WEBVTT - How Long the Dying Went On 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:09.680 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. I am six 0:00:09.840 --> 0:00:12.719 years old and standing next to a gravestone with my 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:15.520 name on it. The little girl with my name is 0:00:15.560 --> 0:00:19.120 buried here, along with her mom, who was my father's sister, 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:22.360 and her dad. There were others who died in the 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:25.720 wreck too, some who were buried here and some who 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:28.280 are buried at the other cemetery that looks just like 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:31.440 this one. I cannot keep up with all the dead people. 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:34.120 I am not sure how many there are, because I 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:36.840 have never heard anyone list all of their names at once, 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:39.920 or tick them off on their fingers, one by one. 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:43.600 I do not ask what happened to the girl, because 0:00:43.640 --> 0:00:46.120 I already know what my father will say, the same 0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:48.760 thing he said when I ask why I have just 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:50.800 one grandmother the wreck. 0:00:56.400 --> 0:00:59.880 That's Cassandra Jackson, professor of English at the College of 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:04.160 New Jersey, where she teaches classes about African American literature 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:08.440 and visual culture. She's the author of several books, most 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:12.640 recently The Wreck, a Daughter's Memoir of Becoming a Mother. 0:01:13.720 --> 0:01:17.360 Cassandra's is a story of a tragedy that happened before 0:01:17.400 --> 0:01:20.920 she was born, a loss so profound that it seeped 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:24.520 into every corner of her childhood and her family's life, 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.840 until finally, in the fullness of time, she was able 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:44.800 to lay it to rest. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:47.800 is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:50.640 the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:51.800 keep from ourselves. 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:02.000 I grew up and were class black family. 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:04.200 Everybody in my family. 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:08.040 The most part it spent their entire lives in Alabama. 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:11.600 It was a really, in some ways, a really tough 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:15.640 way for place to grow up in that it felt 0:02:15.680 --> 0:02:18.400 like history was all around us, like we were always 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:22.280 walking on hallow ground, in part because even though I 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:27.520 was born after the Civil Rights Movement, the world just 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:31.160 hadn't changed that much in that space. So I remember 0:02:31.200 --> 0:02:39.240 it as being incredibly oppressive. I remember being very aware 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:43.880 of what it meant to be black in that space 0:02:44.080 --> 0:02:47.600 where the people who had the power, who had the 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:52.639 most prestigious jobs, who ran the town were almost exclusively 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:56.919 white men. And in some ways, it creates this really 0:02:57.160 --> 0:03:00.920 sort of strange idea of what home is when the 0:03:00.960 --> 0:03:05.079 first place that you grow up in is one where 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:07.760 you are very alien to that place, even though it's 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:09.000 the place that you're from. 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:14.639 And you grew up with your mother, your father, and 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:17.959 a much older sister and brother. 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:23.360 Yes. Yeah, So I was a very late baby with 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:27.280 siblings that were already in their teens, so I didn't 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:29.840 have a chance to get to know them as children. 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:33.400 They were already sort of like many adults by the 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:37.760 time I could remember them. My sister did a lot 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:40.520 of stuff with me when I was a kid, and 0:03:40.600 --> 0:03:44.640 a lot of the things that people sometimes expect moms 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:46.640 to do, Like she was the one who did my hair, 0:03:47.040 --> 0:03:50.000 the one who, you know, would make a little picnic 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:53.480 and we'd take it outside in the backyard fresh peaches. 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:54.520 She was that person. 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:58.280 And my brother was gone a lot when I was 0:03:58.800 --> 0:04:03.559 a kid, Like he sort of started moving into adulthood, 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:05.920 I think, at a different rate from my sister, which 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:08.320 I think is not uncommon, particularly in the part of. 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:09.560 The stuff that we grew up in. 0:04:10.080 --> 0:04:12.800 So he was already sort of moving out into the 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:15.160 world even as a teenager. I felt like he was 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:16.920 like sort of gone in his car all the time. 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:20.360 You know, my sister, my mother, and my father were 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:22.839 the people who were present the most in the household. 