Cool Daddy-O

Well, as I ended my last story about my childhood I was in the first grade and we were on our sixth move in three years. I told you all about my second Step-father, Bill, or as we called him...Cool Daddy-O. Where to start the next couple of years? He met momma at Arthur Murrey Dance studio. 

Momma and Bill didn't stay married very long.  Sometimes I think the only reason she married him was because I needed surgery.  Bill didn't stay long and I never heard from him again.  Just a bleep in my memory.  What I do remember though, is I had a bad temper and every time I pitched a fit, he made me sit on the floor and build card houses.  No matter where we were I soon learned to build sky scrappers out of a deck of cards.  I'm sure I learned a lot of patience from him. 

After Bill and momma divorced, we moved into this cute little house. Ophelia, our care taker was there to love us. I loved her so much and always wanted to go home with her. Once again, I went to a new school. To this day I think that is why I make friends everywhere I go. Although at that time in my life I was so shy and scared.  Candy and I playing at the dance studio.  Momma on the left.

 

We did not live there long maybe a year. Momma was never home. She was at work or at the dance studio. She dated a lot of creepy men during that time. They were awful. My sister and I knew how to get rid of them. We just acted up and they would leave. Children should not have to witness the things we did. My mother must have thought we did not pay any attention to her acts. I knew what she was doing, and I was ashamed of her.

We had bunk bed in the one bedroom apt. with our mother. We witnessed too much. It scarred me for a long time. It changed me, I was robbed of my youth and innocence. I resented her for most of my life, until one day I was able to forgive her.

So many episodes from my childhood have affected me and now I am learning how to deal as an adult in a healthy way with my challenges. I am beginning to understand some of my actions and know where they came from. I want to get better and not always blame myself.

416 Colquit Street

Yesterday, I met my sister, Candy, in Shreveport, La. for lunch on the river. We had a really good time talking. I have been on this genealogy kick as of late. So I ask her if she wanted to look for one of the places we lived in as children. That is Candy in the rear view mirror taking the picture. I'm just thinking I hope no one calls the cops because of us. We sort of stand out.

When our parents divorced, Candy stayed with Daddy and I went with Momma. This little duplex on Colquit St. was the fourth place I had lived in since I was three. We went from Daddy's house, to our grand mother's home, then to an apartment, then to this little duplex. Candy came to live with us in this duplex.

What you don't know is that by the time I graduated from high school, we moved 12 or 13 times from the time our mother and father divorced. Factor in several step-fathers and sugar daddy's, momma's boyfriends and you begin to understand what our childhood was like. While most of our childhood was filled with uncertainty, living here, we made some good memories.

I remember this street so well and this little duplex in which we lived in. Fifty-six years ago, I was five years old and it was a nice little neighborhood with the local elementary school at the end of the block and a Baptist church on the corner. While our mother worked, she had the good insight to hire a wonderful black woman named Ophelia to care for us. I have some safe and good memories of this little duplex because of Ophelia. She could barely get through the door and she was an older woman with a limp. That made no difference to me because I loved her dearly.

Ophelia had such a grand sense of humor. She would play along with us and pretend. Once we dressed our mother's sewing mannequin as if she were our mother. We even made a face and put on a hat. Then Ophelia would say "I see Miss Mary Lou has come in for lunch". She was delightful. I always wanted to go home with her when momma took her home.

Many a night Ophelia would spend the night with us when our mother was out partying. She would sleep on the couch by the front door. I felt safe knowing she was with us. And she was the best cook ever. Good country food. I loved her mac 'n cheese. She taught me a lot about life and my faith. Even though she had her own family to care for she always was there for us.

Once I got stuck in a tree. I remember her saying "Child, just let go and fall on my back". I was afraid that I would hurt her, but that is exactly what I did. She helped us chase our parakeet when he got out of his cage. We often lined up the dining room chairs like a train car and would pretend we were on a trip. We got into so much trouble, but Ophelia never got mad or upset. She had so much patience with us. She called us "Her girls".

