The experiences and exploits of a college grad trying to make it in the "real world:" leaving school and friends in New England, moving south, and living with her boyfriend. Watch as I pretend to be an adult.
**Just a reminder- I now offer music as well as witty commentary on my blog. Simply scroll down to the bottom of the post and click on the song name, and in no time at all you'll be chair dancing to whatever tune I've put up.**
I ran into someone the other day who made me think about my mom's death. Well, not her death so much as the aftermath. You see, for a while (almost a month), we didn't know exactly how she'd died. Suicide, accident, and "foul play" were all possibilties, and until a full autopsy was conducted and lab results received, the police weren't willing to venture any guesses. They did tell us that her death didn't appear to have been the result of an attack- or at least that was the least likely cause. An investigation revealed that it was just an accident. A stupid, tragic one to be sure, but she hadn't tried to kill herself, and she hadn't been murdered. It was a relief, quite frankly. This however, was apparently not a good enough explanation for the rest of my mother's friends; or should I say "friends-" a category that includes the person I bumped into. We soon found out that there were all kinds of conspiracy theories being circulated around a particular group of our "horsey" acquaintances. "The Cliftonites" is as good a name for them as any- too much money, too little to do. According to them, my mother had been driven to suicide by the legal proceedings initiated by my father to stop alimony payments (since she was rather engaged to another man); or, she had been attacked by migrant workers at a bar near the marina where she died; or, my personal favorite, my father had hired a hit man to "take her out," and make it look like an accident. Soon people began making up medical facts to go along with the theories- things like the state of her body, the location where it was found, what she had been doing the day she died. Theories became more elaborate and complex; the "lab results" and "forensics" were somehow magically known to the members of this exclusive club, and showed all sorts of startling things- severe head trauma, overdoses of all kinds of improbable drugs, and mysterious "proof" that her body couldn't have drifted all the way from the marina to the river where it was found. Never mind that the only people the Brevard County Sheriff's Dep't actually released the autopsy findings to were me and my grandfather, and we certainly weren't sharing that information- no, one mustn't let facts get in the way of good gossip. And that's all it was. Gossip. Favorite pasttime of the bored, staple of the water cooler conversation. I can treat it with a sense of wry irony now, but at the time? It really, really hurt. These were my mother's "friends." People she'd known for years. It felt like a betrayal- and a callous, cold bloded one at that. What made it all the worse was the fact that, like all good gossip, a great deal of it had at least some small basis in truth. Of course, this truth had been blown up and distored almost beyond recognition, but it was still there. Where had they gotten these ideas? Well, it seems to have been third hand from my mother's fiancee, who discussed it with a local (Virginia) friend of my mothers shortly after her death. The police had given him some of the preliminary information, and then later told him their conclusion, but apparently had not relased the specifics of their investigation to him. And this makes me more angry than all the gossip combined. That my mother's fiancee- the man who was supposed to love her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her- and one of her "best friends" would give information that foddered those rumours makes me furious. It, to me, is a disgusting betrayal of my mother's memory. Not to mention incredibly disrespectful of our (her daughter's) wishes. Like I said, a year and a half later, I'm able to shrug it off. I know these people didn't mean to be as hurtful as they were. I'm sure it never occured to them that their words would get back to my sisters and I, or that we would be so affected by them. But at the time, it made a traumatic time even more difficult. And for that, to all of them I give a big, double handed, middle-finger salute and a hearty "Fuck you!"
Moniter the gossip, people. Only asswipes pass on the hurtful stuff.
What I'm listening to: Cake, Frank Sinatra
After 22 posted at 11:28 AM
