The Same Old Story

As quickly as our lives in Edmonton started, they came to an end.  Without Dale in her life, my Mom was lost, so she turned to the bottle and her pills.  We packed up what little we had, and we moved back to BC, bouncing between the spare bedrooms and couches of relatives, while Mom tried to figure out what to do next.  We moved first to a rural town called Malakwa, then up to Prince George, where somehow my Mom reconciled with my Dad of all people.  This was not a love connection - my Mom hated my Dad, and my guess is that she didn’t know what to do and had nowhere else to turn.  My Dad, though, never stopped loving my Mom and was always hoping to have her back in his life.  We were one big, dysfunctional family.  And while there weren’t any punches being thrown, the chaos continued just like it always had.  The boxing matches that Dale had with my Mom’s face were replaced by screaming matches that my Mom and Dad had with each other.  No sooner had we moved in together, we were moving again.  And that’s the way it went for the next year - it was the same old story again and again and again.  We moved from living in a trailer with my Dad to living in a duplex we couldn’t afford. A welfare cheque can only stretch so far, and so we’d get moved in, not have enough money to pay the rent, so she just wouldn’t pay, and instead would use whatever money she had to go drinking.  We got kicked out of that place, and then had to move again.  

My Mom found a place in a little town called Enderby; but this was no showhome.  It was the former office of an old row house motel on the side of the highway, across from a sawmill.  The place was old, infested with mice, and was probably not suitable for anyone to be living in - but there we were.  It was the first time in a while that my Mom didn’t have a man in her life, and I think that was torturing for her.  No man, no money, and in her mind, no real reason to live.  I guess that’s why when a collect call came from Dale, who was living in the Bear Creek Correctional Facility (a prison in Northern, BC, that had the inmates work in forestry while they were serving their time), Mom was ecstatic.  I don’t think it’s typical for people to have a jailbird boyfriend, but my Mom didn’t have a typical life.  To her, it was a sign from above, almost as if they were meant to be together, and she was smitten by the fact that he called her.  Dale had gone to prison for DUI and assault, and now he wanted her to come visit him.  The call came in on a Friday, and so my Mom was celebrating with her youngest sister by having drinks on the porch. I had no idea about any of this at the time because I was riding the bus home from school.  As we pulled up to the house, I saw my Mom and my Aunt outside having drinks and I was excited to see them.  Despite the chaos of our lives, I was still just a kid and I was always happy to see my Mom.  On top of that, this was my favourite Aunt because she was always nice to me, and she knew how hard it was to be a part of that little family.  I remember the bus dropping me off and pulling away, and me being so excited to go see them that I looked across the road and started running toward them…but that was when I heard a car horn, something smashed into the side of me, and everything went black.