Behind Whispering Pines

November 8, 2003

  Tonight I found out that my mother had been admitted into a nearby hospital and had been a patient there for almost two months. My heart sank as my husband repeated to me the message that came from my nine-year-old son, Connery. He had told Sean that he heard this tidbit from a family friend.

  My mother is on her deathbed.

  While my stomach was doing flip-flops, I picked up the phone immediately to call Bethesda Hospital in Steinbach. My call reached a nurse in the emergency room. After a certain time all calls were automatically dispatched there. She confirmed what I had heard. My mother was indeed a patient on the first floor but she could not give me details. Instead, my call was transferred.

  I was shaking as I waited for someone to pick up the line. I realized how silly it would seem to the nurse that I was calling the hospital at 3 o’clock in the morning to ask something I should have already known. How could I ever explain to a stranger that I had just found out this terrible news!

  A new voice answered the phone. With a trembling voice, I asked if my mother was indeed a patient on her ward. 

  Instead of answering, the nurse asked who I was. I told her. As I expected, the nurse’s voice betrayed her disbelief when I told her that I had just found out about my mother. She then told me that Mom had been admitted on September 10. She also informed me that I was to be notified if something happened to my mother. This came as a surprise, considering that no one had even told me Mom was admitted.

  My next question to her was who had admitted my mom, and why. The nurse explained to me that my sister Anne and brother-in-law Wes had brought my mother in one night after she was found wandering. She added that on my mother’s first night in the hospital, she had walked out the front door unnoticed and the local police initiated a search. The incident ended well, because my mom was found only a few miles out of Steinbach. Apparently she was trying to walk home. Back to the farm. A farm, at which she had not lived since the fall of ‘97, the year my father died. A farm that she hated, and yet suddenly it was the only place she wanted to be.

The Farm

  In 1977, my father left his job in Niagara Falls to travel west. My brother Gerard and my dad traveled together in hopes that my brother could get a good job. At that time, good jobs were growing scarce in Ontario and easterners had begun the migration west.

  After being gone for a few weeks, my mother received a phone call one night that forever changed our lives. My dad, and my brother, had bought, of all things, a farm just south of Steinbach. Not just any farm, but a dairy farm. A wave of bitterness and a complete personality change took over my mother’s spirit. The woman that once enjoyed spending time with her wee adopted daughter had suddenly disappeared. However, she was the dutiful wife so she put the house up for sale and packed our things. When my father returned at the end of June, we were loaded up and on our way to Manitoba.

  How she hated it here. It was cold and she was once again a farm girl. After being raised on a Saskatchewan dirt farm during the depression, to my mother, being a farmer’s wife was like getting a death sentence.  As an adult looking back, I can completely understand how she felt. But at the time, my child’s mind could not comprehend the hatred she felt about her new situation. All I knew was that I was in a new school, in a new home and I seemed to have a new mom. One that I did not understand, and whom I would grow to fear.

  The changes in my mother were subtle at first. A part of her embraced the country and this became evident in the way she would dress me. I showed up for my first day of grade 4 in Elmdale School dressed like a Holly Hobby doll, complete with bonnet. It was like my mother had left everything behind in Ontario. Even her fashion sense.

  She grasped onto her Catholic religion with a fervor that was frightening. She forced us as a family to kneel for an hour each night to say three rosaries. Of course, by the time the second one had started, I was snoring with my face in her bedspread. Along with my father, who had been up since 4 AM doing chores.

  She also believed that fasting was the best way to purge an evil soul, and because I was “evil” I had to be starved. She began putting me on two; three and even seven day fasts where all I could have in my tummy was water. I was ten. I did not understand. I was hungry, hurting and living in fear.

  As I grew older and starting heading to my teenage years, my mother started to become more physical to me. Instead of hugging and kissing me like a mother should, I found myself cowering whenever she raised her hand. I learned to hide this very well. My mother had a fear of being found out and anything that occurred in the home must stay within the home.  I was forbidden to have phone calls. I could not go see friends, nor have friends over. Even school functions, like Christmas concerts took place without my input. In grade 5, I begged my teacher to give me a role in that year’s play – Robin Hood. I told my teacher that the only way I would be able to attend is if I had a part. I ended up playing a butcher, it was small, but I was there. It was a small triumph. And very short lasted.

