Eloquent Silence
Authors: Margaret Weise
Tags: #mother’, #s love, #short story collection, #survival of crucial relationships, #family dynamics, #Domestic Violence
Eloquent Silence
Margaret Weise
Published by Margaret Weise, 2015.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
ELOQUENT SILENCE
First edition. September 27, 2015.
Copyright © 2015 Margaret Weise.
Written by Margaret Weise.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
5. An Outing With Two Short People
10. A Little About Love and Alzheimer’s Disease
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his book is dedicated to Rosie Batty, 2015 Australian of the Year. Her son, Luke, was murdered by his father at cricket practice at the Tyabb oval on February 12, 2014.
Luke was 11 years old.
Rosie campaigns tirelessly against Domestic and Family Violence.
I wish to recall with gratitude the strength of my late mother’s support and that of my children who were always there when there was nothing and nobody else.
With thanks to my friend, guide and mentor, Julie Harris.
And to friends both old and new: Dell, Shirley, Coral, Lyn, Noela...
You know who you are.
Much love.
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his book has been written to present excerpts of my life and those of other women who have shared their experiences with me in one shape or another. The choice of first or third person in the telling is completely random. Only we who have lived through those times know with certainty whose story it is and that’s how it should be.
With my own stories, for most part, all people are either imaginary or dead and the place names are contrived. Of necessity, both fact and fiction are involved, as must always be the case when one is not present to witness all conversations and events. A certain amount of supposition takes place between teller and listener. I leave it to the reader to ascertain where experience ends and story telling begins.
Suffice to say that those of us who write about our lives and the issues that have brought us to expand our souls by sharing, are aware that we can’t have too many secrets if we really want to write of the times that have affected us.
Also, to protect anonymity, names are changed in the cases of real people who are players or may have existed. This is as necessary as breathing in and out if we are to retain our freedom to be honest. I have relied on the testimonies of these women who often labored with a sense of insoluble conflict all their lives. Although some of the stories are personal either to myself or others, a few simply seemed to write themselves. I sat down at the computer and they appeared upon the page, more or less of their own volition.
My mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s Disease taught me that we cannot escape from certain agonies intact. I carry deep scars from the five years I cared for her at home and even deeper ones from having to place her in care and tend to her for another six years. Her stories—God rest her gently—were the ultimate tales of sadness for me.
A philosopher would tell us that we are better people for having suffered through the agonies of soul searching and that where life breaks us we become stronger in the place where we previously split apart and mended. We humans are assembled from strong stuff and we tend to survive whether we want to or not. Certainly it is not easy to die and we need times of trial to enable us to savor the sweet parts of life when they arrive.
The good and bad times have been explored in retrospect. Happy little tales involving grandchildren are mine to relate without stepping on the toes of perpetrators of any kind of misconduct who may be lurking, waiting to criticize.
Needing to be more than a spectator in life, my dedication to the liberation of abused women and children drives me to speak for those who cannot or will not speak for themselves. I can recall having strong feminist opinions in the days before the term was coined and widely used, not so much for being stridently against men and their forms of control, but believing in the innate equality and value of women and girls. I was a feminist down to my bootstraps but didn’t necessarily know I was one.
Some of these tales are a compilation. Many memories have been dredged up painfully, as often only with concentration could the actions of the architects of horror be recalled to be spoken or written about. The combat in those previous times was desperately unequal. Women had little or no rights beyond the most basic. Thankfully, the powers that be are beginning to realize that the scourge of violence in the home and towards women in general must be quelled before civilization as we know it is destroyed. My objection to violence lies not only within the bounds of the home and family but includes rape and merciless treatment of females and males as well as all forms of exploitation of children.
These days the general public is being made much more aware of Domestic and Family Violence in the hope of improving the lot of sufferers. In the times of which I write, the shame belonged to the victim rather than the perpetrator and the matter was hushed up unless a death took place. The tempo of life went on uninterrupted if possible and women wore their badges of damage with shame.
The ways in which marriages and de facto relationships are conducted are as individual as people themselves. Few of us know what goes on behind closed doors unless separation or tragedy takes place. This seems to have been the status quo and to a large extent, still is.
No one stepped forward to assist them in the recent past except their immediate families or perhaps a minister of religion. The police force dreaded confrontation with enraged people in their homes and these scenes were the most common areas for damage to members of the police force and no doubt still are.
In the main, women had to fend for themselves and their children as best they could and homes were rarely broken up because a man was brutal, with wives and children weathering the storms in silence. There was simply no protection beyond the extended family and nowhere to go as Women’s Shelters did not exist. Nor was there financial aid for these people thrust beyond the Pale.