She went with us to several houses that we lived in. I'm glad that I had her in my life. I think I may feel brave enough to go to all of the places that we lived in except for the one when we moved to Dallas and the one when we moved to Houston. I forgot about Houston. My journey continues. I have to tell you that we got some strange looks in the old neighborhood from the current neighbors. It is so run down now and looks different than when we lived there. The memory is crystal clear just like it was yesterday.

The Man With The Steel Plate

When I was in middle school, I walked home from school about 5 miles with my French horn in it's case. I walked every where in those days. The town was large and I guess around 100,000 people. Different neighborhoods and different people. It was a very diverse town as was our neighborhood. In those days it was a real neighborhood with a school, churches, grocery store, drug store, gas station, movie theater and restaurants.

But in my neighborhood there was a park where this man use to hang out. I worked at the drug store as a soda fountain jerk. Sometimes he would come in to drugstore. He was different, and we all heard the scary stories about him. We called him Steel Plate Man. He was a veteran and had part of his brain blown away and the doctors put a steel plate in his head. He looked different in a creepy way. I had never seen anyone like him before. He seemed troubled, but I did not fear him.

Anyway back to my story, I would walk home and when I arrived to the park it was shorter to cut through the park than to walk around the entire block. Steel Plate Man was always there. He sat in the covered pavilion where the rest rooms were. I would just hurriedly walk as fast as I could to get out of the park. In the afternoon, the park was very dark and shaded from the trees. It did not feel safe there on some days. I can't explain it, just a feeling I would get. On those days that I did not feel safe, I would walk the longer way home to stay safe. I lived two blocks from that park and I knew if I could just get home I could lock the door and wait until my mother got home from work or my sister got home from high school.

Once a car full of boys followed me and even drove into the park to try to get me. I have never been so afraid. They were calling out to me to come to the car, but I kept on walking. My P.E. teacher lived on the edge of the back side of the park and I ran as fast as I could to her house. She calmed me down, and drove me and my French horn home. This was how life was in the city I grew up in. You always kept your eyes on the street and watched out for trouble in certain areas.

From middle school, the walk was nice until I got to the park. I still get the creeps when I think of how lucky I was not to be molested or killed by these crazy people. I did have a vivid imagination and that did not help one bit. My best friend and I would go to the park or to the drug store. It was odd how we knew the people to stay away from. How we knew I am not sure, but I am glad we did. We walked every where from church to the State Fair.

It would be years later, that I found out that the man with the steel plate had committed suicide in that park. I really felt sorry for him.

Step-Father # 2~Cool Daddy-O

Bill, my second step-father, was cool and we nick named him "Cool Daddy O". He and moma met at the dance studio, so we became dance studio kiddos. I never really knew much about Bill. He traveled a lot with his work. I don't think he liked children.

New step-father and a new house. Things were looking up for us. We lived in a real neighborhood and there was a bayou behind our house at the end of the back yard. It was a nice place to explore. My memories are few here because Bill and moma were not married very long. Maybe two years or so. He did not know what he had signed up for.

Random memories. Once, I caught a catfish and put him in the kitchen sink.I was always doing things like that because it was fun. Bill wasn't around, so my grandfather came over and got him out of the sink. I was a tomboy and loved to fish. I was always making concoctions to get rid of moles and varmint. I would use herbs and spices mixed up with all kinds of sauces, Worchester, vinegar or what ever was handy. I once fried an egg on the side walk to see if it would fry. It did. I painted my bike royal blue and myself as well. It took a lot of gasoline to get it off me and my clothes. I put a wasp nest in my jewelry box only to learn that is not a good thing to do, especially when you hear buzzing. I leaned a lot of things in those few years. Like how to behave.

My sister lived to torment me. She was mean to me. I was even meaner to her. Once she even kicked me in the stomach after my surgery. We fought a lot about mostly nothing. She put a piece of soap in my eye. My response was very in appropriate. I am ashamed to admit it but I did run after her with the first thing I could grab, a butcher knife. I chased her down the hallway until I ran it through the hollow core door of the bathroom. I am so thankful that I did not hurt her. It would take me years to even like her. She was sneaky and was always getting me in trouble. As for me, I was not even good at lying and you could see it on my face if I lied. I found it was better to just tell the truth. I tell you I got in some serious consequences for that incident.

