Cap Badge of The Loyal Edmonton Regiment
A Novel By Brian Howard Seibert
© Copyright by Brian Howard Seibert
In The Shadow of TASU (The Autism Spectrum Umbrella)
Chapter 3: On Being Bad, Sylvan Lake, Alberta, June 2006:
“I’m not a bad person,” you tell yourself. “I’m not a bad person, really.”
Yet, when a bad thought crosses your mind, you know that you are…really.
I remember when my sister Donna would go to the lake with us on family trips or holidays and she was always getting into trouble, or getting lost, and our parents would organize us kids into search parties and we would go out looking for her and we’d all be hoping and praying that she hadn’t gone off into the deep waters of the lake and drowned. Except for me. There would be a part of me that wished she had. And that is how I know I am bad, really. Eventually, my younger brother Garry did go out into the deep waters of the lake, Sylvan Lake, and he drowned. I guess he was bad too. I guess I wasn’t the only one thinking it.
Years later, a little after Austin was born, he must have been just over a year old, because it was Labour Day, the September Labour Day, and his birthday was in July and it was well after he was born, but it was well before he was two because by two we were sure Austin had brain damage and during this little tale we were still not sure. I think we were just starting to suspect. Ann saw it first, in his eyes. She knew there was something wrong, but I was still in denial. Sometimes I felt as though I was living my father’s life, but I was doing it better. My father had homesteaded up in Spirit River, Alberta, but had failed and had to move back to Edmonton, back into the city and I had always sensed he felt it was a failure. I had my acreage, I was homesteading, and I was still out there. We were roughing it a bit but I hadn’t packed it in and moved back to the city. But then…I was still in denial.
We couldn’t have been roughing it that much because my wife Ann had just cooked a nice roast beef dinner for Labour Day Monday and she was even sitting down to eat with us and she hardly ever ate with me and the children. But there she was at the other end of the dining room table looking at me blankly and Austin was in his highchair next to her and my three girls sitting down either side of the table watched their mother get up out of her chair and she walked silently toward me, clutching her chest and I realized she was choking! She made it to my end of the dining room and just as I got up to grab her, she collapsed face down on the floor. I slapped her on the back twice, but she’d already blacked out. The kids were calling out to her and I was a little surprised how cool I was about it all. The children were beginning to panic and cry and I very cooly picked Ann up off the floor with my hands about her waist and, as she sagged down forward, I jerked upwards and a chunk of roast beef flew out of her mouth across the room. Ann sucked in a great gulp of air and she regained consciousness and the girls all gathered around us and everyone applauded my heroic efforts. I’d never performed the Heimlich Manoeuvre, nor can I remember being trained in it, perhaps it was my St. John’s Ambulance training when I was a teen in the Loyal Edmonton Regiment that took over, but I had performed it flawlessly. Cooly and flawlessly like a seasoned pro and then a thought came to me…a pang of regret. If I had just kept pounding on Ann’s back, she would have died and I would have been free. I buried the thought deep inside of me, but I couldn’t get rid of that pang of regret, and I wondered if that meant our marriage was over. I was bad…really.
But it would have been ironic if my wife had choked to death. Death from lack of oxygen. My sister suffered from lack of oxygen, my brother died from lack of oxygen, my son suffered from lack of oxygen, why not my wife? I saved her life, but could I save our marriage, for I now, too, suffered from lack of oxygen. The oxygen my wife would have lacked had I not saved her. “I’m not a bad person,” I tell myself. “I’m not a bad person, really.”
SeiberTeck: 'The Varangians Series' 