Martyr - Tape 5

(Beep.)

You were so weak in the hospital. You were so weak when I went to visit you. You were a shadow of who you once were. I was not expecting that, but I don’t know what I should have been expecting. Maybe I should have known things were going to be bad when my mother started acting like a mom to me. She’d never been all that good at it. My stepsister was always  top priority. Even when she died, I didn’t expect to move up that far in the pecking order. But there I was: the sole recipient of her full attention.

(Music fades in)

I would have done anything to bring you back. To save you somehow. Even though that wasn’t possible, I still found myself lost in the fantasies of such in those moments when you were too weak to speak. In the beginning of my visit, I mean. Do you remember that? You were fading in and out of consciousness. 

You had been already weak before the fall. Then from the fall. And then the new medications you now needed to take. They were necessary, I can’t and won’t deny that. But the consequences of them all were still very much real. 

It took you awhile to focus on me and to enter into a conversation with me. That was one of the consequences. I know this now. But back then, I wasn’t so sure. In fact, I thought you were deliberately ignoring me, that you were angry with me, or that you were dying, right then and there. And that I would have to watch.

Those things felt like fitting punishments. One way or another. One way or another, they were deprivations of the care you had shown me: the thing I had not properly returned to you.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

In time, even in that short time, you got a bit stronger. Enough to hold a conversation with me. While my mother and everyone else were out in the hallway, discussing you. Your fate, as it were. You weren’t going to recover. Not fully. Physically exist, you were not going to get worse for a while. But you would not fully be what you were, not even reaching the weakened state that predated the fall. This was the beginning of the end. A long, drawn out end. 

Three years would go by before we heard about your death. I don’t know if it really took that long. Or if there was a delay in messaging. But every day in that state was a day too long, wasn’t it? It’s not what you wanted or what anyone wants. No segment of a life should be defined by that much pain. But yours was. There was the physical pain, sure, and the pain from being surrounded yet again by strangers. By people you didn’t know who did not care about you. Like we did.

Uncle did not want it to be that way. But it was not his decision. You had a niece still living, and though she was a distance away, ultimately it was her decision which hospice you were sent to.  And I don’t remember why exactly I don’t remember why it was her and not someone in the diocese who maybe could believe that this parish had become your family and that we wanted to be there for you. 

But no, it was her decision, and I like to think she made it the best she could.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

I was alone with you for the better part of an hour, but only towards the end did you find it in yourself to speak to me. Well, to listen to me and then to speak. I told you... the not full truth. I interwove the pieces I had left out before but I left out Stepdad and his failures. I always left them out when I was telling the story. Honestly, until this podcast, I told no one about it. 

You hardly knew my stepdad, but I still felt like I needed to leave him out. Not to protect him. But because--really--I just didn’t want to spare myself your rightful wrath. That suffering was rightfully mine, and I didn’t want to give it up. There would have been something validating about having you hate me. Like it would have told me that I was right for hating myself. That there was a reason everyone had turned on me thus far. I wanted to think there was a reason. It would have made the rest of the world easier to understand.

But no. Instead, you gave me a charge, a task. You commanded me to be more open and upfront about my dreams. Whatever they were, you said. Whatever was happening, it was not my place to take that chance.

And I took your words to heart. I lived by that motto for so long. Or so I could claim. I knew that was right, but then I failed. Again and again. I let my shy and fearful nature silence me, repeating the same mistake over and over again. Failing you, over and over again.

But suddenly, I think… I think I just might have misunderstood you. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

No, uh, or… No, that’s not right. Because your words came out clearly. I just don’t think you necessarily meant what you said. There were just so many things that contradicted it. Like everything you were to me. You who had showed me kindness and accepted me for all my flaws and vulnerabilities. You who gave me love and care and candies. How could you strike me down so hard. How could you send me out to slaughter? 

You always told me to care for other people, though. To offer small acts of kindness when I could. Acts of service. Acts of compassion. Those things. Not fortune telling. Not martyrdom. Just kindness. All that I was, you said. And I may be quiet, but I still do that. I still am the girl I was back then. I’m just hurting.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

And besides, you were a Catholic priest. Shouldn’t you have wanted me to get an exorcism or not listen to the devil? This sort of thing is forbidden. And Acts Chapter 16 verses 16 to 34. When Paul liberated the slave girl possessed by the demon. There was an element of truth to her proclamations, but it caused others to keep her in chains. And so Paul set her free. He saved her. Because the truth might be wonderful, but there’s more to it than that in some situations. Many situations. Maybe mine. 

But I can’t banish this so easily. These dreams. Nightmares. And maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe it’s just a twist of perception. That might be the part I need to cast out.

(Music fades out. Beep.)

The Oracle of Dusk is a Miscellany Media Studios Production. It is written, produced, performed, and edited by MJ Bailey with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful Music Supply. If you like the show, please consider leaving a review, tipping through our Ko-Fi account, subscribing on Patreon, or telling your friends about it. And check out Aishi Online, the story of the voice you know all too well.

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