My father's 74th.

Last night, it would have been my father's 74th birthday. I guess he was quite lucky to live to this ripe age. I remember ages ago, when the problems in the family were already quite obvious, when the quiet nights were the nights I could not go to sleep, waiting for another argument my parents would not have been bothered to conceal behind the close doors, I could not sleep. In the dead of the night I would be waiting for their raised voices, for my mother's frenetic screams, for threats to divorce my father, to leave him, to even kill him. The threats were never followed though, of course. Some women are like that, and I promised to myself that I would never be one of those women. I hope I can keep the promise, because dysfunctional families are only cute in the published works of Douglas Coupland. And never in real life.
My mother would come to my room and try to wake me up, which was not necessary - I was wide awake anyway. She would try to quickly dress me in the first available thing, throw on a sweatshirt and order me to qickly pull on a pair of jeans. We would go to the hallway, my mother would wait for a few agonising minutes, waiting for my father to emerge from the kitchen, to fall on to his knees and beg for her forgiveness, to promise a better life, to promise to stop doing things that were killing, that by then already killed their relationship. My mother would have none of that, it was like a well-rehearsed play. We would leave. Just the two of us, she clasping her handbag and nothing else. I would always worry that we did not even have a change of clothes, shampoo, our toothbrushes. We would leave the house but would not even make it to the main road just a few blocks away from our house, to, perhaps hail a car to take us somewhere, where parents were loving and children were full of pride to have an important father and a stay at home mother, where commitment to being part of the healthy family would be palpable. We would stop in the middle of the lane leading to the main traffic road, my mother and I, in the dead of the night. It just dawned on me that maybe my mother was waiting for my father to come running after us. But he never did. And eventually, after several minutes, or maybe half an hour outside, we would turn back and head home. By then I would be really tired, I cannot remember how these short trips and returns home ended. Perhaps I was sleep-walking, with my eyes already shut tight, before I even hit the already cold bed.
It was one of these nights, the argument I was listening to was just getting out of control, my mother would soon start screaming her devastated threats, not caring about the early morning hour of a school night, the fact that she had a child, not even a teenager with a sort of wisdom of the world and how thing run, but merely a child, to work out unhappy families by herself. She screamed and screamed at my father, who kept quite, maybe because he was considering the late hour, maybe because he simply did not care to respond, maybe because he wanted us to leave.
I wish you were dead, my mother spat viciousy these words in his face. And then I heard him saying, that it was better to have a shitty life, then die in a happy place. I don't know. Actually, I know for sure that this is not the best at all. To lead a shitty life instead of ending one when you could, in a happy place, still loved and respected and knowing that this is the peak, that things might never get any more perfect, that all that is in the future is a slow downfall, exhiliraring, the loss of hair, the loss of sexual desire, the loss of respect, the sudden guilt of being a burden to people who surround you. All of the old people are left to themselves, to shrink within their bodies, to lose the appeal, the hopes, the wit, and finally even the wisdom of an old age. To be left with bad odour and helpnessness and broken nights of nocturnal weakness, when one can never fall asleep and is constantly woken up during the night to empty the weak bladder - an early signpost to the future of adult nappies, and than the grave. Was my father the major egoist? The selfish cancer eating the life of his family away? I guess, after hundreds of futile attempts of my mother to leave him, he was quite certain that she never would. He knew that he was safe with her, looked after and never abandoned. He knew that whatever his sins, whatever his selfish deeds, he can push further and further and there would always be a cushion to fall back on, not the softest cushion, but hey, it's better to enjoy the shitty life, then to be dead. People in the East Europe are lucky to live to the age of 60, the statistics show. My dad lived to 73.
I still remember the awkward phone-calls I had to endure on his birthday, when after the usual greetings and wishes of health and propserity, there was nothing left but ackward silence, year after year. Well, the first year I am relieved from this duty. Happy birthday, dad.