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:26.000 Did you feel in any way like an only child, 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:29.159 given that your sister was how many years older? 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:31.160 Thirteen years older. 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:35.320 Yeah, I did feel very much like an only child 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:39.160 because they moved out before I was even you know, 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:46.080 in the fifth grade. It was incredibly lonely. I played 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:49.039 by myself a lot. I played with some of the 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:52.400 kids in the neighborhood, but it was not the same 0:04:52.440 --> 0:04:54.720 as having another child in the household. I remember being 0:04:54.760 --> 0:05:00.440 alone a lot. I remember being very aware of the 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:04.440 relationship between my parents in the house because there was 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:05.480 no other place. 0:05:05.200 --> 0:05:06.080 For my focus to go. 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:08.240 It's not as though there was like another child there. 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:12.400 So yeah, it was much more like growing up as 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:17.760 an only child, and I definitely was really aware of 0:05:17.800 --> 0:05:21.159 my isolation in that way. Yeah. 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:23.800 One of the things about only children, and I say 0:05:23.839 --> 0:05:26.480 this as one myself, or actually as someone who had 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:28.520 a much older half sister, which is why I asked 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:32.159 that question, there's a way in which only children or 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:37.040 people who feel like only children study their parents. And 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:40.400 I'm wondering what you can tell me about your mother 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:44.719 from your early memories of her and what she was. 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:45.200 Like for you. 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:51.120 She was a big presence in the sense that she 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:55.919 had very specific ideas about how things should be done and. 0:05:55.839 --> 0:05:57.120 What things should look like. 0:05:58.160 --> 0:06:03.960 She was very obsessed with our house, and our house 0:06:04.120 --> 0:06:08.640 was constantly being redecorated based on things that she saw 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:13.320 in various magazines, and everything was in this constant state 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:18.560 of transformation. And it was interesting because no matter how 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:22.919 much she did it, she was never completely satisfied with 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:28.120 the result for very long and it became clear that 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:31.280 the transformation part of it was the point, not the 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:36.720 end result. And that was largely her entertainment. And it 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:38.680 was unusual though in the sense that it was sort 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:42.040 of obsessive. She was also a very anxious person, and 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:47.360 so one of my memories was of her getting dressed 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:53.320 on an ordinary morning and she would come out wearing 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:56.280 one outfit or half of an outfit and say, how 0:06:56.320 --> 0:06:58.559 does this look? And I would say, oh, it looks great, 0:06:58.600 --> 0:07:00.760 and then she would go back to her room and 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:03.960 then she'd change again, and then she'd come out wearing 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:05.400 half of another outfit. 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:06.880 And she would go back and change again. 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:12.200 So self presentation and having you know, sort of control 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:15.800 was very important to heart. Some of it was about respectability. 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:20.000 I think she had grown up in poverty and you know, 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:24.400 hadn't always had the things that she needed, and so 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:32.440 she was absolutely meticulous about having control over the way 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:34.280 she looked when she walked out of the house. 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:37.680 What did I feel like to you? As the kid, It. 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:42.880 Felt anxiety producing. It's like a child sometimes you know 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:45.720 something is wrong and you don't know exactly what it is, 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:49.240 but you are certain that something's not right. This was 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:55.440 definitely that thing in that I understood that you weren't 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:58.480 supposed to change clothes six times before you left the 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:01.880 house on an ordinary work day, and by the time 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:04.040 we would leave, she would be in a complete panic 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:07.400 because of course we would be late, and that lateness 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:10.440 did not fit with her ideas about respectability. And yet 0:08:10.440 --> 0:08:16.920 at the same time she struggled with just organizing herself 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:20.320 to get out of the house. And I absorbed a 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:25.320 lot of her anxiety as she was sort of going 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:28.120 through these paces in the morning, and I can remember, 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:30.080 you know, sort of I'd be sitting on the sofa 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:34.000 Washington o'clock as this was happening in my own anxiety 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:35.640 getting higher and higher as I. 0:08:35.600 --> 0:08:37.040 Watched her going back and forth. 