  In grade 6, the truth that I was being physically beaten and starved came out in school. Because of my attire, which consisted of ugly dresses and turtlenecks, my mother forbid me to change for gym. A group of girls ganged up on me one day, and tore my blouse off. They stopped and stared. Two sat back and looked at me. I had forgotten that I had received a beating a day earlier with a broom handle. My back was riddled with welts and bruises, both fresh and old. It was humiliating. And yet, such a relief. My secret was out. One student told the school principal, but at that time child abuse was not viewed the way it is today. It was soon forgotten by all. Except me. My face still burns with embarrassment when I remember how that event hurt me.

  I was able to hide better in Junior High but I still had no friends. Most of the girls I went to school with had told others what they knew about me. I was treated like I had the plague. Kids can be so cruel, without even realizing it. I kept to my books and tried to study hard, but I lost interest in my classes. I found myself constantly turning to books. I devoured novel after novel.

  I was also a very hungry child, so I learned to steal. While helping out in the library, I found where the late book fines were. I was soon helping myself, so that I could buy a hot dog, or pizza pop from the canteen. In grade 9, I figured out that the home economics teacher left her purse in the classroom, and she always had cash on hand. I never took more then I needed. It was always just enough to kill the hunger pains in my gut.

  It wasn’t until the end of grade 9 that I finally began to do something about my situation. My mother, who still felt that I was truly evil and possessed by the devil, decided that she did not want to send me to the Steinbach Regional Secondary School. She felt strongly that if I went to that school something would happen to me. So the decision was made that I would become home schooled. Well, you can understand that this was the last thing I needed. It was bad enough that I had to come home to that farm. Just thinking about being there day in and day out was more then I could take.

  It took some planning, but I took a backpack, along with a pup tent and I climbed out the basement window and made a bid for freedom. I made it to a mile from the house, when I stopped at a farm where they did not know who I was. How odd, that we had lived within a mile of this family for four years and they did not even know me. I called a boy from school. Someone, who barely knew me, but was kind whenever he crossed my path. Soon afterwards, I was riding between him and his twin brother towards Steinbach. And my first taste of freedom.

  For three days I camped out in the corner of Barkman Park, along Main Street in Steinbach, sleeping in that pup tent. I tried applying for some jobs around town, but I had no address, and I was only 15. I admit that I was not mature enough to understand the gravity of my situation. But I did not care. I was not going home.

  On the third night, I awoke to the flashing of a light in the tent and muted voices. Startled, I sat up and I heard a voice tell me that they were RCMP officers. Terrified I crawled out of my tent and I was asked to come to the station with the officers. From there, I ended up in a foster home in Ste. Anne until it was decided what should be done with me. But that was short lived. After a week, I was returned to the farm, and my mother’s horns had grown even larger.

  Her hatred towards me grew worse. I had won a small battle; I was now allowed to go to high school. But she made it so difficult for me in the process. She would show up at school and do spot checks. I once came out of class to find her cutting up clothes and books that were in my locker. Yet, no one stepped in to stop her. All her behavior succeeding in doing was making me stand out even more.

  During first term exams, I was goofing around with some friends, when one of the boys picked me up, threw me over his shoulder and carried me into the boy’s bathroom on the second floor. I was too naive to realize what was going on, until it was too late. My panties were on the floor. I was sobbing and bleeding when a special education student found me later.

  It took awhile for the school to find out who I was. I looked younger then the other kids and they didn’t know I was a student at the school. But one afternoon, the teacher that saw me leave the bathroom that awful day, caught up with me. I was subsequently suspended from school. My mother was livid. I do not think that she has ever believed me when I told her that I had been raped. No girl would ever choose to willingly lose her virginity on a school bathroom floor.

  After returning to school, things were worse again. I became fodder for the local gossip mill. The kids ridiculed me for what had happened. No one ever wanted the truth. I was an outcast. At that point, I would do anything to be accepted. However, that got me expelled after the vice-principal caught a boy touching my bum.

