s t r a n g e cousin susan

My father has been a gone week and my mother, six days. I cannot say I am a bit surprised her death came so close on the heels of his; they loved each other with a depth I have never witnessed between any two people. Even after almost fifty years together, my parents were still as much in love as they’d been when they were younger. My mother described their feelings for each other once as a force of nature and that’s what it was. Nothing could stop that force; even the two most trying situations in their marriage – the long weeks (months, sometimes) my father would find himself away from home because of his job and the fact his parents detested my mother because they believed she wasn’t good enough for my father could shake their feelings for each other.

For as long as I could remember, I’d sensed there was someone else involved in their relationship and somehow mysteriously involved with me, and a few years later, my sister as well. It wasn’t threatening in the least; it was a simple fact of our lives that they never spoke about, at least with my sister and me. As I grew older, the curiosity grew and grew until I finally could not stand it any longer. I was eleven and keen to ask about it, believing at that young age that my parents simply had not existed before I was born, that their lives together consisted of only me (and my sister) and absolutely nothing else.

Naturally, I went to my father first, for even in those more liberated times, I had been raised to look upon him as the head of the household, the authority figure, the familial leader. Whether that was accurate is a discussion for another time. He’d been gone for what seemed like forever and I thought that in his excitement to be home, he would answer any question I put to him. I remember my mother shooing us both out of the kitchen after dinner that first night he was back; he put his hand on my shoulder and led me to the family room, where he asked me about school and my friends; when he asked me about the trouble I’d caused my mother and the fights I’d had with my sister, I hoped he wasn’t angry like my mother had been. He assured me that he only wanted to catch up with my young life because he’d missed me so much. I asked him then, point blank about this odd sense I’d had and got absolutely nowhere. He laughed, dismissing the question out of hand with a joke about my overactive imagination. At the time, I believed it was because of my childish inability to communicate what I wanted to know and not for any other reason; I protested ineffectually that it wasn’t my imagination, but my father would not answer my question. That was the end of that, at least where my father was concerned.

(to be continued)