I had a terrible temper. Bill taught me some valuable lessons about my temper. No matter where we were we where, if I had a tantrum he would sit me down on the floor and make me build card houses. If it fell, I had to start over again. I learned a lot about myself, but my sister still did things to aggravate me. She really didn't stand a chance against me because I was tough and she was all mouth and a big sissy. Funny though she pitched fits too, but got away with them.

I was not fat, but she loved to call me fat like Fats Domino, the singer. I don't know why I even let her comments bother me. We were so very different. I was neat and she was a slob. But if anyone tried to hurt her I was there to beat them up.After she came to live with us, my mother spent the next fifteen years trying to make it up to her. If she needed a dance outfit, moma would stay up all night to sew it for her. I know moma loved me, but I always felt slighted.

Bill and moma had lots of interesting friends. We learned all about yatch racing at the country club. We attended lots of dancing parties with all sorts of unique people. Some artists, some gamblers, some newspaper men, and some wealthy folks all made for an interesting mix of friends. It was an unusual place to grow up in. Always dark rooms filled with smoke and the greatest music.

I don't remember too much about their divorce except that our lives changed once again and we moved on.

And The Beatings began...

I tried to spare you some of the gravity of the issues of my last post, but I am not sure I accurately described it all. I think I wrote a watered down version to spare you the imagery and the true pain. I imagine that you know that I am working through some hard issues with my childhood. A re-telling of my childhood memory to memory. Some good memories and some not so good, but truthful and from the heart. This next post is difficult for me to write because of the nature of the abuse and how long the abuse went on.

I started wetting the bed and I could not stop it or control it. It would be a while before they figured out that I was born with a congenital birth defect in my bladder. While I stayed at my grandma's, when I wet the bed she would clean and wash the mattress and then drag the mattress out side on the front yard to air it out. Everyone saw it and the neighbors did ask questions about that mattress. I didn't know what was wrong, only that I repeatedly wet the bed. Wet the bed then drag the mattress outside repeated everyday of my life. The embarrassment was horrible. It never ceased, in fact it slowly grew to anger and resentment.

Enter the BIG plastic table cloth. I was instructed to place it under the sheets to protect the mattress. I soon came to believe that the mattress was more important that me. Very rarely was I allowed to spend the night out. If I went to spend the night with anyone, out came the plastic table cloth. The look on my friends faces was devastating to me. They had no insight to draw from to understand this. The few times I went to daddy's to spend the night his new wife made such a big ordeal about the bed, the mattress and the plastic table cloth. My step siblings did not understand why I wet the bed. I just stopped going to spend the night with them. It was too painful and humiliating.

Everyone thought I was doing it on purpose even my grandma. Loved ones can say horrible and hurtful words. It rolls off the tongue with great ease and no sympathy. What I gleaned from it was "You are no good", "If you wanted to stop bed wetting you could","You are making my life miserable with how you act." and "Why can't you stop it?" These were just a few of the remarks I heard over and over. It really damaged my opinion of myself and my outlook on life. And then the beatings began.

So now we have moved out of our daddy's home, moved in the first time with my grandparents, moved into an apartment, then back to our grandparents for the second time. Next we moved out of my grandparent's home and into this old creaky house. Moma worked, but she also liked to go out and party and dance. She seem to have little regard for us. She constantly brought new men in and out of our young lives. Little kids just know what their parents are doing and I knew it was wrong. Sure she tried to cover it all up with fun, picnics, and her drama. but I knew what she was doing. I just did not know why she was doing this to me.

The best thing she ever did was to hire this wonderful black woman named Ophelia to watch us and to care for us. She was real jewel and my life was better because of her. I loved her and begged to go home with her to her family. She was the one bright spot in my life. She had a great imagination and would play with us even when she was busy. Once I got stuck in a tree and she bent over and told me to land on her back. She was crippled, yet she put herself last. She made the best macaroni and cheese. Baked until it was a little bit burned on the edges. She was a caretaker, she loved us and we loved her. Why couldn't our mother love us?

