1.9
March 2016. Brian was coming home. His visit was going to be all about how to reduce mom's stress. I knew I needed his help to reinforce the rules I had given to dad. Dad appeared to the rest of us that he had mellowed some. But there was always tension, always walking on eggshells when he was around. I tried to get mom out of the house as much as possible until Brian came home. Dad kept trying to find excuses that she needed to stay home with him.
Brian's visit went too quickly and pretty soon it was Sunday. He was going to fly back home the next day. Brian spent most of the weekend observing, watching what was going on, asking everyone questions about what has been going on recently. Just as supper finished and we were all starting to sit around the table to start talking about all the issues as a family, I received a phone call from mom's supervisor informing me that earlier that week, she was standing next to mom when dad called. She could hear dad yell at mom through the phone that she needed to get her work done so she could come over and help him. Mom's supervisor told mom she was not going to help him do his work. He's capable of doing it himself, he didn't have that much to do. Her supervisor was furious because she knew mom had a lot of how own work to do and dad was expecting her to get all her work done and then go do his. I was pissed.
Brian had started the conversation off by telling dad he had to take care of himself and stop trying to do the things that were causing him to need another hernia surgery. Dad sat there grinning as he argued saying that his doctors said he could keep competing in the Celtic Heavy Games. He forgot I had medical power of attorney over him so I could ask the doctors what they said to him. The doctors had not told him that. In fact, they had been telling him for a long time he needed to stop because this was the last time they were going to be able to add more mesh. He didn't care what any of us were telling him. He would just reply, "They said I can, so I'm gonna." almost in a small child, sign-song tone, smiling at us. It's hard to describe his behavior, like no one's going to stop me. Nah, nah, nah, kind of behavior. Mom started to cry and said she can't go through him having another surgery again. Dad wouldn't even look at her or acknowledge her.
After discussing that for maybe 20 minutes, I brought up the phone call I had just gotten from their supervisor. He of course denied that he yelled at mom. He tried to claim that he had all this extra work. I called him out on that too. Now that sing-song attitude stopped. Now he was mad and fell silent. Brian said, your wife is sitting next to you crying, don't you even care she's crying. I think he may have looked at her once, but he was glazed over. No emotion. It felt like watching a psychopath sit there, with an angry, hateful stare looking down at the table, not saying a word. It didn't matter what we said or how much he was hurting her. After about 15 minutes, he got up and stomped into their bedroom and slammed the door. Brian just looked at me. I said, he's just going to sit in there the rest of the night. You'll go home tomorrow, and after a couple of days, he'll come out like nothing happened and go back to the way he was. We have to stop this cycle.
Brian got up from the table and opened the bedroom door. Dad was just sitting on the bed. Brian said to him, "We are trying to have a family conversation about what we need to do for mom to make things better for her. You need to come out here so we can discuss this like a family." Over the next 45 minutes, dad just sat on the bed, Brian just standing in the doorway repeating that, waiting for a response from dad, and doing that over and over. There were a few times that Brian added, "Don't you even care that your family is out here crying?" At one point dad finally shouted back, "Everything was fine here until them two called you." He was referring to John and me as them two. I got up and went over the bedroom doorway and said, "Is that all I am to you? A them two?! I am your daughter!" I'm not sure why I felt the need to say that. I knew it wouldn't matter and I went back over to mom and sat with her at the table with my arm around her as she cried. Dad threatened to call the police on Brian. I think we both told him to go ahead, we don't mind telling the police how he treated mom. He got up and made a fist and started the motion like he was going to punch Brian. Brian just calmly replied, "I wish you would." Dad just backed down.
Somehow dad pushed past Brian, and he had turned to say something to us and came out into the dining room to grab his coat. I said, you are not going anywhere, we need to talk about this for mom's sake. Brian again stood in front of him. We were well over an hour into this, and dad was not going to back down. Oddly, somewhere inside of me, I had thought that with all of us there, he would finally realize what he had done, but that was wishful thinking. Brian just kept repeating what he had been saying all night as dad stood in front of him.
Suddenly dad tried to shove Brian in the chest to get past him. I'm sorry, I have to laugh here because Brian didn't move, and dad just bounced off of him. It felt like just a moment of justice for all the years he bullied all of us. When that didn't work, dad grabbed the edge of the table. He was going to try and flip it. The problem was that mom and I were sitting on the other side of it, in front of their dining room windows, already close up to them. Mom was leaning on the table with her head in her hands when he tried to do this, and I had one arm leaning on the table. We tried backing up, because as he was trying to pick up the table, he was also pushing it into us. We were backed up against the windows now. The leaves had been left in the table after supper, so it was extended out. He slammed the table down and picked it up again, once again pushing it further into us. We had no place to go as he slammed that table into us again pinning us into our chairs.
Luckily both John and Brian in one simultaneous motion grabbed dad by the shirt collar, one on each side, and backed him into the wall. Dad knew he just crossed a line. He tried to drop to his knees as he went into a full panic attack mode. Brian and John helped lower him to his knees so he wouldn't drop right to the floor. Dad was now hyperventilating. Brian shouted at him, "What in the hell were you thinking?! You just hit them with a table?!" Dad, on his knees and hands didn't say anything for a few moments, he didn't ask if we were ok, he never did. He just said he thinks he's hurt. So, I called 911 right away and explained the situation. I asked them to send police officers as well. We were going to be in for a long night.
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