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:40.559 As for the transformations, I think that one of the 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:42.719 ways that it affected me was that my body was 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:46.480 also a part of it, and that she was not 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:52.240 satisfied with how I look either. She wanted control over 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:55.840 everything that I wore, but she was constantly shopping for 0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:57.839 something that would make me look different. She thought it 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:02.680 was too thin, and she wanted me to be bigger. 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:05.560 She thought my sister was too big and she wanted 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:09.440 her to be thinner. And so some of the anxiety 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:13.720 was really about the fact that I think I understood 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:18.280 that there was something wrong with me in her eyes, 0:09:18.320 --> 0:09:23.319 and that I didn't know how to address it, something 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:28.520 kind of unfixable, and I felt like I didn't have 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:32.920 control over the things that you know, she was disappointed in. 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:36.800 Tell me about your father. 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:42.679 I remember him as this very loving father who was 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:50.240 much more accepting, and yet he really wasn't that present 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:55.800 in the sense that he drank. He was, you know, 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:59.080 sort of trying to cope with a lot of grief 0:09:59.320 --> 0:10:03.360 and things he experience in his past. And I think 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:08.320 that he was self medicating for a good portion of 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:12.360 my childhood. And he was very susceptible to alcohol as well. 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:15.080 So you know, if I were to say to somebody 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:16.960 how much he was drinking, they would say, well, he 0:10:17.000 --> 0:10:21.319 wasn't drinking very much, but very little alcohol could really 0:10:21.440 --> 0:10:26.080 knock him out, and it made it such that it 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:32.839 was lights out usually during and sometime after dinner, because 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:35.839 it didn't take a whole lot of alcohol for him 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:40.680 to fade into a dream like state where he would 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:44.240 be kind of snoozing in our home, usually in the 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:49.400 din and so it was pretty normal to walk into 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:51.440 the den and for him to basically be sitting in 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:54.960 this like lounge chair, but he's actually like asleep and 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:59.040 he's dreaming, and I can hear him. I think sometimes, 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:02.679 you know, I've heard people imagine that the parent who 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:05.520 is the alcoholic is this you know, horrible person who 0:11:05.600 --> 0:11:08.120 is out doing all of this harm in this very 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:11.280 sort of vindictive way. But really, in a lot of ways, 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:16.120 he was somebody who was incredibly like sort of loving 0:11:16.160 --> 0:11:19.880 and accepting when he was present with us. He just 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:21.200 couldn't be present with us. 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:22.720 He just wanted to check out. 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:25.880 Yeah, he wanted to check out. And it was something 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:29.880 my parents argued over as well, about his you know, drinking, 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:33.000 And yet it was difficult because on the one hand, 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:36.200 they argued about it, but at the same time, you know, 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:39.760 I don't think either of my parents understood that was alcoholism, 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:44.400 I think in their minds, because he got up and 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:45.920 went to work every day, and he was a very 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:48.679 hard worker and he was very sort of successful at 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:52.520 the factory where he was working. I think that that 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:56.800 meant that he couldn't possibly be an alcoholic, because in 0:11:56.840 --> 0:11:58.760 their minds, an alcoholic as somebody who drinks to the 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:01.480 point where you know they can't go to work. He 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:04.679 wasn't doing that, but he was the functional alcoholic. 