On the few occasions she did spend the night with us she stayed on the couch. I would wrap my arms around her. She felt safe. Moma had a sewing mannequin and my sister and I would dress her up and pretend that moma had come home. All the while, Ophelia went along with the joke and pretended that it was moma. She carried on a conversation with her until we burst out laughing. When we moved, she still cared for us. Ophelia brought short term security to me, but mostly love. It odd that total strangers could love us, but not our own mother.

They tried everything to make me stop wetting the bed and when everything failed they would beat me for it. Moma had met a new man, Bill. She met him at Arthur Murray Dance Studio. She was a dance instructor. They were going to be married. When the doctors said I needed surgery it coincided with moma's second marriage to Bill.

The doctor ran all sorts of test that were painful and frightening to me. Then he said I needed surgery. It was the beginning of December when I had my surgery. When they came for me they had to catch me. I hid under the bed refusing to take any medication. They caught me and tied me on this gurney to take me to surgery. Everything was this green color. The walls, the equipment, even the people's scrubs were green. I fought so hard, but then they held me down and placed this big black mask over my face. They said to breath in and it tasted like onions.

The next thing I knew I was back in my hospital room with a huge glass bottle attached to me. It was for the catheter to drain my urine into. No plastic bags in those days, just the giant water bottle which fit underneath my wheel chair. I am not sure which was worse for me, having surgery or finding out that there was no Santa. I was devastated on both accounts. I was in the hospital for a month. My teacher came to see me with a big card made by my class mates encouraging me to get well. I liked that and appreciated it very much.

I had a little Christmas music tree that would spin around playing Christmas songs. The nuns came around with gifts from a fake Santa. All I wanted was to get out of that place and be normal. Every Friday I would go to the urologists office to be dilated. They put this purple liquid into your bladder and when you voided, it turned bright orange. Not cool, but necessary to kill infection. I felt so violated in so many ways. More about that in future post.

By now, this is the sixth place we had moved to in three years. Bill built us a new house and Ophelia came with us to take care of us. I was in the first grade. I lived in fear of wetting the bed. Moma would wake me up in the middle of the night for me to go to the bathroom. I could not go then, only when I relaxed enough could I go. Every morning like a drill sergeant moma would throw back the covers to see if I had soiled the bed. If I had then she would beat me with this big belt. Me...crying and promising to not wet the bed again and her shrill screaming voice scolding me over and over. This still makes me sick to my stomach and shiver in fear. She was a bully.

I thought of a cover up for the situation. When I wet the bed I would get up and put towels on top of the wet sheets, then add another sheet over that to cover up my accident. I never slept because of the fear and the abuse. It went on for years even after they knew I could not help it. I soon learned to hold back the tears from the beatings. If I didn't cry, then she couldn't really hurt me.

As this chapter ends I am in the first grade.
To be continued...

Ripped apart at the heart

My childhood was surreal. I could not handle the emotions, the bad feelings, the loss of control. Maybe if I had been better, or minded, my family would not have fell apart. I know I felt responsible for this tragedy in my life. Why would a young child feel this? I must have been four years old and I remember this thought. "What did I do wrong?" "Why would I feel responsible?"

Things began to change. I felt no security and a huge sense of loss and abandonment. Wait a minute...don't I have a say about this? Evidently no was the answer.

It would not be long before my life was turned upside down because my parents divorced. My sister moved out with us to our grandparents home, but after a while she wanted to go and live with daddy. The judge ask my sister and I where we wanted to live. I stayed with my mother and my sister went to live with our daddy. My whole world changed. The loss of security, my safety, and my family. I was three years old and my sister was six years old. Poof...all gone up like smoke.


Moma found an apartment and a job with in walking distance from the apartment. She worked at a dentist office.I tried to help moma with the dishes and house work. I also did my best to be good and not get into trouble. My sister would come to visit us and I was so excited to see her, but then she always left to go back to daddy's.