  Suddenly, I was thrust into the constant company of my mother. Her hatred towards me for humiliating the family in this manner was evident constantly. I was constantly living in fear. I would wake up in the middle of the night, because she would suddenly get the urge to go through my things. I would go help my dad, only to come back and find my room gutted with nothing but a mattress left on the concrete floor. I was not living. I had to get out of there. I dreamed constantly of freedom. In March 1984, I was finally successful.

  I can’t remember how it started, but I do remember how it ended. My mother had me by the hair and was banging my head against the kitchen cabinets. Over and over, I was crying, and she was screaming. I was terrified, and in pain. Blindly, I swung, and I was surprised when my fist made contact with my mother’s stomach. That single action left my mother blubbering.

  How dare I touch her! What gives me the right? She kept screaming at me. She ran to the phone so that she could call the priest. I headed to my basement bedroom. Within five minutes I had a few things in a pillowcase, and I was gone. I ran and ran. My terror kept me going when I couldn’t take another step.

  Cowering in a grove of pine trees behind the family farm, I waited for what seemed like forever, for a safe time that I could make it across the field, across the road and off to freedom. From my hiding spot I could see the family car drive back and forth. I could hear my dad calling my name. But I just hide deeper. When it seemed safe, I bolted out of my hiding spot, across the road, and away I was. It took me almost three hours to practically crawl along in the bottom of the ditch, the whole three miles to Steinbach. Every time I heard a car, I would duck and not move. There was no way that I was going to be caught and sent back home. Not after striking my mother. I had done the unthinkable. I had finally fought back! 

  It would be a few months before I saw my mother again. I was placed in the care of Child and Family Services because I refused to go home. I was now living in Landmark. And it was at this foster home that I met the man that would later become my first husband and the father of my four children.

November 8, 2003

  After hanging the phone back onto the hook, I sank onto the couch into my husband’s waiting arms. I cried like my heart was breaking. I felt so betrayed by my family and worried about my mother. I had not seen her in several months. It had also been over a year since I last paid her a visit. Suddenly all the reasons I had stayed away were meaningless.

  Feelings of guilt, fear, pain and remorse flooded me as I thought back to my last few years. I sobbed for my mother. I sobbed for myself. I sobbed for what might have been, and what never was. It is so difficult to think of Mom with only one emotion.  I remembered all the times I tried to be the daughter that she always wanted. Yet, I hurt so deeply because felt that I had failed miserably with every attempt. Anne had always been “the one”. The perfect daughter in my mom’s eyes.

  The very next day I went to see her. It was actually about nine hours after finding that she was in the hospital. The first thing I did was ask the nurses how Mom was doing. I was very relieved to hear that she was not dying. She was just very confused.  As a health care aide, I understood that my mother was at the age where her memory would start leaving her. I mentally prepared myself. But I was still in for a shock when I entered her room.

  The first thing I noticed, was my mother was in a room with two other women. Being the antisocial lady my mom was, I could not imagine how she could tolerate that. My mother was never one to go out and make friends. After my dad died, she literally locked herself into her home. She even refused to answer the phone. I can honestly say that the real world terrified my mother.

  Looking to the left side of the room, I recognized one of my mothers hand crocheted afghans. Underneath it lay my mother. However, the woman that I saw was nearly unrecognizable. Her once long dark hair was now short cropped and very grey. It also looked like it had not been combed in a few days. 

  With slight hesitation I proceeded into the room. Hearing my footsteps she looked up. My heart quivered when Mom’s face lit up with a huge smile. Despite warnings from hospital staff that she might not recognize me, she did. To my even greater surprise, she opened her arms and reached out for me. In tears, I entered her arms and let her hug me. I found myself gladly embracing her. The relief that she was alive and well soothed me.  I did not want to let go and neither did she.  She kept pulling back, looking into my tear filled eyes, and then she would pull me back into her arms.

