Worthy: A Memoir

By Francine Brocious

A single daughter is born to a former nun and an eccentric, volatile man. As her parents' unhealed pain affects her life, Francine embarks on a journey all her own. And then she is faced with one life-shifting event that proves to be even greater than all of the others. Her childlike, curious nature, somehow still so vital in her heart, leads her

• Language: English
• Publisher: Francine Brocious
• Release date: Feb 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9780578380384

Francine Brocious

A single daughter is born to a former nun and an eccentric, volatile man. As her parents' unhealed pain affects her life, Francine embarks on a journey all her own. And then she is faced with one life-shifting event that proves to be even greater than all of the others. Her childlike, curious nature, somehow still so vital in her heart, leads her to disentangle the web of her past, heal her heart, find her voice, and rise up in love and service to a deeply hurting world.

Book preview

Worthy

A Memoir

Francine Brocious

Copyright © 2022 by Francine Brocious

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 978-0-578-38037-7

EISBN 978-0-578-38038-4

Preface

I wrote this book from late 2016 through early 2017.  At that time, parts of the world were collectively in great periods of upheaval and social unrest.  But it was still years before a global pandemic would spread throughout our world, greatly magnifying and altering so many complex issues which millions of people were already facing, and adding in additional issues that many of us had likely never before deeply considered or had to learn how to manage and endure.

There is no mention of a pandemic in this story, or of so many of the other huge collective changes we have faced since its spread across our world.  I chose to leave this part of my life’s story written as it was completed in the spring of 2017, with a few minor edits, but no major additions.  I feel that so many of my experiences and reflections which I share in this story are still relevant to today’s times, perhaps even more so, now that we have all endured such a trying, heartbreaking period of uncertainty, change, and loss. 

Naturally, since I wrote this part of my story five years ago, my life has shifted in immeasurable ways since then as well.  Perhaps some of my stories from these more current times will find their way into a future work of writing.  Perhaps some of them may also stay firmly within my heart.  Only time will tell. 

My greatest wish for all of us is that we can learn how to healthily assist each other in coming though the tremendous trauma and grief brought about by all of the recent shifts and losses in our world.  I deeply believe that there are so many more ways we can assist each other than what our current systems, traditions, patterns, and ways of existing have allowed for. 

Yet, I am not the first person on this planet to have idealized visions for what a healthy world could look like.  And I will not be the last. 

I just hope that after so much pain and tribulation, we can really begin to pull each other out of the ashes of trauma, grief, and loss, and co-create a society free of so many of the pains of our past. 

I thank you for your interest in my story.  I hope that it may help you in at least some way, whether that may be to find deeper levels of understanding, empathy, compassion, and care for yourself and for others, or whether it simply may be to help you feel a little less alone in some of your own experiences. 

With much love and many blessings,

Francine

I love you, Mom.

Mom was sitting on her cushioned folding chair in the kitchen of her small apartment.  As she focused on me, she smiled in genuine gratitude.

I love you too, Francine.

Her smile read to me some very distinct feelings.  There was a very innocent, almost childlike quality in it, of someone who was completely in the present moment, existing peacefully in its awe.  But there was also a sense of detachment from the world.  It was almost like she’d longed for so many years to be in another dimension of reality that she’d actually made it happen, even though she was still in a physical body on earth. 

And then there was the mystery.  Even though I’d spent as much time with Mom as I had over the few decades of my life, I felt like there was so much I didn’t know about her.  So much I might not ever know...

The genuine exchange of good feelings between us in that moment was rather rare, and somehow not awkward.  Most of my previous almost-thirty years existing in relationship with this person who I knew as my mother had felt in so many ways the opposite of what I imagined a mother-daughter relationship could be.

Yet, I was truly grateful for the exchange of loving words that day. 

I’d just gotten done singing to Mom for maybe about half an hour before we’d said those words.  I’d recently started voice lessons again after a lot of time off from solo singing, and wanted to show her how my studies were progressing.  And since I had only flown out to visit her for five days this time, I knew our time together was limited.  So I’d chosen to sing some of her favorite hymns.  I’d snuck a religious hymnal out of my church temporarily before I’d made the thousand-mile trip to see her. 

I don’t remember specifically what I sang that day.  Probably Just a Closer Walk with Thee was in the lineup, as well as How Great Thou Art.  Classic old hymns.  And likely another one of her favorites, In the Garden.  These were all hymns that she’d sung in church, in choirs and congregations, and had listened to for decades while tuning in to religious radio.

The radio was right there on her kitchen counter.  It was a small, old radio, rectangular in shape, and cream-colored on the top and sides.  It had a black speaker on one part of the front side and a horizontal station tuner on the other, with two silver dials underneath the tuner.  One dial was for power and volume, and one for tuning.  My mind flashed back momentarily to many years before, when, as a growing teenager, I would turn that tuning dial to the clearest top-40 radio station I could find.  Many of our arguments during that time had ensued over my radio song preferences...