Another odd memory I have is that moma dyed my hair blond. My blond hair was turning darker and I have no idea why she bleached it blond. This was the sort of stuff my mother was known for and I never knew what to expect.


I went to a day care center that I did not like. I remember that we all went to the bathrooms together. When we went swimming, we changed into our suits in the hall way in front of our lockers. I did not like that one bit. It felt embarrassing to be told to change in front of the other kids. I had never experienced anything as humiliating as this was. The only thing I did like was art. In the afternoon, we had art and I found my love of painting and color there.


When daddy remarried, he left my sister alone for a week while they went on their honeymoon. My sister called grandmoma and begged her to come and get her. Momma and I went to get her and bring her home with us. I remember it was cold and raining that night. Swoosh, swoosh went the windshield wipers. I sat in the car while moma went up the stairs to get my sister. What happened next upset me so much that I could barely believe my eyes. Moma and daddy got into a fight and the next thing I see is daddy pushing moma down the stairs. I hate the rain to this day because of that memory. It was awful to see daddy do that to moma. We brought my sister home with us that night. In that moment my sister and I both hated our daddy.


Safety, security, hunger, pain, and abandonment were words that became all too familiar. They next chapter in my life began when I wet the bed.





To be continued...

I remember my daddy

I remember so many wonderful things about my daddy. He made box kites and we would go and fly them in the fields. He was a very creative person always coming up with a new way to express his talents. He was a postal carrier so he had pretty regular hours. He made hand made puppets and performed shows for us. He was always entertaining us in some fun manner. I really loved him and thought that he could do no wrong.


I liked helping him paint the outside of our home. I know I wasn't any help, but he let me paint right along with him. I didn't quit until he stopped. I think my tenacity really surprised him. We had a large front porch made of concrete and my sister and I would wet it down with the hose and slip and slid across it. It's a wonder we didn't bust our heads open. We had a scuffle board court and moma had a green house with lots of prickly cacti. I got into those as well.

I also remember going to my neighbors home. They were the Ginsbergs and they had dogs and chickens. They were nice people and very interesting. I use to go through their dog door. I made myself at home and they didn't mind. Well, I don't think they did? Daddy had an old Model T that he was fixing up. He let my sister drive it first because she was the oldest, but he also let me drive it too. Of course we sat in his lap. That was a really nice memory.

We had a regular life. Moma taught Sunday School, baked cakes and drank, but she hid the drinking from us. Life seemed good from my perspective, but gradually things changed. Moma and daddy would scream and fight. I can't express how much this upset me. I did not understand why they were fighting, but I felt like it was my fault. Little children should not feel this way, but I did.

As things became worse, I started setting the kitchen garbage on fire at least once a week, or else the woods. I think I was desperate to express myself, but no one would listen. Well, I got their attention with the fires. To this day, I think it is odd that I didn't get in trouble with the law for setting fires. I am very thankful though.

To be continued

Life With Mary Lou

There is something to be said about survival. There is just one definition for the word as it applied to my life. Survival, was to make it through the day with out being humiliated, embarrassed, abused, ashamed, unloved and just kicked in the gut so much that you don't ever think you can escape your life. Some how, by the Grace of God, you survived it; you are so damaged from the things in your young life that you don't even know what a normal life was like. How can people hurt another human being? How can a parent hurt their child with out caring? How could a parent be so selfish? This happens everyday for a child somewhere. I thought I was alone, but I found others that had experienced similar childhoods. It was comforting to know that I was not alone, but saddening to realize that so many children suffered as I did. This is my story and I hope it gives strength to others that have suffered and survived at the hands of people that were suppose to love them. I spent the first twenty years just trying to survive my life, the next twenty years trying to forget my life, while I married and raised a family. Now, twenty years later, I am trying to understand it and to let go of my painful past.


