Forever Tainted

Five or ten minutes after I hung up the phone with my dad, the phone rang again and the call display showed my ‘Canada House – Puckle’. He was explaining to me that my mother got the results of her EEG and the doctors have found signs of Epilepsy. They refused to act on it because she has not had a seizure that she can remember in the last month or so. There’s some hope that much of what she’s been going through and putting us through have been physical after all. No doubt at all, any and all symptoms were increased thanks to her severe alcoholism. He told me she seemed to be doing better these days. She was looking for work, asking about insuring the car (though he will never agree because it’s down-right out dangerous to let her drive) and relatively positive about the idea of visiting some of her old friends.

For the past 10 or so months my mother’s hate for me has seemed to increase. A week or so back, my sister was visiting from the mainland and got to spend a day with her shopping. They planned a BBQ for the evening and when my sister mentioned that she was calling to invite me, my mom responded with, “Fine, she can come, but I’m leaving.” The fight was on, because my sister, my father and my brother know that I have done nothing to encourage this deep a hate from her. My mother’s feeble attempts to defend her opinion were drowned out by her psychotic behaviour and words. She had just called and asked to talk to me a week prior while I was with my sister, as normal. Nothing had changed in that week.

So when the phone rang this time showing her house, I assumed it was my brother calling. I answered and was shocked to hear her voice. She was talking as though all was normal, as though she hadn’t hated me for reasons unknown to me. She told me about her EEG results, she told me about her job hunt she even invited me out for coffee sometime. At the end of the conversation she said, “I’m glad we got this chance to talk.” As if for some reason she felt she could not call me up at any time previously, like I had somehow cut ties with her and not the complete opposite.

I still don’t know what to make of the conversation. I am not sure how to feel about it, or what is going on through her head. I do now know that my father was distant from her yesterday, busy with his own things and giving himself a break from the insanity. Perhaps she was just that lonely. Perhaps she’s half snapped back into reality. Perhaps, the ice I heard in the background was her first drink of the day and getting drunk alone is never any fun. Who knows.