This time, however, was one of those rare moments when the radio was turned off.  There were no sounds of discussion from the frequent broadcast of one of Mom’s favorite radio shows, a show described by its hosts as a space where we turn our hearts toward home.  There was no classic religious music, no hymns being sung or played in the background, no children listening and questioning with rapt attention as they talked excitedly to the adults about the lessons they were supposed to gain from the week’s bible story.

There were just the simple sounds of my live singing of some old hymns in that small kitchen space, and a few meaningful words of appreciation which were felt in a deep and unusual way, seemingly by both of us. 

And there was also the silence. 

Silence had been a big part of Mom’s and my relationship over those almost-thirty years.  There had been silence between us so many nights after dinner when I was growing up, as we sat and listened to the religious radio station.  When I didn’t live with Mom as frequently when I was older, there had been a lot of silence and space between our phone calls, our visits.  And between those periods of silence, there had been a lot of arguing.  So, so much arguing...

Ours was a relationship of extremes, of power struggles, and of great hope.  Mom had likely hoped so much that I’d become all she had in mind for me to become—a bright woman who was devoted to the same religion as she was, and who wanted a similar devoted life as she’d had.  But through all of our arguing, I’d just desperately hoped much of the opposite.  I’d just hoped that Mom could love me for who I was and who I was becoming, no matter how different I was from her, or even how much alike we might actually be after all...

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Twenty-six years earlier

Supper’s ready, Mom called from the kitchen.  Pop and I made our way over to see what there was to eat. 

Mom had made us one of the usual foods she’d make for us—browned, drained, very-lean ground round without any salt or spices.  This was served with some plain great northern beans which she’d previously cooked, and some previously-frozen peas, also with no salt and no spices or butter. 

Mom herself was having something much different.  She’d prepared her usual food—those same plain cooked great northern beans, mixed together with a few scoopfuls of dry wheat germ, a couple of tablespoons of canola oil, and some dry milk.  This was Mom’s signature meal, the basis of her special diet, which she ate out of a Tupperware bowl or dish for lunch and dinner nearly every single day. 

Mom hadn’t always eaten this way. 

She’d grown up in a fairly large family, on the outskirts of a small upper Midwestern city, a little over an hour north of where I’d grown up.  Mom was born in the late 1930s, the fifth of seven children.  Her father worked for decades for the postal service as a letter carrier, starting out delivering mail by horses.  Her mother stayed at home to attend to the children, keep house, and work on their small part-time farm. 

Mom spoke rarely but fondly of her childhood.  The family didn’t have a lot, but it seemed that there was a lot of love.  They maintained a handful of cows, a few pigs and chickens, and a large vegetable garden which the children would help with.  They also enjoyed picking crates full of berries from their backyard berry bushes in the summertime, as well as picking fresh fruit from some apple, pear, and plum trees on their property. 

Mom almost didn’t get to experience this childhood, however. 

When she was a little over a year old, Mom was toddling around curiously in the family‘s backyard on a warm summer day.  She discovered a metal tub full of rainwater which her parents used to collect and make later use of.  The tub was probably about at least half as tall as she was.  She pulled herself up against the tub and fell headfirst into the water. 

By the time her oldest brother discovered her in the tub, Mom had started to turn blue.  Her brother, almost twelve at the time, had very recently learned how to perform CPR.  He assisted Mom while the emergency personnel made their way to the house.  They told him if he hadn’t found Mom and had given her CPR when he did, she probably would have not survived. 

Mom’s mother, stories say, was a great cook and baker who loved to make cookies and fresh fruit pies.  Likely, Mom ate quite traditionally all the years she grew up.  She probably had a mixed and varied diet, full of meats, dairy, fresh fruits and veggies, and the occasional sweet treat.  The drastic changes in her diet would come later on.

As a young girl, school was something Mom really seemed to enjoy.  Her family was quite religious, and Mom attended religious schools from first grade all the way through high school.  She had several good friends who she spent time with in school, and she played trombone in her high-school band.  In her junior year of high school, she was even voted prom queen by her classmates.  The local newspaper even took a picture.  I have a clipping of that picture, which proved to me many years later that this prom really had happened. 

I’m grateful for that picture.  When I think of Mom as such a social butterfly and a prom queen, I smile a little as I shake my head in disbelief.  When I look at the picture, in it is a young woman with full light-brown hair, no glasses, happily sitting next to her date.  She is wearing a paper crown and a gorgeous light-colored dress with a full layered skirt. 

Looking closer at this faded black-and-white newspaper photo, Mom has a light shrug draped around her shoulders, and the dress actually appears to have thin straps and a sweetheart neckline! 

Mom!  Wearing a dress with thin straps and a sweetheart neckline!  This was a young woman who I would have been fascinated to have known.  She seemed almost the opposite of the mother I eventually did come to know.

Mom’s enjoyment for learning, she said, as well as the kind, caring influence of her schoolteachers who were religious nuns, prompted her to feel called into the religious life at the young age of eighteen.  Her career goals were to become a nun and a schoolteacher.