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:10.559 When Cassandra's a little girl, her father often asks her 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:13.040 to take a ride to the country. That's what he 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:16.240 calls it, the country. Her mother goes along for the 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:20.479 drive as well. These regular outings stand out as unsettling 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:22.599 and strange. 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:25.200 Where I grew up, there was this distinct difference between 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:27.440 living in a town and then the more rural areas 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:31.040 outside of it. And my father had grown up in. 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:33.559 One of those really rural. 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:38.240 Areas, and so we would go to visit people that 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:41.040 he knew in his childhood. We would go there to 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:46.040 visit relatives, and we would get there and I would 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:51.040 meet these older people who in my mind were really 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:55.320 at the time because I was five, and they would 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:59.240 stare at me, they would act very oddly sometimes around me. 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:01.120 They were very interested. 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:05.479 In my appearance. I remember them trying to feed me constantly, 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:08.000 Like I would get there and they would say, oh, 0:13:08.120 --> 0:13:10.719 let me go get some cookies, let me go get 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:14.720 some candy. There was always take lemonade, something that they 0:13:14.760 --> 0:13:19.880 wanted me to eat. And they would often remark about 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:24.680 how much I looked like my father's family, who died 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:29.080 before I was born, And they would have these really 0:13:29.240 --> 0:13:34.720 kind of interesting expressions because they were often, I think, 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:38.440 sort of trying to figure out if the resemblance was 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:42.840 just a resemblance, or if there was something of the 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:46.320 occult that was happening in these encounters, right, And so 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:49.439 in some ways, the whole thing about trying to get 0:13:49.440 --> 0:13:52.040 me to eat was about trying to make sure that 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:55.120 I was like a real child and not something else. 0:13:55.840 --> 0:13:58.320 And so they would sit there and watch me eat 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:02.680 whatever it was, and then they would be sort of satisfied, like, oh, 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:06.320 it's just a resemblance. But they talked about it constantly. 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:08.959 They would say to me, like, you look so much 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:12.800 like my father's sister, Maggie Joe, or you look so 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:17.679 much like Bernice's his mother. And they would say that 0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:20.520 to my father over and over again. They would say, Oh, 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:23.600 she's just like them, mains, She's just like them. And 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:27.000 it's interesting because this was one of the things that 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:30.360 became pretty regular in my childhood when we would do this. 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:33.040 It happened over and over again, and even as I got. 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:37.320 Older, people still often responded in that way of feeling 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:42.360 as though they were trying to figure out or understand 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:45.600 something about the ways in which you know, there was 0:14:45.640 --> 0:14:48.040 this genetic link between me and the past, and what 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:48.680 did it mean. 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:51.800 It also seems like those comments that they would make 0:14:52.280 --> 0:14:55.200 in front of you as a child, they weren't even 0:14:55.200 --> 0:14:57.200 really directed to you. It was almost like you weren't 0:14:57.240 --> 0:14:59.840 even there. They were talking to your parents about them, 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:01.760 talking to your father about them, they were talking to 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:03.160 each other about them. 0:15:03.520 --> 0:15:04.560 It's really true. 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:09.120 And frequently it was if I was an object in 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:11.760 the room or so than a person, right, And even 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:14.840 with the staring without any real you know, sort of 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:17.000 self consciousness about the fact that you were looking at 0:15:17.040 --> 0:15:20.880 another person was related to that in the sense that 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:24.880 it was something to be addressed and to be talked 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:28.400 about and to be discussed, but not necessarily with me. 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:31.400 Do you have any recollection of what that felt like 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:32.560 at the time. 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:35.840 I found myself thinking about it a lot, because I 0:15:35.880 --> 0:15:39.240 think it felt different at different times. When I was 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:43.880 really little, I remember wanting to go home, and I 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:45.880 knew that we weren't going to stay at these places 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:48.360 for very long because my father couldn't stand to be 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:50.840 there for very long either, So we might drive a 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:54.920 good forty minutes and within ten minutes he's like, well, 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:57.760 it was nice seeing you, repeatedd back out the door. 