"Love Hurts" edited 3-30-2017

My Aunt, Bernice Russo, had been afflicted with Polio when she was a very young girl. She was struck down and forced into a wheelchair, where she sat for the rest of her life.

My Uncle, William, "Bill", met her when they were in school together, which is when they fell in Love. They were High School Sweethearts.
He had been placed in a convalescent home with Alzheimer’s, and she was at home being tended to by in-home nurses and such.

I would learn they passed away twelve hours apart but that would not be until about six months after the fact.

I recall my mother mentioning the situation of, Uncle Bill and Aunt Bern, around the time of my divorce in 1997 but due to never receiving anything that I understood as love and affection, I was unable to respond to their needs.

So poisonous, the regret is, over wishing I had responded to Aunt Bern’s need for my help but I failed us both. It was not possible to receive the messages that Love and Intuition sent me, primarily failing because I was polluting myself with whatever I could get, while dwelling in self-pity.

Lobotomized by the closed head injury and alcohol, I remained ignorant. Ironically, of all the loss giving me worlds of grief, I was about to lose more, and quite possibly two of the last loving family members I had left.

With Polio at eight or ten, and leg braces and a wheelchair, Uncle Bill never left her side.

They were both smokers in high school and their younger days, as many were. Most likely a product of the WWII promotions, smoking Camels way back then but they both decided to quit one day, as far as she knew.

Being confined to a damned wheelchair, she was left only to roam the main floor and deck, which was always odd to us kids because Uncle Bill was extremely Inventive, if not Ingenious.

Uncle Bill had an air compressor system that he had built out of some automotive parts. And he engineered and manufactured his own boiler system that provided heat and hot water for their home. He also had a 1969 Dodge Charger R/T. God only knows when he bought it but he kept it alive, driving it right up until he couldn’t drive any longer.

Everywhere he went, someone would offer to buy this car- literally begging him to sell it. People would ask him to race, and to see under the hood, really lusting after that car. It was the same make and model that was used on the “Dukes of Hazzard” show.
Uncle Bill wasn’t selling. This car was being saved for me. He had told me this himself when I was maybe twelve years old. The car is now gone. Nobody knows where it went but one thing I know is, I was never invited or informed of the funeral.

The funny thing about Uncle Bill, with all of his Inventiveness and Genius, never built a lift for Aunt Bern to climb the stairs to the lower level.
Come to find out, he had his own pad down there, complete with a kitchenette and an exhaust system in the chimney so he could smoke cigarettes.

It wouldn’t be until too late, until Aunt Bern has been long gone, while here at Jackson Prison, that I would finally realize what it was like for her to be imprisoned in that condition, and feeling as lonely as she must have felt.
She would mail letters to us quite frequently that would always contain pictures and articles from these tabloid type newspapers you find in the grocery store checkout lanes, within reach of her wheelchair: Largest ball of twine unwinds; Thirty nine pound cat eats whole pizza; Man with no legs climbs mountain. There was always a “can-do” aspect to everything she shared with us.

The problem was, having been going through the motions of life with a dysfunctional family, we were never motivated to write her back, that I can remember or maybe the thought was overridden with traumas from the past or a beating, replaced with the hungers children have for the love they are starved of.

My poor Aunt Bernice was a Sweetheart that showered us all with hugs and kisses but having never received them, they were strange to me, and I would cringe and try to resist, like an animal that never has been in human contact.

Odd to look back on, the sheer irony, that I have been literally killing myself, in my search for a place to be in life, and in my head- searching for love and affection. And the very people that had it for us kids died before we could become wise enough to understand what they had, which denied them of the love they deserved just as much.

All I have of my Aunt Bernice is a picture of her seated and smiling, spectacles and shawl- the silver in her hair matching the bluish yarn. Extremely saddened with the truth in her memory, I realize now how very, very important love is for our children, and for one another. It’s the main message in almost every religion, and the Bible: God is Love. Love one another… 

Stealing from our children brings pain to us all, in that moment, in their tomorrow, and finally, to us when we look around and find they’re not by our side when we are transitioning into the final phase of life- our death.

So, I failed in all respects. That is, if any of it is respectable. It was a perfect opportunity for so much, to come to her rescue, as well as my own.

I would later hear of how the in-home nursing assistants were unable to move her around without hurting her. She really would have appreciated it if I could have been able to stop feeling sorry for myself long enough to see that I was truly needed; another irony since I am a Pisces.

It was a perfect opportunity for me to find my safe haven. It was another perfect opportunity to have love and support that I so direly needed. It was a perfect opportunity to position myself to take over the familial reigns, replacing my Grandfather- becoming the Pinnacle.

I couldn’t help but wonder if having a father to talk to, in this very tough time, would have changed any of it. Even still, I am not without the understanding that the drugs and alcohol compounded everything, making it all far worse than it really was or needed to be. Stupid me.

     I can still hear my Aunt Bern’s voice echo in my head:    
                     

"Rutabega soup! Rutabega soup!"

                    "That’s all they fed us at 
                 the damned VA Hospital!” 


Between the memory and a photograph, that’s all I have of my Aunt Bern, and from what I’ve witnessed after the deaths of loved ones these days, it’s probably the best thing I could have.
                                          
                                            Thank You For Reading My Stories.

I Love You