At Least We Have Good Weather: A Life of Love and Loss

Chapter 2

While ultimately this book is a compendium of my eternal search for a chance at making someone happy, it's necessary for me to maybe try explain why that is important to me and why, as Popeye would say, I am what I am.

But what exactly am I then? Well.

I am Burg.

I believe in romance.

I believe in love at first sight.

I believe in telling people how you feel.

I believe in epic gestures.

Yet...

I make mistakes.

I hold on too tight.

I never realize what's at stake.

I never know when to give up the fight.

I live in a world (time?) in which I don't fit.

I try and change the world to be more like me, but I find the world changing me to be more like it.

My stories are my scars.

My scars are my stories.

So much of what I went through as a kid shaped me into the person I am today. Both good and bad. From a very young age I got to see the world for what it was. Or rather, I got to see a very real, very ugly version of it.

I've never been one to give a hoot about what people think about me...which I suppose goes a long way in explaining the many experimental fashion choice, hairstyles and beards I've had (and continue to have) over the years, but the one thing I've often wondered about, is what the neighbors must have thought about my family growing up. We lived in what used to be a typical suburban neighborhood, or maybe that's how we viewed it as kids.

There has been so much drama in my house, even more so than in Wysteria Lane. In fact, for the last 35 + years, I'm pretty sure this house I live in has provided the inspiration behind everything from an E! True Hollywood Story, to an episode of The Last 48 hours on the Crime & Investigation channel to an episode of the insanely cringe worthy Japanese gameshow, Takeshi's Castle.

It's hard for me to pick out a single good memory here, although I'm sure there is (right?), but I would like to share a few stories with you, dramatic events that I've been through that changed the course of my life forever.

I was 10 years old when I lost my dad.

The rest of my family always knew about my dad's problems, and I guess as a child it was hard not to look up to your dad as your idol. It was this juxtaposition that always left me confused as a kid. I knew my dad could get angry...really angry. Especially when he came home drunk, which he so often did. My mom always did her best to keep my brother and I out his line of fire, often taking the beatings herself while my brother and I would be hiding under the bed in a locked room, holding each other for dear life and blocking the arguing with our tiny hands covering our ears.

One night was particularly bad. There was a major fight between my mom and dad, and he threatened to take us all out of this world and proceeded to get his gun (ironically, the same gun with which my brother would *spoiler*, years later, take his own life). My mom, fearing for our lives, locked my brother and I in the car in the garage and then locked the garage so that my dad couldn't get to us.

My mom had managed to phone our aunt and uncle to come help and keep the peace, as they did on many occasions (a fact my cousin actually recently confirmed to me, which made me feel slightly better that I didn't imagine all of this.). I always wondered if my dad remembered how far he went, because when he sobered up, he was the most loving father as if nothing happened.

Beatings were a regular occurrence at home. I guess it was my mom's way of transferring the anger and lack of power she felt against my dad towards us kids. I understand it now more as an adult, but as a kid, you just accepted that this was normal life.

It's funny the things you remember from your childhood.

I was always a huge He-Man and the Masters of the Universe fan, and my modern day love for collecting action figures and merchandise went back to those days already. Collecting for me was always a sense of creating my own happy world.

When the live action movie came out, I was a kid in love! He -Man was real! Along with the movie came a whole new range of action figures. The new range had some cool new characters, and I begged and begged my mom to get me one.

Then, she finally did. That's one thing my mom would do, if I wanted something, especially toys, she would make sure I got it. As a kid we never really appreciate things like this, and I remember when I opened the gift she presented me, I saw that it was a character named Gwildor (yes I'm sure the spelling may be wrong, but go with me on this). Now Gwildor was a dwarf-like character whose action figure didn't do all that much. Being disappointed, I ended up being ungrateful and mocked the toy saying "all he does is twirl his weapon" and I sarcastically twirled his accessory. My mom was so angry about my ungratefulness that she grabbed the toy out my hand and threw it out the car window on the way home from school one day.

When we got home she beat me with a belt and told me that I needed to pay her back for the toy immediately, and for every hour I didn't have the money I would get another beating.

Of course I didn't have money. I was what...10 years old, and those offshore accounts hadn't matured yet.

Like clockwork, every hour I got a beating. When my dad got home she told me I'd better get the money from him if I wanted it to stop.

And so, I put on a smiley face and I told him about this toy I saw and begged him to give me the money for it...My dad always treated me like gold (when sober), and said sure, but he'd get me the money the next day.

Phew...problem solved, right? Not exactly. My mom continued to beat me every hour until bedtime that night. She would come into my room beat me with the belt and tell me not to let my father hear. So I would take the belt lashes and try my best not to scream in pain or my dad would hear me in the next room.

Longest. Night. Ever.

For all his problems, my dad was good to me. It was the alcohol that turned him into a raging beast. I love him and miss him tremendously. I guess I miss him because I didn't get to have a father son relationship when I was an adult. So it's more about the "what could have been", rather that what was.

I remember the day of my dad's death back in January of 1990 crystal clear. I guess I'm thankful that the night before his early morning heart attack, I had in fact spent a loving night with him, watching wrestling I had taped on the TV. Royal Rumble 1990 to be exact. I, as a child often does, ending up ruining the ending for him by telling him that Big John Studd won, he was comically annoyed that I ruined the ended but not angry, but I'm so glad I had that moment with him, because it would my last.

In the early hours of the next morning, I woke up to the sounds of my mom screaming, and as I wandered out of my room cleaning the sleep out my eyes, there was chaos...my mom running around frantically, one of our neighbors was there trying to calm her down and holding my brother, and I had no idea what was going on...until I looked to my left and saw my dad laying dead on the bathroom floor. Suddenly I felt as if I was floating away, but in reality it was our neighbor who picked me up and carried me to the lounge to be with my brother while all this madness was going on. There was an ambulance outside the house, and soon...the coroner. My dad, who I laid next to just hours before as we watched wrestling, was gone. He had had heart attacks before, and always recovered. This time, he didn't get up.

The next few days, the cars that were parked outside came and went, from family to flower delivery guys, to people I hadn't the foggiest idea who they were, yet offered their support if I needed anything.

As time does, it moves on, and people carry on with their lives, but I always wondered what the neighbors thought.

Then, less than a year later, we went through it all again...when my older brother committed suicide.