The vomiting dreams did end ter writing about them. I believe in the power of the written word. There are many writings that prove how powerful writing is. Not only does it purge the mind of thoughts, it sends them out of the min where the collective can absorb them, maybe even purify them, when we alone cannot.
I am an old woman now. I no longer even look like the photo with my old blogs. I seldom even feel anything like that woman.
I believe I am nearing the end of my life on earth. No, I have not had a medical diagnosis like terminal cancer that has numbered my days. Yes, I have several diagnosises that could lead to death soon, COPD, pre-diabeties heart problems, and a myriad of little 'thing to watch". I'm sure the feeling of death approaching is enhanced by fear, fear of what will happen to those I take care of more than fear of what death is, what it will be for me personally. But it is the second fear that I want to explore, need to understand and prepare for.
Somewhere in the last 20 years I have lost most of my fundamental beliefs. Faith. God. I have not worked to teach my grandchildren as I did to teach my children about God. Maybe because it appears that I taught my daughters little or nothing that had any effect. They seem closer to atheism than Christianity.
If I die today, I will die believing I have failed at everything I ever believed was important to me. Hopefully some would disagree, hopefully my attempts to teach and lead haven't been as futile as I see them. And of course there is always that thing where people glorify the dead, I'll need a lot of that to leave a mark anywhere near the one I once intended!
If there is time, I want to try to fix this.
OMG
I just read "By His Own Mother". I have no memory of writing it but I know that I did. It is a horrifying story. It is, as far as I know, a True Story. My brother died in that garage. The story that he committed suicide that night had never made sense. When my older brother and I tried to reenact her story if how Herbert died and how she found his body it was impossible to have happened the way she said. She said she went in the garage from the side door, saw him slumped in the car and ran to him. When we opened the side door there was a pile of lumber blocking anyone's entrance there. When we looked at the car the key was in the off position and there was still a quarter tank of gas left. Someone killing them self wouldn't turn the car off. What we saw was Herbert shutting it off after he felt the battery was recharged. Mom said she did not touch the key in the ignition.
The peanut butter sandwich comes from her, her last conversation with him given to us without realizing what it told us of his life with her. I remember the little row of freshly planted beans. The chair with the empty beer can, he was not a drinker normally, and the self rolled cigarette butt. I don't know how I looked into his mind for his last thoughts that night but reading it I am sure that I did.
My mother went insane in the years she survived him. She saw his ghost walking through her house daily, was so frightened by it that she started getting dogs. LOTS of dogs. At one point she had over 20 dogs living in her house. Her once beautiful home literally became a pile of shit. As she aged and grew weaker she just laid carpet pieces over all the excrement over and over. We called the humane society but they did nothing.
She eventually lost that house. Got rid of the dogs. Moved to a little apartment where someone broke in and beat and robbed her. Then my brother moved her to a trailer park near him.
She was dying the first time I went to that trailer to see her. Her trailer was piled with junk, trash, vermin, cockroaches, just paths through it all from room to room. Her Japanese dolls were still there, standing beautiful on top of the mess around her bed and couch. I was filled with pity for the woman who loved beautiful things. She had COPD and was on oxygen. She did not smoke except very briefly to look American around when she met my father, an American soldier. We believe the COPD might have been caused from the years living in a house full of dogs especially if she was allergic to dogs. I know that I am.
I moved back to Texas to take care of her during her last days with Mike's help. I only remember feeling pity, grief, guilt and love taking care of her. The glorification of death. I remember taking her a finger bowl to wash her hands before serving her a snack and she looked at me in surprised wonder and said, "I never knew you were nice". I remember feeling pleased that she noticed. I didn't think how odd her words or my reaction was.
I'm sure some part of me knew she had killed my beloved brother, Herbert. Knew how she had damaged all of us. I have convinced myself that killing Herbert was an accident. It really could have been. I believe my depiction of her closing the garage door in rage was probably accurate. Even though she was a highly educated pharmacist, I don't think she thought of the carbon monoxide killing him when she shut that door.
I don't hold her innocent in the damage she did to us, her children, but I do believe that she never felt she was doing wrong or evil. OK, here's the whopper: I believe she loved us.
Mike fought to keep her alive later when she was on life support to the point of cruelty in my mind and the minds of her doctors. He told me it was in the hope she was somehow finding redemption to enter Heaven.
I do believe she is in Heaven if Heaven exists but not because Mike gave her that extra time to suffer and beg forgiveness.
I believe she was insane. She wore many faces through her life , she did many evil and few good things. I think her insanity started after WWII. She was 200 miles from the Hiroshima bomb, alone, at school. We know almost nothing for sure of what happened to her during this time. And even before, she once told me that when she was a child her father took her to a doctor for a twitch in her face that wouldn't go away, possible neurological damage even younger.
The cruelty and oddness we grew up with was clearly growing insanity. Her IQ was likely near genius which would make it not only more likely but harder to see coming.
I firmly believe the insane are not accountable as the "sane". Like the person born paraplegic, they are here to judge how we react to them. It is just more complicated when they raise children. Damage children.
Mike and I are considered "sane" but we both have insanities that we deal with and that we have inflicted on the next generation by having our own children.
I remember being terrified that I would be like my mother when I started having children. I also remember when my youngest was 3 my husband sitting me down and saying, " You are NOTHING like your mother!! You are loving and kind and beautiful inside and out. My children are lucky to have you! "
I don't remember the conversation before him saying that, obviously I was voicing this fear, but I do know that I believed him, that him getting that through to me saved me.
I don't share the insanity of my mother with her decendants. My daughters know some but not all, so they can remember her with love. It will be the same for their children unless one of them along the way sees something like this. I'm not even sure why I do this. Maybe it is for the part of me that loves her and because I forgive her. Maybe it is rooted in us to speak kindly of the dead.
