Empty By DJ Thorndale

Sean Benham CC




EMPTY
  
Like any addict worth their salt, I started young and kept it close. All the best hits happened at home.  And, while I’m nothing like my family, I’m a curated collection of the emptiness that we embodied. The Thorndale’s got granular - like any addict worth their salt.
 
I grew up on Blue Licks Road.  The streets in our idyllic neighborhood were nostalgically named for Civil War battlefields: Gettysburg, Appomattox, Yorktown, Antietam, Williamsburg, Roanoke, and Shenandoah. My parents, Vic & JoAnn, hosted epic parties that many times ended with a huge Southern breakfast whipped up at 5am.  Empty was my mother’s theme. Empty stomachs were her specialty. Stray, injured animals gravitated to our doorstep like they were answering a call to Mecca. We had mangled cats, lizards with missing tails, hobo turtles, one-winged parakeets, and pregnant bunny rabbits. We didn’t discriminate. If it needed a home, it was welcomed into ours. Every kicked-out runaway ended up living on one of our couches, which, I guess, is why we had three. 
 
It began with Brenda. In the summer of 1977, this beautiful young woman from a well-to-do family was caught having “relations” with a less than desirable guy. To be fair, Willy was a pot-smoking redneck. And, at fifteen, Brenda was more goddess than teenager. She was self-possessed, full of grace, and sexually on fire. At the time, her decision to date Willy went over like a led zeppelin. Years later, they went on to marry and raise a family, but in July of 1977 all her folks knew was that they were of the country club set, and Willy’s family – well, they were white trash. Brenda showed up late one Friday night, in tears with a duffle bag slung over one shoulder. She cried in my mother’s arms and stayed for three months.  Before she moved on, my brother's shaggy motorcycle-riding friend, BH, arrived in a terrible state, anger and sadness tearing him apart.  He was the product of a Pentecostal mother and an absent, alcoholic father who consistently betrayed them both. BH sealed his own fate when he left a 6 pack of Budweiser and some crumpled Marlboro’s hiding in plain sight.  At sixteen, he found himself with a new label, disowned.  My parents would be stand-ins, providing pocket money, clothes, packs of cigarettes, homemade birthday cakes, and a steady source of unconditional love. BH lived with us for over two years. He truly was our “brother from another mother.”
 
Everything ended well at the Thorndale house. Empty fifths of Maker’s, poured out in celebration. Empty Rx bottles - because we shared our bounty. Cheerleaders who needed to drop a quick 5 pounds for the weigh-in counted on Lasix. My Jr. High School friends dabbled in Valium - blues and yellows - while I found the best of the lot, Percooooooooset. I didn’t get it then but certainly now I see it - I am my mother’s daughter.
 
My parents were a winning combination, a fun-loving couple who said yes without thinking.  JoAnn was known as an excellent cook and gracious entertainer who loved a good surprise. She was also a consummate housekeeper, a 50’s stay-at-home mom, actively living by Benjamin Franklin’s adage “a place for everything, and everything in its place.”  Vic Thorndale was charismatic, an unassuming man, the hometown high-school basketball star who maintained his popularity into adulthood, and poured a stiff drink, insisting on Maker's Mark Straight KY Bourbon over that Tennessee interloper, Jack Daniels. My parents had standards. High standards. My mom lived for the challenge to make every ending perfect, and my dad didn’t cotton to the idea of being an elitist. The rudest thing, in his opinion, was to leave somebody out. How tacky. Add to the mix a large 2 story brick house with a huge backyard and covered patio and the scene was set. We would entertain until the end.
 
There were annual Christmas parties followed by the New Year’s Eve Bash. March Madness viewings spilled over into legendary NCAA Final Four weekends, usually with the University of Kentucky Wildcats making an appearance. They’ve won the national title 4 out of their 8 times during my lifetime alone and stand second only to UCLA in overall Championship wins.
 
Then there were the bowl games: the Orange Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, the Peach Bowl, the Rose Bowl, and the big daddy of them all, the Super Bowl. Crock-pots full of homemade chili, gigantic seven-layer salads, cheeseballs in numerous varieties, and then the casseroles, casseroles, casseroles. My mom’s most famous appropriately being called “Football Casserole” which was a crowd-pleasing mess, built lasagna-style, seasoned ground chuck alternating with sharp cheddar, catsup, and biscuits. It disappeared quicker than you could say “touchdown!”
 