  When I could finally speak, I asked her if she knew my name – she responded “Marianne”. Just to make sure she knew me, I asked her whom I was. She looked at me with puzzlement in her eyes and stated emphatically, “You are my daughter”. The way she said it made me think she was saying, “how dare you even ask me that question”.

  I had to step out of the room, where Sean stood waiting. He held me and wiped my tears as I declared “That woman is not my mother – where was this person twenty years ago.” I could not help it. For years I craved my mothers touch. As I grew up, I was like a puppy, waiting to be patted on the head. But that act of tenderness never came. I was used to being pushed aside and belittled. For her to reach for me and pull me into her arms. It was just too overwhelming.

  Before I could go back into the room I stood in the hall and quietly cried on my husband’s shoulder. Soon I could hear Mom fiddling around in her things. I quickly composed myself and reentered the room. It was odd, sitting on the edge of her bed. That simple act was just one more thing that I was never allowed to do when I was a child. It seemed ironic that all I had wanted as a child was suddenly before me. Yet it felt so meaningless.

  Don’t get me wrong - it was nice, but at the same time in my heart I knew that things would never be the same. As sad as it sounds, I wished my mother were still the bitter, worried person that she normally was. To see her so dependent and so happy. That was it, I had never seen her look happy. Her eyes were even sparkling. I don’t think that I have ever seen her eyes sparkle! Even at my wedding or the birth’s of my children.

Second Chance

  When I decided to get married at the age if 18, I thought that I was doing something that for once my mother would approve of. She did, to an extent. But I later found out that it was all what she wanted me to see, and not how she really felt. She was mad because I asked my dad to walk me down the aisle. She was mad because we got married two months after my sister’s wedding.  She was constantly disapproving.  Looking at my wedding album, I can not find one picture of her with a smile on her face. Yet, I distinctly remember making plans with her in mind. Anything she said she liked was somehow coordinated into my service.  But I was happy. I was a blushing new bride, and I had just found out a wonderful secret. I was pregnant with my daughter Vanessa.

  This should get my mother rethinking my “badness” right? Wrong. My brother had finally gotten his wife pregnant, so there were two impending grandchildren coming. My mother found no peace in any of this. My sister was also trying to have a baby, but with no success. To her, Anne’s not getting pregnant was more important then her impending grand-motherhood courtesy of her least favorite children. But she put on a smile whenever she was around me, and afterwards I would hear all about what she had to say, from whomever she said it too.

  Yet, I still sought her approval! Why is it that children that grow up in situations like this are forever in search of what they have lost? That love, acceptance, faithfulness. A mother! Lord knows that after I gave birth to Vanessa, I could never understand how my mother could treat me the way she had. I had this most beautiful daughter, but I still had a hole in my heart. One that I felt could only be filled by a mother’s love.

  My second daughter arrived a year later. We named her Larissa because that was the only name I could think of at the time the nurse asked. My mom had told me at some point that she loved that name. In a drug-induced fog, I remembered that, and the small act was my tribute to my mother. But that too, was not good enough.

  When I got pregnant for the third time, my mother was once again her livid old self. You see, my sister was still trying to have a baby and not succeeding. But a few days after I announced my impending delivery, my sister had her own announcement. My sister and I were both pregnant together. How wonderful!

  We spent countless hours together, talking about our babies and pregnancies. For me, I was an old pro, and it was nice to have my sister seeking advice. Despite all that, the bond was severed in August when my niece was born. She was tiny, ill, and the doctors did not think if she would make it. My daughter Ashley’s birth came a month later without so much as a phone call from my family. By then, my sister had been elevated to sainthood because Stephanie was born severely autistic. She is now fourteen and has never spoken.

  The worst part was, as bizarre as it sounds, I was blamed for my tiny nieces problems. My mother asked me if I had cursed my sister. I was asked by my own mother, if I hated my sister that much that I could have wished that something this horrible could have happened to her. At that point, I could see clearly that my mother had never changed. Her real self was hiding deep inside. And I sobbed for all that I thought was, but turned out to be only an illusion.

