Please note this is non-fiction. Don't worry; I have no intention of bleeding all over the keyboard.
If you haven't read Part 1 of this series, you might want to go back and at least read the introduction before continuing here.
Li and John both commented that it would be a good idea to mark these as non-fiction. I've added it as a label, and put a note up top here and in Part 1 as well.
Part 2 is the second and last example dealing with denial. It's a little harder to explain, because unlike Part 1's example, I'm pretty sure I never got to witness the worst of it. It's sort of like reading a novel where the protagonist keeps on noticing people playing cards, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything until two weeks later when you're trying to describe the book to a friend. I didn't put everything together until years after all these little snapshots of interactions occurred.
I'm thirteen, my one brother is ten, and my youngest brother is four. So after my dad passes away, when it's communion-time at church, my mum goes up first, and then when she returns to the pew I go up with my ten-year-old brother. That way there's always someone old enough to be responsible with the four-year-old. Nothing more to it than that.
Except...
The whole time my mum is standing in line at the front of the church, the people behind us are whispering things like: "That's not allowed. A divorced woman taking communion... that's not allowed. Why doesn't the priest do something about it? Why doesn't he talk to her? Who does she think she is? I suppose it's the modern way... but it's not allowed. Well, if the priest wants to help her pretend..."
It was an open casket visitation. The obit was in the local paper. There was a church funeral. There was a condolences notice in the church newsletter. There were In Memoriam masses which were also announced in the church newsletter.
Even if they missed all that — Catholic congregations are big around here and you don't get to know everyone — there's no excuse.
I could have had a dad who was disabled and found it too difficult to physically make it to church.
I could have had a dad who wasn't Catholic but who agreed that the kids would be raised Catholic.
But no. They had to go there.
Snapshot B: music class interrogations
There's a girl, let's call her Vera, in music class. I only met her when I started high school. But she knows about me and my family a little bit, because her family is friends with my mum's hairdresser.
A couple of times a week, when we're getting our musical instruments out of their cubbyholes or putting them back, she asks me questions.
"Does your mum wear makeup?" she says.
"Lipstick."
"So, would you say your mum wears a lot of makeup?"
"Just lipstick."
"Do you think your mum is pretty?"
"She was a model in high school."
"You're lying."
"She wasn't a famous model. She modelled clothes from home sewing patterns."
"Did your dad know how to cook?"
"Yeah. He was good at it."
She laughs at me. "Oh yeah, sure. Hamburgers and hot dogs."
"His first job in Canada was working as a cook."
And on. Sometimes I'll interrupt her and ask what the point of all these questions is. She shrugs and acts like they're no big deal. They aren't presented like I've written them here — just one or two a day, a few times a week — but if the same question was asked more than once and I varied in my answer at all, I'd get grilled on it.
She says her hairdresser contact gave a different answer than mine. I ask her what the hell business it is of any of them and tell her I'm tired of being mined for gossip.
She says she just wants to know and that she doesn't mean anything by it.
The thing is, the incidents I described in Part 1 only started after the questions started. And Natasha and Vera knew each other.
I understand that there was a time (in some places that time is now) where a family that's been abandoned by one or the other parent will pretend the absent parent is dead. I get that. But I doubt very much that these pretending families will go through such an elaborate charade that they'll find a body to display at a funeral home for a couple of days, hold a church funeral for it, and convince the priests in two parishes to go along with the story.
Reading this post over again, it sounds like these things happened in a much smaller community than they did. We lived just outside of a small town until I was ten, but before my father passed away we moved to a suburb of 300,000 people. There were 1,800 people attending my high school the year I graduated, and the students who went there lived in two different municipal counties. The church where my dad's funeral was held had over 2,000 people in the parish.
There is a line where assumptions turn to malice. And I think these examples show two points that line intersects.
If you haven't read Part 1 of this series, you might want to go back and at least read the introduction before continuing here.
Li and John both commented that it would be a good idea to mark these as non-fiction. I've added it as a label, and put a note up top here and in Part 1 as well.
Part 2 is the second and last example dealing with denial. It's a little harder to explain, because unlike Part 1's example, I'm pretty sure I never got to witness the worst of it. It's sort of like reading a novel where the protagonist keeps on noticing people playing cards, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything until two weeks later when you're trying to describe the book to a friend. I didn't put everything together until years after all these little snapshots of interactions occurred.
Part 2: More Denial
Snapshot A: churchI'm thirteen, my one brother is ten, and my youngest brother is four. So after my dad passes away, when it's communion-time at church, my mum goes up first, and then when she returns to the pew I go up with my ten-year-old brother. That way there's always someone old enough to be responsible with the four-year-old. Nothing more to it than that.
Except...
The whole time my mum is standing in line at the front of the church, the people behind us are whispering things like: "That's not allowed. A divorced woman taking communion... that's not allowed. Why doesn't the priest do something about it? Why doesn't he talk to her? Who does she think she is? I suppose it's the modern way... but it's not allowed. Well, if the priest wants to help her pretend..."
It was an open casket visitation. The obit was in the local paper. There was a church funeral. There was a condolences notice in the church newsletter. There were In Memoriam masses which were also announced in the church newsletter.
Even if they missed all that — Catholic congregations are big around here and you don't get to know everyone — there's no excuse.
I could have had a dad who was disabled and found it too difficult to physically make it to church.
I could have had a dad who wasn't Catholic but who agreed that the kids would be raised Catholic.
But no. They had to go there.
Snapshot B: music class interrogations
There's a girl, let's call her Vera, in music class. I only met her when I started high school. But she knows about me and my family a little bit, because her family is friends with my mum's hairdresser.
A couple of times a week, when we're getting our musical instruments out of their cubbyholes or putting them back, she asks me questions.
"Does your mum wear makeup?" she says.
"Lipstick."
"So, would you say your mum wears a lot of makeup?"
"Just lipstick."
"Do you think your mum is pretty?"
"She was a model in high school."
"You're lying."
"She wasn't a famous model. She modelled clothes from home sewing patterns."
"Did your dad know how to cook?"
"Yeah. He was good at it."
She laughs at me. "Oh yeah, sure. Hamburgers and hot dogs."
"His first job in Canada was working as a cook."
And on. Sometimes I'll interrupt her and ask what the point of all these questions is. She shrugs and acts like they're no big deal. They aren't presented like I've written them here — just one or two a day, a few times a week — but if the same question was asked more than once and I varied in my answer at all, I'd get grilled on it.
She says her hairdresser contact gave a different answer than mine. I ask her what the hell business it is of any of them and tell her I'm tired of being mined for gossip.
She says she just wants to know and that she doesn't mean anything by it.
The thing is, the incidents I described in Part 1 only started after the questions started. And Natasha and Vera knew each other.
I understand that there was a time (in some places that time is now) where a family that's been abandoned by one or the other parent will pretend the absent parent is dead. I get that. But I doubt very much that these pretending families will go through such an elaborate charade that they'll find a body to display at a funeral home for a couple of days, hold a church funeral for it, and convince the priests in two parishes to go along with the story.
Reading this post over again, it sounds like these things happened in a much smaller community than they did. We lived just outside of a small town until I was ten, but before my father passed away we moved to a suburb of 300,000 people. There were 1,800 people attending my high school the year I graduated, and the students who went there lived in two different municipal counties. The church where my dad's funeral was held had over 2,000 people in the parish.
There is a line where assumptions turn to malice. And I think these examples show two points that line intersects.