Massacre

Today is December 6th, the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre and I feel I should say something. Maybe I'll say this:

My mother tells stories about how her father used to beat her mother regularly. One day my grandmother had had enough. She packed up her kids and left. I can't remember where they moved, but it was away from him. He arrived one day with his truck and stole their washer and dryer, drove them to his friend's house and left them in his front yard. Somehow or other, they ended up moving back in with him.

A few weeks later, the friend showed up on their doorstep with a garbage bag full of clothing. "He left the washer and dryer out on my lawn," he said, "and I didn't realize that there was still clothing in it. My wife said I should bring it back." Things like this happened more than once, from what I've heard.

I used to have this idea that he only ever touched my grandmother, that somehow or other, my mother was never affected. I used to picture her in my mind as a talented and outstanding student when she was in school. Maybe that's the way that she'd rather remember it. One day out of curiosity my father went back to their high school and made a copy of her transcript, and the sheer volume of absences marked in there told a completely different story.

She tells me sometimes about how he used to drive with her to the pub when she was little and leave her in the truck for hours on end while he drank inside. Then he would drive her home, drunk. My grandmother has a scar on her forehead from when he got into an accident once. Mom remembers little things, like how he gave away her dog to his friend without telling her, like how he stole and drank a bottle of wine she got in a Christmas gift exchange at work.

And one day she decided she had had enough. She left it all, and his entire family turned its back on her because it refused to admit that he was an alcoholic. She went out, got a master's degree, created a new family for herself and tried hard to not look back. She's always apologetic about the fact that my sister and I never really knew anyone from our extended family. I have never thought that she should be.

When he died, we recieved numerous phone calls from relatives that I knew only by name. Again and again we heard the same message that they weren't sure why she had divorced herself from the family, but that they knew he was an abusive drunk and his death wasn't exactly a tragedy. They had nothing but love and support and understanding for her. And the more times I heard this repeated, the angrier I got. Where were these people thirty-five or forty years ago, and why didn't they say anything then?

I can't help thinking that if someone had just said something, that things would have been different today, that I would have a family and that my mother wouldn't have to hold back so many tears.

I wish that I didn't have to hold back so many tears.

Not really a massacre, I suppose, but a little closer to home.