Remembering dad.

Pamela Pietersz.
Sep 8, 2018 · 6 min read

Charlie would live to be 41, the survivor of a hernia and tumor operations, father of two, probably an alcoholic, and very likely depressed. 17 Years after the fact, however, anything said about him is speculation. Memories that are left are so old they can no longer be trusted to be true, not to mention that what he was or wasn’t doesn’t matter much either way. He died 17 years ago and how he lived isn’t going to change that. When Charlie died, he simply stopped existing, regardless of what is remembered. Still, strange things happen when I think of him today.

By all accounts, Charlie’s life was never as impressive as he wanted it to be, but it certainly wasn’t for his lack of trying. People have said many things about the way he lived, and while the most important description could arguably be ‘cautionary’, he was also a beacon of light to many who knew him. Indeed, while the wife he left behind was quick to pick up the brush and paint him black (with paints he had made himself, mind you) - unconcerned with the collateral damage it would cause in their children - his family and friends resorted to quietly nodding neither their agreement nor disagreement, choosing instead to let her say her piece. In many ways, this behavior is very indicative of life on the island we called home. Everyone knew everything about everyone else, but seldom was anything done about it other than gossip.

Before his demise, Charlie owned books about English literature and poetry, goat husbandry, and collected magazines about yachts, the expensive kind - the magazines, not the yachts. He sold the only small boat I remember him having in order to pay for the apartments he wanted to build with his wife, on land he had received as a wedding gift from his mother. Charlie was the son of one of the last people to own and live in an actual plantation house. I remember visiting that house and playing tag in ruins of what used to be slave homes in the backyard.

Apart from the ruins, they also owned goats and chickens. One of which stabbed Charlie in the eye when he was a teenager, damaging his left eye and worsening his eyesight even further, or so goes the urban legend.

Another cause for his less than perfect eyesight (something I inherited) may or may not have been receiving a dart to the eye. Charlie was the youngest of 7 siblings, and he was what many families lovingly call a ‘late arrival’. Charlie was never meant to be born. Still, he arrived, and nobody could do a thing about it. A constant presence in the lives of his parents and his siblings, when he was young he would often get his older brothers and sisters in trouble, which is ironic, because as he got older, Charlie was often the one who got things done and kept the peace. And boy was he ambitious. Not only did he succeed in building those apartments with his wife, that wife was coveted by many a man, and she was also the daughter of one of the richest men on the island. He was her knight in shining armor, and would eventually also become the father of her two children.

Yes, Charlie was well on his way to having the life he always dreamed of having. The only thing missing at one point was a big yacht. And if his success wasn’t apparent from his wife, children, and the size of his house and businesses, certainly it must have been apparent from the jealous behavior of almost everyone around him and his family. While we all know that nothing is perfect, it’s harder to think about that when you feel like someone is waving their happiness in your face, isn’t it?

While one could have chosen to see that his son was mentally challenged, his daughter was bullied in school, he bought second-hand cars, he had mountains of debt, he argued with his wife on a weekly basis, whom also needed help, he cried in the kitchen at night because he felt he had no friends, he suffered from a crippling alcohol addiction, and probably suffered from depression - while one could have chosen to see these things, it’s much, much easier to think of someone as competition, as someone who can freely be hated for their luck and success, and refrain from talking about the things that actually matter.

It seems, in hindsight, that it’s much easier to let someone die, and to then continue to not say the things that need saying, than it is to intervene. Hindsight is always 20/20. Charlie’s eyesight might already have been mostly determined by genetics, but perhaps it’s worsening could have been prevented had he been properly taught about goats, or been warned about the dangers of stepping in front of a game of darts, or gotten help for his addiction and mental health issues.

I don’t imagine any of the people that were jealous of Charlie back then are jealous anymore.

His death caused a ripple, a mixed bag of results. Loss is a hell of a thing to process, the finality of it almost unbearable, and when it’s the loss of someone so full of life that you wish you could take it from them, the only place left to go is deeper into that well, deeper into what you know full well is empty and is never going to be filled, ever again. Never. Ever. Never. I can see how going to the dark side can seem better than having to deal with that unending emptiness. It’s tempting. To just pretend you’re angry instead of having an existential crisis. I get it now. But I didn’t then, and I needed someone to explain, or at least try, to explain to me what the hell was going on.

In his absence, we were left with guilt, hatred, and blind eyes. The things he loved were all given away, destroyed, or erased. In the circles where he used to be either the center of attention or the island’s latest gossip, he had now become a painful thing to discuss. A mirror held up for all to see themselves in, or ignore themselves with, which is what most people did.

I’m sure not everyone would be willing to admit it, but now that he was gone, life was worse than it ever was when he was shoving his happiness in your face, because now there was no happiness at all, and it was gone for good.

I remember one day when I decided to have an impromptu field trip with my brother in the woods behind my grandmother’s plantation house. I decided we were old enough not to inform any adults of our whereabouts, or maybe I thought they’d stop us if I told them. Either way, we got lost and started crying for help. It was hot, we were out of water, and our feet hurt from all the thorns that pushed their way up through our flimsy flip-flops. My parents were called and we emerged from the woods, shaken but unscathed. My mother was furious at us, but all Charlie - aka dad - did was laugh, his big belly vibrating with the possibility that there would be no punishment for my actions after all.

He knelt down beside me as my mother was extracting the thorns that had lodged themselves in my big toe and adjusted his hair (he was balding so he was always adjusting his hair). Amused, he pointed at my flip-flops and asked me “Is that what you wore into the woods?”

I nodded as I bit my bottom lip, it was all I could do to not burst out crying again.

“Flip-flops? Into woods full of prickly bushes?”

I continued to nod.

“Well, next time, wear proper shoes, closed ones.” He said, a chuckle hidden in his voice.

Instead of never going back into the woods, I had now learned that not only could I go back, I could learn to solve the issues that had deemed this initial foray into something new a failure. I was allowed to be a curious explorer, continuously falling, getting back up, and learning from my mistakes.

Then, instead of going back to work, dad declared that we would all go swimming in the pool together, one of his favorite things to do, because, according to him, we could all use some cooling off. What was threatening to become a horrible memory, had become one of the memories I cherish most. Whether I’m remembering this memory correctly or not doesn’t matter because it has allowed certain behaviors to be instilled in me. Behaviors that to this day, are things that I hope define me.

This is how Charlie lives on. In my happiness, and my belief in getting back up when I have fallen and allowing myself to do better next time because unlike him, I will make damn sure there will always be a next time.

Pamela Pietersz.

Written by

I don’t drink and I write about how to be human • I also draw things: instagram.com/pamela.pietersz

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