I am an old woman now. I no longer even look like the photo with my old blogs. I seldom even feel anything like that woman.
I believe I am nearing the end of my life on earth. No, I have not had a medical diagnosis like terminal cancer that has numbered my days. Yes, I have several diagnosises that could lead to death soon, COPD, pre-diabeties heart problems, and a myriad of little 'thing to watch". I'm sure the feeling of death approaching is enhanced by fear, fear of what will happen to those I take care of more than fear of what death is, what it will be for me personally. But it is the second fear that I want to explore, need to understand and prepare for.
Somewhere in the last 20 years I have lost most of my fundamental beliefs. Faith. God. I have not worked to teach my grandchildren as I did to teach my children about God. Maybe because it appears that I taught my daughters little or nothing that had any effect. They seem closer to atheism than Christianity.
If I die today, I will die believing I have failed at everything I ever believed was important to me. Hopefully some would disagree, hopefully my attempts to teach and lead haven't been as futile as I see them. And of course there is always that thing where people glorify the dead, I'll need a lot of that to leave a mark anywhere near the one I once intended!
If there is time, I want to try to fix this.
OMG
I just read "By His Own Mother". I have no memory of writing it but I know that I did. It is a horrifying story. It is, as far as I know, a True Story. My brother died in that garage. The story that he committed suicide that night had never made sense. When my older brother and I tried to reenact her story if how Herbert died and how she found his body it was impossible to have happened the way she said. She said she went in the garage from the side door, saw him slumped in the car and ran to him. When we opened the side door there was a pile of lumber blocking anyone's entrance there. When we looked at the car the key was in the off position and there was still a quarter tank of gas left. Someone killing them self wouldn't turn the car off. What we saw was Herbert shutting it off after he felt the battery was recharged. Mom said she did not touch the key in the ignition.
The peanut butter sandwich comes from her, her last conversation with him given to us without realizing what it told us of his life with her. I remember the little row of freshly planted beans. The chair with the empty beer can, he was not a drinker normally, and the self rolled cigarette butt. I don't know how I looked into his mind for his last thoughts that night but reading it I am sure that I did.
My mother went insane in the years she survived him. She saw his ghost walking through her house daily, was so frightened by it that she started getting dogs. LOTS of dogs. At one point she had over 20 dogs living in her house. Her once beautiful home literally became a pile of shit. As she aged and grew weaker she just laid carpet pieces over all the excrement over and over. We called the humane society but they did nothing.
She eventually lost that house. Got rid of the dogs. Moved to a little apartment where someone broke in and beat and robbed her. Then my brother moved her to a trailer park near him.
She was dying the first time I went to that trailer to see her. Her trailer was piled with junk, trash, vermin, cockroaches, just paths through it all from room to room. Her Japanese dolls were still there, standing beautiful on top of the mess around her bed and couch. I was filled with pity for the woman who loved beautiful things. She had COPD and was on oxygen. She did not smoke except very briefly to look American around when she met my father, an American soldier. We believe the COPD might have been caused from the years living in a house full of dogs especially if she was allergic to dogs. I know that I am.
I moved back to Texas to take care of her during her last days with Mike's help. I only remember feeling pity, grief, guilt and love taking care of her. The glorification of death. I remember taking her a finger bowl to wash her hands before serving her a snack and she looked at me in surprised wonder and said, "I never knew you were nice". I remember feeling pleased that she noticed. I didn't think how odd her words or my reaction was.
I'm sure some part of me knew she had killed my beloved brother, Herbert. Knew how she had damaged all of us. I have convinced myself that killing Herbert was an accident. It really could have been. I believe my depiction of her closing the garage door in rage was probably accurate. Even though she was a highly educated pharmacist, I don't think she thought of the carbon monoxide killing him when she shut that door.
I don't hold her innocent in the damage she did to us, her children, but I do believe that she never felt she was doing wrong or evil. OK, here's the whopper: I believe she loved us.
Mike fought to keep her alive later when she was on life support to the point of cruelty in my mind and the minds of her doctors. He told me it was in the hope she was somehow finding redemption to enter Heaven.
I do believe she is in Heaven if Heaven exists but not because Mike gave her that extra time to suffer and beg forgiveness.
I believe she was insane. She wore many faces through her life , she did many evil and few good things. I think her insanity started after WWII. She was 200 miles from the Hiroshima bomb, alone, at school. We know almost nothing for sure of what happened to her during this time. And even before, she once told me that when she was a child her father took her to a doctor for a twitch in her face that wouldn't go away, possible neurological damage even younger.
The cruelty and oddness we grew up with was clearly growing insanity. Her IQ was likely near genius which would make it not only more likely but harder to see coming.
I firmly believe the insane are not accountable as the "sane". Like the person born paraplegic, they are here to judge how we react to them. It is just more complicated when they raise children. Damage children.
Mike and I are considered "sane" but we both have insanities that we deal with and that we have inflicted on the next generation by having our own children.
I remember being terrified that I would be like my mother when I started having children. I also remember when my youngest was 3 my husband sitting me down and saying, " You are NOTHING like your mother!! You are loving and kind and beautiful inside and out. My children are lucky to have you! "
I don't remember the conversation before him saying that, obviously I was voicing this fear, but I do know that I believed him, that him getting that through to me saved me.
I don't share the insanity of my mother with her decendants. My daughters know some but not all, so they can remember her with love. It will be the same for their children unless one of them along the way sees something like this. I'm not even sure why I do this. Maybe it is for the part of me that loves her and because I forgive her. Maybe it is rooted in us to speak kindly of the dead.