It’s so easy for me, being born decades later than the 1950s, to forget that at that time, careers for women were so much more limited.  Many women still adhered to very traditional historic cultural norms.  These norms seemed to have dictated that if a woman really wanted to, she could have a job as a nurse, a schoolteacher, or maybe even a secretary.  But otherwise, her given job was at home as a mother, attending to the needs of her husband and children. 

Mom had an older sister who had gone on to become a nurse.  Her second-oldest sister eventually did the same.  Both sisters also married and had families of their own.  Her youngest sister also married and raised children.

But Mom wanted to become a teacher, and during the early-to-mid-20th century, it was acceptable for young women to pair that vocation with a call to religious life.  After all, many parochial schools had been formed by nuns, and many nuns still worked in them.

And so, in the mid-1950s, Mom moved to a much larger city about four hours from her family home and began her life in the convent shortly after graduating from high school.

Mom would only say very little to me about what her time in the convent was like when I would ask her about it, even though she spent five years of her life there.  Mainly, she would say that she enjoyed the companionship of the other sisters.   

So, like for much of her life, I can only imagine what Mom experienced during that time, as a nun.  I can guess that her time there, in addition to taking her initial formal religious vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, as well as taking on important aspects of religious life such as prayer and daily service, also included further education to prepare her to become a schoolteacher.  At that time, it wasn’t a requirement for nuns to have college degrees to teach in schools.  As long as they’d been in the convent and had pursued some further education, they were allowed to start teaching.

According to some papers I discovered, Mom spent two and a half years in the convent before she began teaching.  She even taught under her new name, Sister Mary, named after her mother.  There is actual physical proof of this time in Mom’s life as well, in the form of an elementary-school class picture.  Mom’s small picture is included, along with all of the other students in her class.  There she is, as Sister Mary, her head and shoulders covered in the full habit of a nun.

In the course of the following two and a half years, Sister Mary taught early elementary school in three different schools.  For one year, she was even sent to teach in a school halfway across the country.  Mom did tell me that she didn’t like living in that part of the country.  She felt it was much too humid.

Things get even more murky at this point in the story.

After those five years, Mom decided to leave the convent.  She attributed her decision to stress and to some mysterious food allergies to animal fats that had suddenly seemed to crop up. But even though that was her story, I often sensed that there was much more behind it that she wasn’t telling me.  I sensed this even more so as I got older.

When I think about Mom’s time in the convent, along with what I did come to know about her, I often feel that a peaceful, monastic, contemplative life would have been the perfect life for her.  She would have been totally free of family responsibilities and have been able to devote all of her energies to teaching, which I think she really did love. 

So, I wonder, really what made her leave?  She’d tell me that she didn’t want the other sisters to have to cook special meals for her because of her allergies.  But that reason alone doesn’t add up in my mind.  Couldn’t she have cooked her own meals, as she ended up doing for years afterwards?  Or couldn’t the sisters have been understanding about her dietary needs and have provided the ingredients she felt she needed to stay healthy? 

Was it maybe that she felt a lot of shame for not being able to eat meals with the other nuns, perhaps like her allergies made her an outcast, and feeling that way was just too hard for her heart to take?  And what on earth had caused all those allergies and that stress anyway?  Was it maybe from switching schools so often in such a short time?  And why had she had to switch so often?

But many years later after Mom had left the convent, and this particularly ordinary evening played out in my childhood, Mom had cooked her specific food for herself and a slightly-more normal dinner for Pop and me.  I was only four years old then.  I was much too young to have known about Mom’s life in the convent, or to have wondered any of those wonders.  And Mom’s days as a nun were so much in her past, even though in many ways they weren’t.  Yet she was now married, still a schoolteacher, and now with a young daughter. 

At dinnertime this night, as usual, Mom was abiding by her own diet that she had customized for herself in order to deal with her food allergies.  Ever since leaving the convent, she’d maintained a no-salt, no-sugar, low-fat diet.  And she was very rigorous about adhering to this diet. 

Animal fats, Mom said, made her break out in acne.  Sugar made her feel on edge.  Salt made her bloated and ornery.  Fruits had only natural sugars, but even so, she rarely ate them.  And most vegetables, or even salad?  For reasons unknown to me, they just weren’t a regular part of her diet.  So Mom had limited herself to eating so very few foods.  She’d read some nutrition books along the way and had tried to cobble together foods that she thought would give her the most nutrients, as well as foods that didn’t make her feel bad or break out. 

Her staple foods were the wheat germ, great northern beans, dry milk, and canola oil which she’d mix altogether in a bowl.  Sometimes, she’d throw in a couple of pieces of 97% fat-free chicken breast, which she’d hand-trimmed as much of the remainder of the visible white fat off of as she could, and had then cooked in a pressure cooker.  At times in the warmer months, she’d enjoy some garden-fresh green beans given to her by neighbors or friends, which she’d steam and eat plain or add to her meal concoction.  Sometimes in the summer, she’d buy a small crate of blueberries or raspberries from the grocery store, and rarely, she’d enjoy a fresh in-season peach or nectarine.

