folks died, and they came up once after that to see me, and then that was it. They hadn't been back to Canada for over 20 years.
I had gone down once just before my first marriage, then once with my second Hubby, then three years ago with Daughter, and finally two weeks ago, just after my stepmom passed away.
And now I am musing on Daddy's life choices, and mine. And the effects of those choices on all our lives.
Daddy paid a hefty price in salary for moving to the south. As an outsider, it took him years to find a job, and when he finally got it, it paid way less that he had earned in the past. But he still had his pension from the military to help them, and they lived very frugally. I can't say they didn't have an entertainment budget, because they must have fed the five thousand over the years! But I don't think they went "out" much, to the occasional movie, the occasional restaurant, but mostly they just went to church and to Minnie's children's homes. Or had people over to their home.
Over the years they did what they could to help out my stepbrothers and stepsisters, and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Daddy knew how to fix stuff, Mother did a lot of sewing and cooking...And then they got old, and the roles began to be reversed. Now it was the job of my stepbrothers and stepsisters to come and cook and clean for Momma and Poppa. And then they got really old, and needed full time care.
Daddy had absolutely refused to sign up for medicare. Somebody got Momma signed up, so when she got really ill at the end of her life there was home help and then hospice care for her. But Daddy was determined he had seen his last doctor and visited his last dentist. He would fly into an absolute rage if we tried to convince him to go to either.
Sadly, I now know that this wasn't just his innate stubbornness, that Alzheimer's was eroding his brain at the time. We all just thought he was stubborn and knew what he wanted. The reality of it was, he didn't understand the consequences of this decision.
When my stepsister asked me to go down, three years ago, while both my dad and stepmom would still know who I was, I hauled Daughter with me and off we went. My dad had become an old man, and Momma had had a stroke that had, for all intents and purposes, made it virtually impossible to communicate with her. She could walk, barely, from the bedroom to the livingroom, but she became easily discontented when Daddy wasn't paying attention to her.
This time, when Momma passed away, I was able to go alone. Well enough, mentally, to live on a different planet without it destroying me. Because, make no mistake, the deep south is an extreme antithesis to life up here in Montreal!
My stepsister and her husband are taking care of Daddy in their home. I tried to help with caring for him while I was down there, but something in me irritates my father and he gets cantankerous around me. So my stepsister patiently explains to him several times a day that he needs to change his "underwear" - a euphemism for Depends. And she has to guide him through the whole process, explaining each step for him. And three hours later, he has forgotten it all and it has to be explained all over. And the same goes for getting him to eat, and getting him to brush his teeth, and getting him to take a bath...
While I was there, I engaged Daddy in some activities he used to enjoy, to see if he was still capable of doing them. We tried a jigsaw puzzle, which he used to love, but he wasn't interested. We tried a game he'd never seen called Tangrams, where you use plastic geometric shaped pieces to make pictures, and he watched that intently and shook his head when I did it incorrectly. And we played some cards.
Now that he could do. It only took a few minutes the first time, and he remembered what the suits were, what the values were, and what trump was. We played several times just the two of us, and then the night before I was to go home we played with my two stepsisters.
The one who is caring for Daddy was very uncomfortable at first, because all she could think of was how much laundry still had to be done. We played four hands of whist, and everybody eventually enjoyed themselves. Daddy really perked up, his sense of humor coming to the forefront. This is what I remember from my childhood, that playing cards was fun and funny, even if we didn't really know what we were doing.
But my stepsisters talked to me then of leisure time, and how little they had of it. And that's what's got me musing about life choices.
I have realized, since coming home, that I have a great deal of leisure time. Especially when compared with my stepsisters. And some of that is due to the fact that they simply have to work harder and longer to make ends meet than I do.
They live in an economically depressed state. My dad was able to help everyone out for years, and actually still contributes to his own support because they handle his finances for him since he became unable to. And I want to be clear - they handle his finances very well, much better than he ever did himself!
But the fact is, when you have to work that hard just to stay afloat, that is subsistence living.
I stayed in Montreal, where there is universal health care. I ended up in a good job with benefits. And when Daddy asked me to leave and move down south even just a few years ago, I said no, again. Because I know that I need medical care, and my best chance of that is from the position I have right now, with vacation, sick days, employee assistance program...The only advantage I've never used is maternity leave! I need all that to survive.
And I need the community of friends I have here, people who prefer liberal thinking, hate guns, think Barak Obama is the USA's last and best hope to be anything other than a national disgrace. People who don't believe in a god, at least, not the way my other family does! People who understand multiple cultures, who have travelled and come to understand that other people see things differently than we do.
I need peace and quiet, I need to read, to quilt, to pat my cats. I need my life, the life I've built for myself, with the help of family, friends, and lovers. This is my world here. I am not wealthy, but I have way more leisure than my other family. Plus, I only work three days a week, so I have even more leisure than most of my friends.
I wish I could give my stepsisters leisure. Down-time, time to play cards, or read a book, or play bubble pop for goodness sake! To organize their thoughts, soak in a tub...I don't know how they keep going. Part of my need to relax is medical, from the mood disorder, but I'm so much healthier now than I was, that's pretty moot now.
No, I'm pretty much convinced that the choices I made gave me this room to breathe that they simply don't have. I can't feel guilty about it - there was no way of knowing that there would be this inequity 40 years ago. I didn't know my life would work out the way it has, and I didn't know how things would work out for Daddy, for my stepmom, and for my other family. We don't know, when we make our choices, how they will open opportunities for us on the one hand, and limit our future choices on the other.
And 40 years ago, when my Dad moved away, he couldn't foresee that he would be so far away from where I lived that I would not be there to help him when he became to old and frail to care for himself. He kept insisting, during my visit, that he wanted to go home. But there is no home to go to, for him, but the one he is in. He is loved, petted, fed, washed, cared for, joked with, entertained, and safe.
But he moved away, and I didn't follow. And now we are very far apart.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less travelled by -
And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost
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