Severed Ties

  It was at that point that I realized that I would never be the daughter my mother wanted. I also realized that no one could be that hateful unless something else was eating him or her up inside. But when you have been subjected to the same roller coaster ride of emotions, over and over. Year after year, you eventually get to the point where you can walk away. Or at least shut yourself down from all the pain and heartache that such a relationship can give you. I felt that I had to cut those bounds and move on. It was admittedly, the hardest thing I had ever done. That was in 1990.

  My son Connery was born in 1994. This was a time of great joy in my life. Finally, after three daughters, I had fulfilled what I had felt was my duty as a wife and mother. I had finally given my husband the son that he so wanted and deserved. It also gave me a chance to reacquaint myself with my parents. Specifically my father. For me, it became suddenly important to give this man, whom I had cleaved to when I was hurting, a chance to know his grandson. You see, there were five people in my family. My mom, my dad, my brother Gerard and my sister Anne. But in my mother’s world, there was only my sister and her self, and the rest of us were “demon spawn”. Those are her words, not mine.

  My mother once told me that when I ran away, I broke my daddy’s heart. Sadly, I would tend to believe that. Whenever the wars would start in our home, my mom would come down on everyone. My dad, he would hide in the barn. Doing chores, or meaningless tasks, just to stay out of her way. As for me, well, I hung around where ever my father was.

  I would tell him about my day at school, or a book I was reading. I would sing while milking, which he loved, and I baked for him. He loved sweets and my mother never made them. His favorite thing I made for him was cream puffs. I still have the recipe, but I have never made them since I left that farm.

  This was all fine, until I reached puberty. Then suddenly, she turned out relationship into a nasty little affair. Later I would find out that her own father had molested her and she truly couldn’t understand that a father and daughter could have a normal relationship. Needless to say, there was no incest involved. Between my father and I.  Just a silent companionship. We did not even dare talk to each other about Mom. It seemed wrong. We just hung around together in silence. But the damage was done.

  Until the day my father passed away, he was afraid to be alone with me in the same room, because of the allegations of my mother, so many years before.

  But what about me? At this point, I felt like a brood mare. I was a mere 26 years old, with four kids and a husband that was always out of town. I had never had a job, even though I tried to find work. But Marty was determined that I remain a stay-at home mom and he did not understand that I really needed to get out of the house. Oddly enough, this was when I really began believing that I could become someone. That all I needed was a chance, and I could fulfill my dreams. But what were my dreams? I didn’t even know. Sometimes I still don’t know. When I was growing up, I was so focused on survival, that I did not believe that it could be any different. To be honest - I did not even know where to begin.

  I spent months trying to be content with my life, and for the most part I was. Then in March 1997, a call came from my brother-in-law. My father was dead! I was devastated. 

  I had just seen him two days earlier. He seemed fine. His ankles were a little swollen, but other then that, he appeared in good health. I remember the ankles because Connery was crawling all over his “grandpa with the tractors” and I saw my dad flinch. It was then I noticed his feet.

  Two nights later, he went to bed and while getting undressed for sleep, he just fell backwards and never woke up again. There too, I was the last one to know. My mother found Dad, she called my brother, who charged over and he called the authorities. Then Anne and Wes showed up and Wes was the one that called me later in the morning. It was after my dad’s passing that I really “saw” my mother for the way she was. I felt bad for my dad, because he wasted twenty years farming on a farm that he too hated. But he felt it was penance for whatever, and he would never admit he was wrong. I hated my mother, for making his life so miserable, that he spent it hiding in the barn. I was so consumed with anger because of all the time my dad and I had lost.

  However, I reached out. I was the strong one in this situation. I, Marianne, the baby of three, the adopted outcast, was the one that held my mother’s hand throughout the whole bereavement process. From picking a casket, to holding her while my dad was buried. The one, whom my mother treated so callously and coldly, was the one that was the most giving in her time of need.

  Why? Because despite all that I have written, and suffered at her hands, I still love her with all my heart. I can still say that, to this very day.

Life, through new eyes

  While my mother and I may have reunited, my relationship with Marty had deteriorated drastically. I could not help feeling so rejected by him. While I was trying to grieve for my dad, he ignored me, like he wanted it to go away. Yet when his father killed himself prior to our wedding, I held his hand each step of the way. I guess a part of me, has my mother’s unforgiving side because I pulled away.