Amazingly, with this diet, Mom was able to maintain a steady, light-yet-seemingly-healthy weight, although I’d always known her to be much smaller and thinner than it looked like she had been in her prom picture all those years prior.  In that picture, her hair and her face were full, her weight seemed maybe fifteen or twenty pounds higher, and her body appeared much healthier overall. 

Mom always ate very regularly.  She just had small bones, she’d say, and osteoporosis ran in her family.  Her arms were thin, and they seemed to get thinner and looked more like sticks as I got older.  Her wrists were tiny.  Even if she would have wanted to wear a wrist watch, none would have fit her, unless she would have tried to poke more notches in some of the leather watchbands.  Her stature was slight and slim, yet her legs had a good bit of muscle to them.

Her hair, which had grayed completely by the time I was a young child, was cut very short around most of her head, except for two chin-length bang pieces on each side, which she would pin back in a circular manner near her ears with bobby pins to keep from falling in her face.  Her hair was thin, even though she said it would get thick.  She didn’t go to a hair stylist.  Instead, she cut her own hair and would use a handheld, powder-blue-colored piece of plastic with a razor-like blade on one side, which she called a hair thinner, to thin out her thick hair.  I’ve still never seen a hair thinner existing anywhere else in the world, other than that one that Mom would use for her own hair, and later, for mine. 

Her clothes were mainly all professional clothes.  I rarely remember Mom wearing jeans or much else that was considered casual, even on days when she didn’t teach.  Her clothes consisted mainly of a bunch of brightly-colored pantsuits which she’d gotten used from a family friend who no longer needed them, and had gotten tailored to fit her.  Most of the pants had elastic waistbands.  The rest of her wardrobe consisted mainly of other blouses and sweater vests which she’d found at thrift stores, and a rare calf-length skirt.  She didn’t wear dresses.

Mom would always tell people that she had a low body temperature and was often quite cold.  So she would layer all of these clothes daily, sometimes up to five layers at a time on top, and at least two on the bottom.  She’d often wear long underwear or leg warmers underneath her pants, even in late spring and early fall, when temperatures in the upper Midwest were somewhat crisp but not always freezing.  On top, she’d layer a blouse or two, then a sweater vest, then the top part of her pantsuit.  Sometimes, she’d wear a sweater vest over the top part of the pantsuit.  The colors of all of these layers sometimes coordinated, but they often didn’t match much at all.  Yet, she always tried her best to look professional for her job and when she attended church at minimum on a weekly basis. 

As far as accessories went, Mom would use powdered makeup on her face, sometimes a bit of blush, and rarely a little bit of neutral-colored lipstick.  She didn’t have pierced ears, and she didn’t wear any other jewelry except for her wedding ring, which was a plain gold band.  She owned about two pairs of shoes—some comfortable black or neutral-colored flat Keds which she liked the comfort of, being on her feet most of the day while teaching.  The shoes were sturdy and looked to be a cross between a dress shoe and a sneaker.  They were a rare part of her wardrobe that she would buy new, maybe one new pair every several years if she felt her old pair was finally wearing out.

And since she often felt so cold, Mom had plenty of clothing for the outdoors.  Before going outdoors, she’d normally put on at least a lightweight long jacket and would wrap a light scarf around her head for most of the entire year, even in the summertime, so that her head or her bladder wouldn’t get chilled.  But in the winter, she’d wear the light head scarf, then a hat over the top of that, along with a neck scarf and a long used dress coat, sometimes with a hood on.  She’d wear warm gloves, of course, and at times would wear mittens over her gloves.  And she’d wear snow boots to school in the winter, or black rubber rain galoshes over her shoes in the spring and fall, even though the school was literally right behind our backyard.  She’d often change into her Keds in her classroom.

And so it was, on that evening long ago when I was a young girl, the same routine took place as it did on many evenings back then.  Mom would come home from teaching and cook Pop and me a simple dinner.  She’d have her usual food, and then she’d often stay in the kitchen and listen to religious radio while Pop and I would go into the living room and watch TV.

It was a life that Mom probably never expected to live, not only having to fully provide financially for our small family of three, but taking on the additional roles of wife and mother.  Teaching took a lot out of Mom, I’m sure, as her introverted nature would lead me to believe.  So by the end of a school day, she probably wanted nothing more than to come home, relax, and immerse herself in the familiar safety and warmth of the discussions on her favorite religious radio station, the soothing musical arrangements of classic hymns, and the worldwide and local community she likely felt such a part of.  But she had a husband and a daughter to attend to, and by that point in the day, her energies were probably spent.   

Besides that, her marriage wasn’t shaping up to be anything at all like she had probably imagined it would be.

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What does this mean, Pop?  What’s this?  What’s in this picture?  Who’s that?

Back before the age of instant information and the Internet had taken the world by storm, we had a very old encyclopedia set in the house when I was young.  And like many children, I had an insatiable sense of curiosity. 