I have also tried to look at the plight of women cast into the single state in desperation, which was not the norm as pride, shame, finances and fear usually kept them in their place at least until their children were reared. Going against the mores of the times and frequently against their will, once alone again they were sometimes tempted to be caught up in dreams that denied reality, often feeling inadequate to deal with the future and what it brings or fails to bring.
Many women experienced and still experience a protracted period of malice emanating from the men who find themselves to be ‘ex-husbands’ as well as denial of their need for emotional connection. Much violence is being unleashed in our society these days by men who supposed themselves to be so wronged that they willingly and righteously set out to kill their women and/or children. Family members who were once precious come to cringing even in their sleep, shrinking in fear from the monsters who profess to love them or to have loved them.
The issue of violence against women seems to be escalating with two women being murdered by a partner or ex-partner every week in Australia. To give an opinion, it seems self evident that respect for women has been forfeited to the likes of pornography and violent movies may seem a trite answer to the problem. But added to this is the impact of brutal and mindless TV games that are desensitizing our youth and dehumanizing their outlook toward the female of the species. If our community and culture are destroyed I don’t think it will be from the outside but rather, from within, the way other cultures and civilizations have crumbled over millennia e.g. the fall of the Roman Empire.
There is never a morning when I wake without a longing for my family, my children and my mother, all virtually gone from me. I dream frequently of my babies and my mother like being in a time capsule of the years when those precious four were close by, loving, loyal and always present.
I am a fortunate woman these days to have constant supportive help, generosity of spirit and encouragement from my husband. This was not always so for the simple reason that he was not always my husband. Perhaps if I had led a charmed existence I would be prepared to let life swim around me without being touched by it, but I have plumbed the depths and received a sense of purpose from climbing up from rock bottom. Distressing marriages and destructive husbands can do this to a woman. Nor do I think I was born for an easy life due to the fact that I think too much. But we are made as we are made and must suffer the consequences down through the years.
We vacillate from happy times to sad. After my mother died in 2005, it took me seven years to be able to sing again, let alone indulge in any sort of jollification. I had just found my voice, singing in the car and around the house when in 2012 I was hit with another almighty family whammy from which I doubt if I will ever recover in this lifetime. I hope the person who carried out the evil acts that led to such despair for some in our family pays the price for his deeds, if not in this life, then the next. Karma will eventually take its revenge on him. Like myself, he is now much closer to the grave than the cradle with an exaggerated sense of his own importance which has no doubt been the source of his blindness, his inability to see how he has damaged those who were in his care.
The ways of the Lord are strange indeed. By my age one has had enough time to ponder them and certain things are clearer than they were in my youth. Clearest of all is the fact that we do not understand in the least, God’s plan for us.
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e are seated in a busy restaurant, the air abuzz with conversation and restrained laughter, the talk full of fruitiness and meatiness. Our party consists of six people. Two are in their early thirties. The other four are definitely not.
The young woman, Libby, is a bubbly, effervescent type with shoulder length blonde hair and snapping green eyes, who chatters lightheartedly from one subject to another. She imagines herself to be interesting-looking and indeed she is quite striking. There is a decidedly attractive aspect to her with her vivacity and varied vocabulary. She laughs and talks constantly, mostly just words strung together in the cause of amusing her listeners, holding their attention by the sheer force of her personality. Her bangles jangle as she waves her hands about, making her points with uncommon emphasis. Her earrings dance in time to her animation, bobbing and jiggling.
Her male companion is definitely not the effervescent type, a veritable bear of a man with a shaggy head of ginger hair and a little corpulence beginning to swell out in front of him. He has stubby, hairy fingers and a pronounced stutter but he is well-spoken, nevertheless, a gentlemanly type of man who will let Libby have her head no matter what she says. Libby is decidedly the dominating partner and she has staked a claim on his heart, a fact that could be unfortunate for him in the long run.
She is giving us her take on life, free, gratis and for nothing, regaling those of us at her end of the table with tales of young men who have proposed marriage to her, recently and in the past, her wit clever and sharp. She runs from subject to subject like a babbling brook, more than taking up her fair share of the conversation but we are all content to listen to her as she rattles on.
Her boyfriend, Noel, continues to watch indulgently, his dark face bland and smiling broadly, knowing that when the time comes for her to move on she will use his idiosyncrasies to amuse other listeners. That is a given and he would not expect anything less. He has long prepared himself for this eventuality.
She’s a very smart young woman with an agile wit and great sense of humor. We are in stitches listening to her tales of escapes from the bonds of marriage. Her companion, with his eyebrows knitting together in concentration, turns from us to discuss the building industry with her father at the other end of the table. He starts to look a trifle edgy at the content of the conversation.