Can't Get You Out Of My Head

One of the things I noticed about my last few days with my mother was how often she brought up the name of “the Colonel,” the husband of her Aunt Eleanor, who had rowed over to great-grandpa Sam’s boat with a shotgun saying he was taking Eleanor to marry.

This man was volatile, irascible, and in his later years blind, and my grandmother went to his house regularly to tend to him after Eleanor died of breast cancer. My mother once told me the story of how he had tried to kill her when they were all staying at a house in Acapulco — she was so frightened she jumped out of the window into the scorpion-infested night and pounded on her parents’ window. Whether this actually happened or not is irrelevant: she was deeply traumatized and this man occupied space in her head up until the end.

Would therapy have helped her? Who knows? She was so fond of one of her cousins, Henry, but seeing him necessarily meant being in the company of the dreaded Uncle Edwin. Who insisted that his staff answer the phone with “the Colonel’s residence, this is the maid speaking.”

We are no strangers monstrous men. One of them is even president. But let’s not give these reprobates any more power by allowing them room in our heads. Mum, I wish you could have been free of this. I never met the guy but I hate him on your behalf…