So probably starting at around age three, long before I could read, I used to go into the living room and open one of the two horizontal glass doors which housed the twenty-six encyclopedias we had somehow acquired.  They were kept in a beautiful redwood case, and the glass doors were just at my tiny height.  I’d open them and pull out a random encyclopedia, take it to my father, open it to a page probably with a picture on, and ask him to tell me all about whatever that was. 

In a shift of roles which was much more unusual in the mid-1980s than it is today, Pop took on the role of house-husband while Mom taught at school all day.  With no other children in our house and none ever to follow, I was Pop’s little girl.  And I loved spending time with him.

Pop had an amazingly joyous and lighthearted energy about him.  He would often try to do things to make me laugh, like putting half a banana in his mouth at once and trying to talk with it.  His eyes would light up when I would laugh in delight at whatever antics he decided to try.

Pop (pronounced pup, as in the word puppy,) got his nickname from Papa, which I’d shortened.  I think it had started off as daddy when I was a toddler but had somehow switched along the way.  By the time I was older, Pop had stuck, and it stayed that way.

Many mornings after Mom left to teach for the day, before I was old enough to go to school, Pop would help me get up and ready for the day, and after I ate, he’d have his breakfast.  His normal breakfast consisted of an extra-large bowl of corn flakes covered generously in milk, and a couple of bananas to follow.  Then we’d watch some TV, shows like $25,000 Pyramid and The Price is Right. 

After those shows, we’d go on with the rest of our day.  Sometimes Pop would take me to the small local grocery store in our tiny village to get food.  On different days, he’d take me downtown to the post office to pick up the mail, across the main street to the bank to make financial transactions, over to the tiny office where we’d pay our monthly electric bill in person, and sometimes to the pharmacy to pick up some over-the-counter meds or other odds and ends.  Every once in a while, he’d take me to the outskirts of another small town about ten miles away, to a butcher to stock up on meat.  He was always so proud of me and loved to take me around.  Hard to believe she’s getting so big! he’d say happily to all of the local vendors and secretaries whenever he saw them.  Feels like just yesterday that I was changing her diapers and feeding her bottles!

It never really embarrassed me when he said those things to people.  I was Pop’s little girl, and I was just happy to be around him.

Back in the half-duplex house we rented, I’d follow him downstairs to the cool, moist basement as he put laundry in the washer and dryer, and back upstairs to watch him fold it.  The washer that we used was a front-loader with a circular glass window, and I loved to stand in front of it and watch the clothes mix with the suds and toss and turn all around as they would get clean.  Pop would show me how he would change the dryer’s lint filter, and how he would spin the dryer wheel around an extra few times after he removed the clothes,  just in case some socks or other articles of clothing might be stuck in it.  His strong arms were able to spin the dryer wheel easily, whereas my tiny arms and hands could hardly get it to move.

Sometimes I’d want to help him with things, like folding the laundry.  But just as he had a special and very particular way of doing many things, Pop had a special way of folding the laundry.  The corners had to be lined up just perfectly.  He’d often let me start to help, but if I didn’t fold things exactly the way he wanted, he would gently instruct me more as he re-folded them.

Pop was a strong, muscular man, just a couple of inches shy of six feet tall.  His hands were large, and his feet were even larger, so much so that he needed to buy custom-made shoes in a size thirteen, with a triple-E width.  He’d once had a head of thick brown hair which gradually thinned and decreased on the top as he got older.  Pop would joke that he thought his hair was falling out because he wore baseball caps so much throughout his life. 

Despite the hair he was losing on his head, Pop was covered in a lot of it from head to toe, in that way resembling the looks of the late comedian Robin Williams.  And in some respects, Pop’s personality was a little like the one that Robin shared with the world.  Pop was a jokester also.  He generally kept his jokes very clean.  Puns were his favorite; and humor, joy, and a desperate desire to connect with others kept Pop as sane as he could be after all that he’d lived through.

Pop was also born in the late 1930s, about a year and a half after Mom.  He also grew up in a religious family in a small upper Midwestern town in the same state as Mom, about an hour east of where we lived when I was little.  Pop was the first child of my paternal grandparents, born only about four months after their wedding day.  In the wedding pictures, my grandmother had a very large spread of flowers which she held, perhaps strategically, over her mid-section.

Pop’s father worked as a laborer, either in carpentry or in a factory of some kind, and his mother stayed home initially as a housewife.  After Pop was born, a brother came along only thirteen months later.  Then, tragically, over the next decade, my grandparents experienced the stillbirths of four more children to follow.  There were three boys and one girl.  The reason given by doctors at that time was that perhaps the Rh factor in my grandmother’s blood had caused the stillbirths.

