I flipped over to the ‘60s channel on XM Satellite Radio just now and find myself listening to some Richie Havens concert song.
Richie was one of the featured performers at Woodstock. He was boring then and he’s boring now.
All of which is apropos of nothing in particular.
I had an exchange of e-mails this morning with my cousin Sam, the son of my mother’s sister Ruth. Sam was the youngest of four kids and is a year or two younger than I. His oldest sister, Joanne, was almost a contemporary of my mother. Next in order was Kay and then Susie and Sam.
Susie, who was five years older than I, was all flash and brass. Disarmingly glamorous with a startling directness. I remember my parents being taken aback when she called them by their first names, instead of “Uncle Charles” and “Aunt Eileen.”
I thought she was beautiful and cool and had a crush on her during my pre-school years.
My chronology may be off a bit – I was only in junior high school – but I think she got married during her senior year of high school because she was pregnant.
She married her boyfriend and he went on to be a successful attorney. They moved to Michigan and she occupied herself being a model and doing television commercials.
Somehow, though, it all started to slip and the next I heard of her she was drinking heavily, had crashed her marriage and was living with her widowed father in Indianapolis.
A short time later, my parents told me Susie had attempted suicide with sleeping pills and was in an Indianapolis psychiatric hospital.
I visited her several times, renewing our friendship despite the confusion and memory loss she was experiencing from electro shock therapy, intended to zap away her chronic depression.
After a few weeks, she was released and I lost track of her until one winter night when I got a call from a guy who turned out to be her current boyfriend/drinking buddy. He and Susie were holed up in a fleabag motel on the Westside of Indianapolis and Susie was drunk and out of control. Would I come out and help, he asked.
When my (first) wife and I arrived, Susie was in bed, slamming down vodka like it was water and jabbering incoherently. At one point, she tried to drag her into bed with her with obvious amorous intentions. My recollection is that we somehow got her into detox, at which point I realized she was way beyond my ability to help.
Her brother and sisters had pretty much washed their hands of her years earlier after she used them and stole from their homes to get money for booze.
The last time I saw her, she was apparently semi functional – the encounter was her father’s funeral and I think it was about 20 years ago.
So when my cousin Sam mentioned this morning that he had passed through Indianapolis last Friday and visited Susie – he calls her Sue – I asked how she’s doing.
His response:
Sue is in an assisted living facility on the westside of Indy, just north of the airport. Health is declining, largely due to her continuing smoking and crippling arthritis. She basically "vegetates," having no interest in anything. All she has is (our) side as her kids haven't attempted contact in years. An extremely sad set of circumstances but, unfortunately, largely self-imposed.
Jeez, the twilight years of the Golden Girl of my childhood. How freaking depressing!
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