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:02.000 But I do remembering rather nervous and like I was 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:04.840 supposed to do something and I didn't know what it 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:05.200 was I. 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:06.040 Was supposed to do. 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:10.960 I felt as if I did not really want this 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:14.320 attention that I was getting any situations, especially when I 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:15.640 was really small. 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:18.280 And it didn't make sense to me. I didn't know the. 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:22.600 People that they thought I resembled. I had never met them, 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:26.280 and we didn't talk about those people as a family either. 0:16:28.280 --> 0:16:30.720 When you were a child at that point, what did 0:16:30.760 --> 0:16:36.040 you know about your father's family before you were born 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:38.800 and what had happened to them. 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:43.120 I knew that there had been a car accident that 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:45.960 my father always referred to as the wreck when it 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:49.320 did come up, but we did not talk about it ordinarily. 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:53.880 Occasionally I would be looking at a photo album and 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:56.600 maybe point to a relative in that photo album, and 0:16:56.600 --> 0:16:58.600 he would say, Oh. 0:16:57.920 --> 0:16:58.720 She died in the wreck. 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:01.600 I knew there had been a wreck, I did not 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:05.200 know where it happened. I did not know when it happened, 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:10.960 and I wasn't clear on who was in the wreck 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:17.160 and who survived it and who died. I knew there 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:20.200 were a lot of people who died, but no one 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:24.679 ever said to me, this is what happened, this is 0:17:24.680 --> 0:17:26.960 where it happened, this is how it happened, and this 0:17:27.040 --> 0:17:31.719 is how these particular people died. And so it was 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:33.639 one of those things that I felt like I was 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:37.880 learning about it kind of like piecemeal. But I had 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:41.480 a very hard time as a child keeping track of 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:42.680 all of these people. 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:44.879 I was too little, I guess, in some ways to 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:45.560 keep track of it. 0:17:45.600 --> 0:17:48.840 But also we just didn't really talk about it unless 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:51.760 my father was saying, oh, the wreck, and that was 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:53.560 the explanation in those two words. 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:56.679 So did you have a sense as a child that 0:17:56.720 --> 0:17:57.920 you shouldn't bring it up? 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:03.800 Yes, absolutely, I think I understood that there was a 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:07.240 reason that we weren't talking about this and I think 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:12.160 I also understood that this was a very painful thing, 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:16.280 and that in our family you don't talk about painful things, 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:20.360 and so I figured if they weren't talking about it, 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:22.879 I wasn't supposed to be talking about it either. And 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:25.360 I'm not even sure if I knew how to talk 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:30.520 about it, because at no point was there and open 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:34.679 enough conversation about it that I would have understood, like 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:37.639 the language in terms of that kind of conversation about 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:43.320 grief and loss. And so there was no model by 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:49.159 which to understand how you talk to someone about what was, 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:52.520 you know, the worst day in my father's life. 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:56.760 You also had a grandfather, so Daddy Blewett, it was 0:18:56.800 --> 0:19:00.000 your father's father. He was a presence in your childhoo. 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:04.960 Absolutely, he was there in the summers usually, And he 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:08.520 was the only person too who ever really talked about 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:12.320 the wreck. And he didn't tell me what happened, as 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:17.320 much as he would repeatedly tell this story about the 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:20.959 aftermath and an incident he remembered in the hospital of 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:24.199 someone coming and trying to give him a shot and 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:26.360 having to be held down when they were giving him 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:32.880 this shot. And so that one story was really the only. 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:35.960 Story I ever heard about. 