I was the second girl born to Kenneth and Mary Lou Green on a stormy night at the old Schumpert Hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana on April 11,1950. My earliest memories of life began at 602 Thornhill Drive in Shreveport. We lived in a white frame house on the corner and life seemed idealistic; so pure and simple. We had a terraced back yard with a glass greenhouse with all sorts of Cacti that was attached to the garage and a shuffle board court, but beyond that was my favorite place, the sunken gardens. A long path of steps led down through banana trees, ferns and a jungle of plants to my paradise. It was like a “ Secret Garden” full of long lived days of summer and fun. I felt safe there. Oh, how I loved the outdoors, my sister and I would take shower baths in these large metal tubs, just the right size to hang out and stay cool and occupied with nothing but the joy of the moment. We had so much fun there, that I never wanted to leave that place. Large trees surrounded us with lots of shade, but there in the middle was a beautiful circle of sunshine. This was surely my heaven, this beautiful place of peace and quiet and tranquility. Full of butterflies, birds, soft summer breezes and glorious haunting smells of gardenia and jasmine. My heaven, my haven.

As much as I loved the outdoors, the opposite was true of the indoors. Something was so ominous, so suffocating; just being inside this house made me afraid. The inside terrified me and I had horrible nightmares about snakes hanging off my opened closet doors. The inside of this house was dark, foreboding of things not yet apparent; filled with a tension that I could not understand or grasp hold. I felt trapped there with no control over my life, but on the outside I was free and could run like the wind. I was safe and no one could hurt me in my green heaven.
Little did I know that my happy life was falling apart. Piece by piece my life was no longer my heaven, my sanctuary, my safety, but instead my life became a hell hole that I could not escape. A deep dark hole where I buried my feelings, the horrors of my childhood, a form of self defense, and survival. I never remember my mother being in the house or taking care of us. I do have some odd memories of her though, like having unbirthday parties. No reason to celebrate, but she needed to celebrate, so momma would bake a cake and we would pretend. Lots of unbirthday parties to disassociate and disconnect; to bury our feelings in food. To hide our disappointments and bury our sadness.

My earliest memory was getting my foot caught in the back of the spokes of my sister's bicycle. We were speeding down this black top road by our house and we had made several successful trips, but on the last one I got hurt. It was bad and I had to go and get it sewn up by the doctor. Just remember being held down and seeing this curved needle sewing my heel back together. After the ordeal was over, I had to walk on crutches until it healed. I could not believe that my family left on their vacation with out me. Daddy stayed home with me, while everyone else left. I thought I was suppose to go on that trip, but they just left me. This was one of the first memories I have of being abandoned.

To be continued later....

Safety

Last week I started going to a therapist to discuss some of my anxiety based problems. While I have not had an attack in a few years, I do have some things that are bothering me. I can't seem to work through them by myself and it is holding me back from being my authentic self.

I would like to feel safe. I have never felt safe...never ever. Things from my child hood keep me from feeling secure and safe. Safety is a real issue for me. Once we lived in a old three story apartment building. Mother called it the penthouse. It was the top floor and our door was half glass and not secure. Strangers would come up to the top floor looking for someones apartment at all hours of the night. My sister and I stayed alone most of the time because our mother was anything but a mother. She was gone most of the times and at night it was frightening. My sister and I were afraid that someone would break the glass in the door and get us.

I always planned my escape route from fire, but in reality I needed an escape from my mother and her crazy behaviour. I pretended I was tough so she would not know how deeply she wounded me. I was stubborn and determined not to let her beatings show pain on my face. I just took it. No tears, no fear.

This is a place I have revisited many times before. I have had some therapy before and thought I had purged myself of these memories. Faced up to them. I have left a lot of baggage in dying moments, which set me free to start being myself. Then unexpectedly out of the blue... Kabam! it resurfaces it ugly head.

I am reluctant to talk about this, but it is one of the reasons I started my blog. Hence the name..Finding Pam. In my journey I hope to rid myself of this extra baggage. This is where I am at the moment. I am struggling to say a float, but like the movie...Hope Floats and I plan to have hope.