The stories say that because my grandparents’ four stillborn children were not alive to be baptized into their religious community, they were not allowed to be buried in the church cemetery.  So it’s very possible that my grandfather actually had to dig the graves for four of his own children, either outside of the church cemetery or in a different one.  Regardless, it’s likely that the tragedy of losing four children, along with the treatment from their church which undoubtedly ignited much shame and a sense of humiliating exclusion, sent my grandfather into an emotional space he didn’t know how to manage.  And so he turned to alcohol, probably to escape from all of that pain.

Here, again, is where the stories fall away, and things are really left much to speculation. 

Did my grandfather come home drunk a lot after drinking with his friends or coworkers after work?  Was he verbally or even physically abusive to my grandmother?  Had they really gotten married in the first place mainly because my grandmother became pregnant out of wedlock and there was likely a social and religious shame they encountered because of that act?  How well had they known each other?  Had they intended to get married before she’d gotten pregnant?

Were there many other things that happened that I’ll never know?  Quite possibly.  But back in the 1940s, just as it is still the case with so many families these days, addictions, abuse, and other behaviors that outwardly display deep inner pain were never discussed openly.  The actions occurred, but during those times, it wasn’t understood just how much that emotional pain, shame, and trauma can influence a person’s actions.  Yet, despite how wonderfully Pop so often treated me, there was quite a dark side to his personality, which provided me with some more possible clues about his childhood and early adult years. 

When Pop was in his late twenties, still living at home, his family committed him to a mental institution close to their home.  Before this happened, he had grabbed my grandmother’s wrists in a fit of intense anger at least one time, and possibly another time before that.

As I imagine back, Pop in his young-adult years was likely simply a grown man with a traumatized little boy still trapped inside.  This grown man had likely experienced a childhood with a mother who had lost four of her babies, lived with a husband who was an addict, and had still done her best to keep the house and family together.  (In those days, divorce carried huge social and religious stigmas, not only subject to shame and punishment in this lifetime but potentially in an afterlife as well.) 

This grown man had experienced a father who had lost four of his babies and, likely not knowing how to handle that pain and grief, had turned to numbing his pain with alcohol, and possibly expressing his pain in verbally or even physically abusive ways.  And this grown man had experienced a brother who loved to spend time in the safety of their mother’s company, helping her as she cooked and entertained for friends.

But Pop had been nothing like his brother.  Learning domestic skills wasn’t interesting to him.  Where did he fit into the family?  How could he feel safe?  And since his father likely came home drunk so often, who could Pop look up to as a role model?

Like a lot of young boys, Pop loved to run around and play outside.  He told me stories of how he loved to climb to the top of the chicken coop on his grandparents’ farm.  One time, he said, he even fell off of the roof of a building as it was being painted, and he somehow didn’t get seriously injured but got brown paint all over his clothes.  From the sounds of it, Pop got into a lot of mischief growing up, like many children do.  But with an alcoholic father and a mother who was trying to keep herself and the family sane, who knows how he was disciplined?  Who knows if he was treated harshly for getting into stuff he maybe could have been more careful about? 

School wasn’t really Pop’s thing, either.  Apparently he was told by his teachers that he had troubles with self-discipline.  Likely, he had a ton of pent-up energy inside, first, from being a normal child, and second, because the energy in his home probably made him feel often anxious and on edge.  He needed better outlets for all of this energy, and trying to sit still in school and focus on learning was definitely not the right prescription for him.  Pop was actually very smart, even if he wasn’t always school-smart.  And he also had other talents that his family was probably unsure of how to manage. 

Pop was extremely creative when it came to words and puns.  Not only could he think of puns on the spot, but he could also make rhymes easily.  His gift with words and jokes was what he tried so often to use to make people smile or laugh.  Similar to the histories of many professional comedians who had difficult childhoods and felt out of place in their lives, maybe Pop thought that if he wasn’t smart or good at school, or had no interest in domestic life like his brother did, maybe he could do silly things to make people laugh and win them over that way.  And very often, this worked—at least, for a period of time.

Pop also had a gifted ear for music.  He told me that he tried to take piano lessons when he was younger, but he had no interest in learning the way that his teachers were trying to teach him.  Pop could play many songs on the piano by ear using simple chords and melodies, and he found great joy in that.   

And so, here was this physically strong, grown man, still with the spirit and energy of an excited little boy.  Here was this grown man, probably having no real interest in the laborer jobs possibly available to him, yet not being able to harness the freedom, the confidence, or the understanding to pursue his own creativity.  In addition, because of his gifts and interests, and his non-interests, he defied cultural and social norms, and there was likely no one around him having the education to teach him that making money with his creative gifts could even be an option for him. 

Here was this grown man, likely very energetically sensitive to the environments around him, who had somehow graduated high school but had probably often felt stupid in school, not to mention out of place at home, that is, when he didn’t feel confused or on edge there.  And here was this grown man, also with an extraordinary amount of anger bottled up inside of him, which no one could understand the origins of.

Why on earth, with all of these challenges and struggles already in the first two decades of his life, could Pop possibly have harbored so much anger?

Obviously, that is one question that I find quite easy to answer.