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:39.639 What happened exactly, and even that wasn't about what happened. 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:41.760 It was really about the aftermath in the hospital. 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:44.280 So I knew that he had been in the wreck, 0:19:44.960 --> 0:19:49.320 and you know, he never said very much about when, how, where, 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:49.919 none of that. 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:52.000 But he did tell that one story about it over 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:52.439 and over. 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:54.919 Again, and it was clear that he was telling that 0:19:55.000 --> 0:19:59.200 story in a repetitive way that suggested trauma. And I 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:01.720 would listen to him to tell the story over and 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.199 over again, and I felt like I understood how to 0:20:05.240 --> 0:20:09.879 participate in that particular conversation about it, because you know, 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:12.000 he could be very sort of emphatic when he was 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:13.840 saying things, and I. 0:20:13.880 --> 0:20:15.480 Would sit there like a little. 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:18.080 Later and be like, mm hmmmm, that must have been awful, 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:23.440 like very like responding in ways that I understood how 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:24.520 to talk about this, because. 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:26.560 We weren't really talking about loss or emotions. 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:28.760 He wasn't talking about the fact that his wife had 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:32.439 died from that accident. He was just telling this story 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:36.760 about what happened to his body after this accident. 0:20:38.280 --> 0:20:40.159 The way you're describing it makes so much sense to me. 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:45.159 I mean, trauma is recursive. The mind goes to the 0:20:45.200 --> 0:20:47.480 same place over and over and over again. The story 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:50.959 doesn't progress until it does if it does, and so 0:20:51.000 --> 0:20:54.680 he was trapped in that story. When he would tell 0:20:54.720 --> 0:20:57.800 you that story, would you welcome it? Were you sort 0:20:57.840 --> 0:20:59.840 of hungry for it because maybe you were going to 0:20:59.880 --> 0:21:01.120 find out a little bit more? 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:06.520 Yeah, I was so hungry for it. It was very 0:21:06.880 --> 0:21:13.680 clear to me that my family was really keeping secrets 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:18.639 about what had happened, and it felt like being let in, 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:24.520 you know, it felt like I was being treated as 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:29.679 if I was somebody who deserved to know. And in 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:32.000 all the other ways, I felt like with my father 0:21:32.520 --> 0:21:35.639 that that story was not mine, even though it was 0:21:35.720 --> 0:21:39.359 obviously impacting our family in ways that impacted me and 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:42.359 it was part of my story, I did not feel 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:44.640 like I could lay claim to it enough to be. 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:46.200 Able to say, hey, what happened? 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:52.200 And I think that I performed that sort of role 0:21:52.280 --> 0:21:56.080 with my grandfather because it felt like I had a 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:59.200 role now, you know, like it felt like, oh, I'm 0:21:59.200 --> 0:22:03.080 being told about this, and he's telling me because I'm 0:22:03.160 --> 0:22:06.840 somebody who's supposed to know, and that felt like a 0:22:07.080 --> 0:22:13.600 kind of belonging in a really sort of interesting way. 0:22:16.359 --> 0:22:30.400 We'll be right back when Cassandra's nine years old, her 0:22:30.400 --> 0:22:32.720 mother tells her that one of the people who died 0:22:32.720 --> 0:22:36.160 in the wreck was her father's first wife, a woman 0:22:36.280 --> 0:22:40.240 named will A Deane. This is the first time Cassandra 0:22:40.359 --> 0:22:43.480 hears this name, and the first time she's told her 0:22:43.560 --> 0:22:47.760 dad had been married before her mother. Cassandra's mind begins 0:22:47.800 --> 0:22:50.960 to work overtime, trying to figure out how it's possible 0:22:51.240 --> 0:22:53.640 that there could be something so big about her father's 0:22:53.680 --> 0:22:57.040 past that she didn't know, and what does it mean 0:22:57.280 --> 0:23:00.639 to have not known. She also begins to about her 0:23:00.680 --> 0:23:04.679 older sister, Annette. The two of them look nothing alike, 0:23:05.080 --> 0:23:08.800 which is something that's always commented upon. Maybe she's not 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:14.840 a full sister, Cassandra wonders, maybe Annette's mom is Willa Deane. 0:23:15.160 --> 0:23:18.600 I remember that experience so well because my mother said 0:23:18.600 --> 0:23:21.159 it so matter of factly, like I'm just looking through 0:23:21.160 --> 0:23:22.960 a photo album I see and I'm like, oh, who 0:23:23.040 --> 0:23:26.119 is this, Oh that's your daddy's first life. And she 0:23:26.400 --> 0:23:28.040 just went back to reading, like I think it was 0:23:28.040 --> 0:23:29.800 like a newspapers, Like she just went back to what 0:23:29.840 --> 0:23:34.160 she was doing. And I felt like somebody had just 0:23:34.240 --> 0:23:37.080 snatched the floor out from U under me, not the rug. 0:23:37.200 --> 0:23:39.640 The whole floor was gone for a moment there because 0:23:39.680 --> 0:23:42.440 I'm thinking, like, if you didn't. 0:23:42.200 --> 0:23:45.159 Tell me this, what else do I not know? 0:23:46.240 --> 0:23:49.800 I just remember it being such an uncomfortable experience, and 0:23:49.920 --> 0:23:54.720 that it raised so many other questions, including about my sister, 0:23:55.080 --> 0:23:59.800 because everywhere we went people remarked on how different we 0:23:59.840 --> 0:24:04.120