  I immersed myself in the preparations to move my mom off the farm, selling all the farm equipment and helping her build a new house. She begged to stay there. She came to me one day that summer and asked me if I would move into the house, while she lived in a trailer on the yard, so that she would not have to leave the only home she had for the past two decades. If I had known then, what I know now, I would have taken her up on that offer in a heartbeat.

  Around this time, I was given an offer to begin writing for the Dawson Trail Dispatch. I was a good writer and I thought that it would be fun to try. For once, my mother was supportive. She even bought me a computer so that I could work in my home. Oddly enough, it was that computer that spelled the end of my marriage. I was already wanting for more, and having access to the Internet, I fell into the spell hook line and sinker.

  By the end of October, my husband and I were separated. Mom acted supportive and all, but I knew it was against her beliefs. She felt strongly that a marriage was until death do us part. I avoided speaking to her about my filing for divorce, but she knew it was coming. I will give her credit, she actually kept her opinions to herself for a change.

  I can see why now. She was already in her new house and she hated it. Even though it was right next door to my sister’s house, she refused to leave the house. She stopped driving. It seemed like her guilt over her life with dad was eating her up alive. I was the only one that could tell that she was willing herself to die.

  I went to see her as often as I could. But it was always so difficult. All she spoke about was my father, and the end of the world. She was depressed but she refused any help I offered. Then I did, what would become the beginning of the end of our relationship. I met someone online, who I went to Texas to meet. This man eventually came up here to Canada, to make a relationship with me. My ex was still not convinced he was my ex, so I did the unthinkable in my mother’s eyes. I remarried. It only lasted six months, which was a surprise because it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

  When my mother heard that I had remarried, she called me up. She told me what she had heard, and I did not deny it. Her next words are forever glued to my brain: “If remaining in a relationship with you is considered condoning what you have done, thus condemning my soul to hell, then I never want to see you again.” I said fine. Just that. “Fine” and I hung up.

  I was deeply disappointed, but at the same time I was relieved. She had given me the out that I had so desperately wanted. I no longer had to feel guilty about anything, because she cut the ties. What is interesting, is as soon as I was divorced from that man, she was calling me up again. And like a cow being led to slaughter, I went crawling back. 

  By then, I could tell that my mother was not herself. I ran into her at the Clearspring mall one afternoon and she didn’t even recognize me. I didn’t think much of it at the time, because I was also with my new beau, and now husband Sean. I introduced the two, but I could tell that what I said never reached her brain. Her eyes looked at me, but were so lifeless. But I was happy for once. I didn’t want to dwell on my mother. I was not interested in rehashing old wounds just to have her in my life. So I carried on.

  In October 2002, Sean proposed. It took two months for me to say yes. One of my biggest decisions was then to tell my family. My mother had told me that she was crushed that I would remarry without telling them first. Or without inviting her. But after the “disowning” conversation, I didn’t have the heart to face her. We were happy! I was happy. Talking to her would have just torn that all apart. So, I avoided it.

  Sean and I married on December 31, 2002 in our house. Not in a church, nor by a priest. But at my home, surrounded by our closest friends and Sean’s family. Except mine. They were noticeably absent. But then, how could they be there, if I hadn’t invited them? The January issue of the paper went out a week later, with a wedding announcement complete with photo. I did this deliberately, so my family would know I remarried. I did it that way also, so I wouldn’t have to face them.

  Sure enough, a week later my phone rang. Unfortunately I was not home. My mother left a message on my answering machine asking for me to call her back. I tried, several times, but I was never able to reach her again. Being a coward, I stayed away from her home too. She would have tough questions, and stronger opinions. I just did not have the heart to have this battle again.

I regret that decision to this very day!


November 8, 2003

  Realizing that it was getting late in the afternoon, I knew that it was time for me to say my good byes to my mother. After promising my mother that I would come back, I gave her another hug and left the room. As I walked down the hall, and out of sight, I turned back. There was my mom, standing outside her door, watching me walk away.