But when Pop was committed to the mental institution, it was the late 1960s.  Educators, psychologists, and mainstream culture simply didn’t have even the understanding that more of us do now, about how, no matter what age that trauma may occur, it can seriously impact our emotional lives, which are just as real and as important as our real, surface, physical lives.  When trauma is coupled with misunderstood potential, the damage and potential for acting in unhealthy ways can seemingly be even greater.

And Pop’s trauma and misunderstood potential were most definitely misunderstood.  When his family committed him to the mental hospital after he lashed out at his mother, Pop was diagnosed with schizophrenia and apparently given some sort of psychiatric medication. 

From the little I’ve read, schizophrenia seemed to be a popular diagnosis for many people with troubling mental health issues back in the 1960s and 1970s, even if not all of those people had more of the trademark symptoms of schizophrenia that we are aware of now, such as hallucinations.  This diagnosis seemed to be more of a trendy diagnosis, perhaps a catch-all that really just meant, we’re not really sure what’s wrong with you and we don’t really know what to do with you, so here—you have this.  Take these pills.

Pop would never speak to me about this time in his life when he was hospitalized, even as I got older.  So again, I can only imagine what took place there.  What did he see, hear, and experience?  Did he incur more trauma from experiencing the actions of any other patients around him?  Did he ever have to be restrained?  Were the hospital employees kind to him, or did they judge him to be a certain way and mistreat him?  Did he have adverse reactions to any medications and was forced to take them or keep trying others anyway? 

I found a medical document years later that stated that Pop had received shock treatment when he was hospitalized.  I don’t know if this is similar to the electroconvulsive therapy that is sometimes used still to this day, but from the little I found when researching about it, I have a feeling that this shock treatment was much stronger back in the late 1960s.

Pop stayed in that mental hospital for two years.  After that, he was moved to two adult foster homes where he received job rehabilitation from social services, while still on medication.  Then he was released back into the real world without any medication. Following those years, his parents would at times refer to him as their disabled son, even though the hospital had told them that his schizophrenia was in remission. 

And so, the late 1960s soon turned into the mid-1970s, and Pop was around thirty-five years old, still living at his parents’ house, having found a job at a local factory.  By 1974, he’d somehow been working at this job steadily for about two years. 

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Meanwhile, after leaving the convent in the early 1960s, Mom had moved back to her hometown and had been busy working odd jobs for several years.  For two years, she’d worked full-time for a nearby family, taking care of their hydrocephalic baby girl as well as another baby girl born premature.  Then, for the next five years, she worked as a secretary and bookkeeper at an office-furnishings store while taking some evening business courses.  Following that job, she decided to enter college and, within two years, likely being able to transfer over some of her schooling in the convent for credit, she obtained her bachelor’s degree in education.  This allowed her to teach first grade for the next three years in a religious school in her hometown. 

By this time, in 1974, Mom was hungry for more education, and she’d developed an interest in working with students with learning challenges, particularly with reading skills.  So that year, she decided to start working on her masters’ degree at a different college, which happened to be in Pop’s hometown.  Mom’s youngest sister was by then married to a man who had an aunt and uncle who lived in this town, and also had an extra room to stay in at their home.  That couple was Pop’s parents.

And so, in 1974, for her first semester of graduate school, Mom stayed in the home of the couple who would later become my grandparents.  And there she met Pop.

They were certainly an unlikely match.  Mom was very focused on her education and career and was really not interested in dating and certainly not marriage.  She had never dated anyone or been in a serious relationship before.  And Pop had had a couple of previous casual encounters with women, but never anything that turned serious.  I don’t know if either of them had ever previously imagined themselves in a long-term relationship or a marriage.

Mom would later describe her first impressions of Pop as cheerful and kind.  She and Pop became friends while she stayed at his parents’ home, and after that first semester of school, when she moved about half an hour away to begin getting experience teaching kids who needed extra reading help, she would drive to visit Pop on the weekends.  They spent a lot of time talking at his parents’ house.  Pop did tell Mom that he had been hospitalized in the past.  He said it was because he wasn’t able to keep jobs very well. 

Pop always had certain ways of doing things, and he was convinced that his way was the best way to do any job.  Even if his employers wanted things to be done quicker or in a different way, Pop would insist that he do things his own way.  He took pride in his way and felt that it was more thorough and had better quality.  After being labeled disabled and likely feeling incompetent at school and in other areas of his life, Pop’s pride over his particular ways of doing things may have been one of the only sources of pride and accomplishment that he’d found in his life.  But of course, those perfectionistic, stubborn, and compulsive tendencies didn’t sit well with many of his employers.

Somehow, he’d managed to keep that current factory job for about two years when he and Mom began spending more time together on weekends.  They attended church and other related religious activities together.  They’d go out dancing and would play pool, would listen to music and would go for drives together.  After about a year of these weekend visits, they discussed marriage, and Pop proposed.  They went on a religious retreat for engaged couples, and, likely due to low finances between them, they decided to not get Mom an engagement ring.  Mom probably honestly didn’t mind, as she really never wore jewelry and would have likely thought that the religious, sacramental commitment to come was much more important than a costly material symbol of their love.