But, the holy grail of all parties, the most exciting two-minutes in sporting history, which anchored our spiritual life was the first Saturday in May. Some call it “The Kentucky Christmas”. It’s the first leg of the coveted Triple Crown, The Kentucky Derby. My parents would begin planning for the following year’s “Run for the Roses” as the flashbulbs went off in the winner’s circle. A stunning thoroughbred posed like royalty, head held high, shoulders blanketed in a mantle of red roses. The Kentucky Derby was our version of a coronation. 
 
Our home was a beautiful dance between order and chaos, a place where preparedness met opportunity, where structure invited spontaneity, and where dumb luck and good fortune were bedfellows. But, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. And it was all perfect at the house of Thorndale, until it wasn’t. The thrill of over-spending left us financially upside down as a family, and the urge to feel good led my mom into the arms of a thirty-year love affair with narcotics. After their divorce in 1983, all those perfect party endings that used to guide us ended as well.
 
My mother’s housekeeping skills faltered - like any addict worth their salt. Order was replaced with clutter, nurturing with neglect. She spiraled without the purpose that a marriage had given her as a Southern woman. She did remarry once, and quite well, moving into an even larger home but it wasn’t lit by the joy that existed on Blue Licks Road.
 
A series of strokes hook taken their toll alongside that sneaky uninvited guest, dementia. The battleground was now in her mind.  Her short-term memory scrubbed clean, pilfered like Yankee carpetbaggers pressing down on the Confederate South, dropping the details of her life like fallen CSA soldiers.  Dementia, running her memory through with bayonets. Sometimes she’d get out 5 words before the drop came...like any addict worth their salt.                                   
“Can you get me my….”
Or three words…
“Where is the…???”                          
Or one word
“I…”
Dementia, burning down her mind like Tara, while she stands wordlessly watching - utterly helpless. Although frustrated, my mother possessed the same prideful attitude that defined Scarlett O'Hara, minus the drapery dress. And to be sure, the South ain't gonna rise again. She once remarked in in judgment and disgust, “It's all downhill from here.”  If anyone mastered creating a perfect end, however, it was my mother. 
 
The final year of her life, I went back to Kentucky in mid-December to be with her. We agreed to stay positive for the holidays. We looked for the surprises in every situation since each moment was as Dorothy Parker coined, its own “fresh hell.” For my mother, there would be no more managing her own finances, she was loose and fast with money anyway - like any addict worth their salt.  And, no more handling of her own medication, far too loose and fast there, as well, and for over 40 years. 
 
After Christmas was over, and the New Years' ball had dropped, we stared at the coming year like Scarlett, defiant and tearful.  How could we go on? What could we build from the ashes of our lives?  How could our elegant delight thrive in this fucking wasteland?
 
We sat in silence. I marked Mardi Gras on the calendar. 
 
My mother eyed April for a long while, then circled Easter. “There,” she cried, “Easter! That’s positive!” I asked why but she’d lost the plot. Some hours later, she woke from a nap, leaned close like a child, and whispered a secret in my ear, “This year, I get to hide my own Easter eggs, because I won’t remember where I hid them.”  Once again, my mother’s spark provided a genius solution to an impossible problem. She would wash the slate clean every day with joy.
 
She would live in the present moment, every day, until there were no more moments. She would embrace now, no matter how impossible the task - like any addict worth their salt. Spent. Empty. Finished. Fini. Whether she had a shred of memory available or not, she would find the path to create a perfect, gossamer end. The last drop drunk, the final Percoset swallowed. Over the stars, over the moon. Floating free. Empty – at last.​




DJ Thorndale is a Kentucky-born, Los-Angeles-based writer, actress, and painter who celebrates life’s appetites through unique passion projects. Her work weaves themes of politics, culture, music, food, men, and addiction together with memory, place, and humor. Illuminated by self-reflective exploration, her current project, “Cocksure: An Ode to Memorable Men,” celebrates acceptance and embodiment by examining 40 unforgettable men through essays, poems, and paintings.



​Anti-Heroin Chic is a sponsored project of Indolent Arts, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor. Please consider making a one-time tax-deductible donation.

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