She peeked around the doorway and clucked her tongue at what she saw in his bedroom. Clothes and books coated the hardwood floor, and his covers lay in a twisted heap on his bed (although his so-called ‘bed’ was simply a boxspring and mattress stacked on the floor). Two pizza boxes sat in the corner next to his desk which was buried under a mountain of jumbled papers, and she wouldn’t have been surprised to know that the boxes weren’t empty and were quite moldy.
More distressing, and immediately noticeable, were the scores of empty beer and whiskey bottles-the result of Finn’s newfound taste for boilermakers. He had become a poster boy for senseless self-destruction, and this room was his crowning glory—his badge of honour.
“How long has it been like this?” she asked, sweeping her hand over the room.
“The mess and food started after Kate went in for chemo..” Mark nudged an empty beer bottle with his toe. “… and this? It started around the time of her funeral. At first, he kept the bottles in his desk, but that didn’t last long.” Mark’s voice was weak. “It filled up pretty quickly.”
“My God.” she sighed under her breath. “That’s almost eight months. Does his family know? Has he been getting any treatment or counselling?”
“He doesn’t take any calls or visitors, and I think his family is waiting for him to get in touch with them. They’re really WASPy, so I’m pretty sure they don’t know.” Mark nudged the beer bottle with his toe again. “He calls this… ‘treatment’.”
They both stood staring into Finn’s room without looking at anything in particular until Mark turned to walk back down the hall. Jenn followed him, and then doubled back to close Finn’s door. She hoped that with his door tightly shut, his depression and self-destruction wouldn’t seep down the hall into Mark’s room.
Growing up, we all loved Crazy Uncle Phil. He was my dad’s younger brother and would come stay with us for holidays. He would tell outlandish stories, tell us dirty jokes and play dangerous games with us (games that our parents forbade). I was too young then to know that he lived in an institution and that calling him ‘crazy’ was as accurate as it was rude. Crazy Uncle Mark died when I was eleven. He had an adverse reaction to an experimental drug, fell into a coma and passed away.
Years later, my older brother and my dad were talking about something I never saw on those visits—something I was too young to see and was protected from. Apparently, Uncle Phil would unpredictably fly into violent rages—throwing punches, overturning furniture and screaming obscenities. My dad would try to hold him back, but a combination of drugs that induced over-eating and institutional lethargy meant that Uncle Phil was easily twice my dad’s size. When my brother Jeff was old enough, he’d jump in and he and my dad could hold Uncle Phil back until he calmed down.
In spite of the black eyes, bruised ribs and broken chairs, Uncle Phil was there for every holiday, and he never once hurt or yelled at one of us kids. My dad never spoke badly of him, showed frustration over having him there or showed any sign of regret. He loved having his brother in his home with his family, and when the holiday was over and Uncle Phil went back to his home, Dad would shuffle around the house in a funk for a few days.
In my whole life, I never saw my dad laugh so hard or have so much fun as when he used to thumbwrestle with my Uncle. I never saw my dad thumbwrestle with anyone else, but he could’ve gone pro. I can only assume that they used to do it as kids and just kept going, but they both loved it and wouldn’t let anyone else play. We’d all just sit there at the dinner table watching them battle after every meal.