Thinking of my parents in those days makes me want to do some time travel just to see them so happy and in love.  I can imagine them existing in such a happy, loving state, but imagining is all I can do.  My memories of them in relationship are just so different. 

Sometime after the engagement, Pop’s mother told Mom that he’s schizophrenic, and said nothing more.  Mom was confused by this when she read more about it.  But Pop seemed to be stable at the time, not showing any signs of mental illness, and Mom wasn’t concerned.

Mom’s family liked Pop.  Her father asked about his work.  Pop was still working at the factory at that time, and things seemed to be fine.  Mom and Pop prepared for their upcoming marriage according to the guidelines of their shared religious tradition.  They felt willing to abide by their faith traditions and open themselves to raising children, even though by this time, Mom was thirty-eight and Pop, thirty-seven.  Having children at this stage in life was less common in the 1970s than it is now.  Yet, there was a twenty-year age difference in between Mom’s oldest and youngest siblings, and so Mom probably didn’t think it would be too unusual for her and Pop to have children someday.

On an early July afternoon in 1976, Mom and Pop were married at her childhood church in her hometown.  They spent their wedding night in a local motel room.  Both enjoyed the physical intimacy, and it was Mom’s first-ever experience of that.

The next day, when they were getting ready to leave Mom’s parents’ house, a couple of her relatives jokingly drove the newlyweds’ car onto the family’s hayfield.  Pop, who had been in great spirits during the rest of the day, didn’t think that this prank was at all funny and became quite angry about it.  His mood changed very quickly.  Mom’s relatives were surprised by this sudden shift of mood.

Pop and Mom moved to a new apartment in the city where she was teaching.  After their wedding, Pop had a week off from work, and Mom wasn’t teaching over the summer.  So they spent their honeymoon time in their new apartment, enjoying each other’s company.  Mom felt happy and hopeful about their relationship and their marriage.

About three months after the wedding, Pop quit his job at the factory.  He brought home a letter from his employer, stating how many times Pop had been late to work, and that he was close to losing his job.  Pop told Mom that the dusty factory work was affecting his lungs and sinuses.  Mom was shocked at seeing the employer’s letter.  This was the first she’d heard about his tardiness. 

That September, Mom returned to her teaching job.  Pop settled in quickly to life at home.  He searched for jobs and was unsuccessful at finding any.  His kind conversation with Mom began to diminish.  He turned to TV as something to keep his interest during the hours of the day when Mom was at school.  And he didn’t really have much interest in helping around the house.  One time, Mom asked him to vacuum, and he got very angry with her.  She felt frustrated and disappointed.

After about nine months of no work, Pop was accepted as a night cleanup worker at a meat-processing company about an hour southwest of where they currently lived.  Grateful for this opportunity, they rented a new home in that area, and shortly after, Mom was hired part-time to teach remedial reading at a local elementary school very close to their new place.

Pop quit his new job quickly after Mom was hired to teach, saying that he was allergic to the soap he needed to use for the cleanup work.  So Mom was left to support both of them on her part-time teaching salary.

For the next handful of years, Pop’s sketchy work pattern continued.  He’d be hired somewhere, would work there for a few months, and would then quit or be laid off.  His perfectionistic and stubborn tendencies were often the culprit of his difficulty to keep steady work.  Possibly also at play was that he simply wasn’t interested in much of the work he could find to be paid for.  Pop had other gifts, but he was the last person to even consider admitting them as gifts and putting them to use for financial gain, let alone, the last person to understand how to do so.

When he wasn’t working, Pop would help with a few household chores, like laundry, grocery shopping, bill paying, and taking out garbage.  Still, he had quite a bit of time on his hands and would often find other less-constructive ways to use that time and the restless energy that must have been accumulating inside of his system.  He’d mow the grass twice just to prove that it was well done.  He’d clip at the bunions and calluses on his feet for several hours at a time.  He’d organize papers and mail in neat piles on the table.  And he’d sit next to the garbage can with a scissors and cut up junk mail into tiny squares. 

Even though Pop had trouble keeping work, he did, however, like to spend money.  He wasn’t usually very frugal with it and would at times be financially taken advantage of by people trying to make a quick sale.  He once spent $90, in the late 1970s, on a bag of denim cloths to wipe grease.  He only needed a few cloths, but the seller asked for that amount for the full bag, and Pop handed it over.  Mom was quite upset by this, as they didn’t have much money left over after their necessary expenses. 

It didn’t take long before Pop’s tardiness at jobs carried over into the rest of his life.  He would speed a lot while driving, and he received a few speeding tickets, at one point almost losing his license.  He also had a hard time getting going in the mornings.  This included Sunday mornings, when he and Mom regularly attended religious services.

It had already proven evident that Pop did not relate well to authority, particularly when his way of doing things clashed with an employer’s wishes.  It was clear that Pop coveted the freedom