    When I climbed into the car, I thought back to that sight and I burst into tears all over again. It was so hard to leave her. She seemed like a lost child, watching her parents leave her behind. It was shocking for me to realize that my mother was indeed, childlike in her own way.

  Beginning the very next day, a new routine in my life began. My mother, whom I had always avoided to some extent, was suddenly near the very top of my priority list. Not a day went by without me dropping in at the hospital. Even if it was just to spend fifteen precious minutes with her.

Sometimes when I would arrived she would run to her closet and get her coat. She would always ask me if I could take her home. Or she would say that she had to get home to make dinner for dad. It was hard to gently remind her that dad was gone. She would get this sad look on her face. I could tell that she never really understood.

  Slowly but surely I realized that my mother would never be the same.

  I could tell the first time I saw her that she had lost about twenty-years of her memory. But the truth came to the surface when I finally got up the nerve to introduce her to Sean. I was stunned when she got tears in her eyes and said “Are you sure? You found someone to marry you? I am so happy for you.”

  She actually stood up and enveloped my husband in a huge hug. I know for a fact that would never have happened, ever, before this. Sadly, I should have been happy about that gesture. It was a sign of the acceptance I had sought for thirty-five years. But instead, my insides died a little, because I realized that I had lost all opportunity to ever explain to my mother how I really felt. Nor would I ever be able to make her understand that I loved her, and I had truly forgiven her.

  While some may not understand why I did not keep close contact with my mother, and my siblings, I feel I have very valid reasons. I forgave Mom years ago for what I was subjected to as a child growing up. But something in her personality, kept chasing me away. After my father passed away, I began looking at life differently. I no longer allowed myself to be whipped by my past. There was no way that I would remain a slave to my upbringing. I had finally realized that it did not matter what my mother said or did. But it did matter, how I felt and how I lived my own life.

  Taking that new found strength, I finally had it in my power to protect myself from the hurts that she had inflicted. Almost reluctantly I exercised that power, but I did it all the same. Was I wrong? I will forever ask myself that very question. One thing that I know for sure, it pains me to not be able to tell her that I love her with all my heart.

  Maybe by chronicling my life – as I remember it – it will help me to finally say goodbye to my demons. Most of all, forgive myself for not allowing myself to live because of my past. I know for a fact that my past has lead to my subconscious fear about being successful. Especially in areas that I know my mother would never approve of.

  Looking back at my life, and at the big picture I also recognize that my mother suffered from some kind of mental disorder. It is that realization, that has given me the freedom to embrace life, and to cut the invisible lines of control, self doubt and fear that had been imbedded in me from the start. For as many times as my mother said I was evil, and all the other nasty things that came out of her mouth, I know that I am strong. I am a survivor. And her words can only hurt me, if I let it.

  I am finally free. Or am I?

The present

  My mother is still alive, and a patient at the Vita nursing home. I have not been to see her since Mother’s Day, when I took my daughter Ashley out for a visit. Mom did not even recognize me, but the look she gave Ashley was interesting. You see, Ashley is my mirror image. She has my hair, my eyes, and my smile. She is me, over twenty years ago. I could tell my mother was confused at my daughter’s presence. I could tell it disturbed her because for the first time since she had become a patient, she quickly dismissed us. My heart hurts when I remember how she turned away from me. Like I was a stranger. But, I have to remind myself daily – that it isn’t me that she is turning away from. It is from the confusion of not knowing what is real anymore. I guess her mind has finally shut down. I believe it’s God’s way of protecting the children. And my mother is truly childlike now.

  When I think of Mom now, my only solace is something I heard on television one day. There is a physic, John Edward’s, who speaks to spirits that have crossed over. Someone once asked him what happens to people who suffer from Alzheimer’s, or dementia. They spend the last few years of their lives, like infants. Will they still be like that after death? John replied, that for people that had suffered these problems, their lives come back to them after they pass on. The years that they were unaware of who or what, are played back to them in their minds, like a movie.

  I’d like to believe that there is truth to that. That one day, my mother will pass on and she will be able to watch her last months or years, like a video – and she will see, that I have always loved her.