When you live with an alcoholic there is no room for anyone else's ego except the alcoholic. The world revolves around them. When you are a child you have no choice but to accept it. Some of the things I am struggling with are besides safety are consistency and why I am afraid to succeed. I am suppose to work on my expectations and goals and make things happen. That is a lot to do right now.

The Anger in Me

Yesterday was a lousy day. There was a lot of tension in the air at my home. Sometimes home does not feel safe to me. My husband has a drinking problem and that is the problem. His drinking takes me back to an unsafe place from my childhood.



A place that makes me tense and unhappy. A deep dark ugly hole that I retreat to when I feel threatened. He does not get it or understand that I had a tramatic childhood with a crazy alcholic suicidal mother. The anger she spewed from her mouth was deafening. It defeated all hopes I had of a normal family life.



After his tirade, I wanted to crawl into the closet and hide for safety. My sister witnessed this as well and she was as sick as I was. I don't talk about this very often and I do try to keep up the pretenses, but his drinking has really bothered me for a long time. Of course, he does not think he has a problem?



So this is probably the only time I will mention it. I don't know how to accept the things I can not change. Just pray for us.

Why do all the people I love die or leave me?

Part three...
After my mother's last divorce, we moved in with my grandmoma, GM (that was my nickname for her). She was a dream maker. Always believing in the good in me, when I did not see it. She always made sure that we had warm coats and shoes in the winter. In the spring, she would buy us beautiful Easter outfit, Patton shoes and a hat. She always told me that my day would come and to hold on and believe. She was a dreamer and I loved her for that kindness and her unique ability not to judge anyone.

Momma was going to nursing school and worked at a discount store at night. I was in college as well as my married sister. GM would send me five dollars a week and I thought I was so lucky to have a little extra money. It was three days before Thanksgiving, when my GM died. So every fall around that time, I get a little melancholy. I was twenty-one when she died and it has taken a life time to heal. To this day, I miss her still and I think of her every time I cook chicken N dumplings because as a child, she taught me how to make them

My grandmother died while I was home alone with her. She had a cerebral hemorrhage and died instantly. Although there was nothing I could do to save her, I felt like I should have been able to help her. It has taken me years to forgive myself. I really freaked out that night. I could not even think. I was in sheer shock and insanity took over that night.

My mother worked in the emergency room of another hospital in different town. And that is where I told the ambulance to take my grandmother. I thought I was going to loose my mother that night as well because she had heart trouble and had a fight with grandmoma before she went to work. It was inconceivable that my beloved grandmother had died. We all lived together in my grandmoma's house. The house was empty without her. We had a thawed turkey to cook and none of us had ever cooked the Thanksgiving meal, much less dressing and gravy. We knew we had to cook it because we were not raised to waste anything. Some how we got that big turkey cooked, but it was a terribly lonely day.

Since then we have lost all of our parents. That was difficult because we were not prepared for the finality that death brings. The realization that we will never get to talk with them, hug them or kiss them one more time. It is just overwhelming. We were no longer invincible. Our turn would be next. We would loose dear sweet friends, aunts, uncles and come to face our own mortality. So something I have always taken for granted, has become very precious to me, life.

I believe that God prepares us for the very things that we may fear the most. I feared death all my life. I came to better understand death when my own mother died years later. I feel like it was one of the most special things I have experienced in my life. I hold death with great reverence and respect. As I write this, I know that I am prepared to meet my maker. I just hope that my sons and daughter by marriage can embrace death , not fear it and know that we will all be together again one day soon.

The Greatest man...

Part Two...
My grandfather, I called him Papaw, was the greatest man I ever knew. He was a barber, and I spent many a day in his shop playing with his hot shaving foam machine, pretending to be the shoe shine boy and counting the money. I grew up in a barber shop and he even cut my hair. He was my world and he unconditionally loved and accepted me the way I was, and did not try to change me. I was a tomboy and we did everything together from fishing, baseball, boxing, to car races, whitttling and so many other great things. I was his sidekick, his shadow. Where he went, I went. We were a team. He was the kindest, strongest man I ever knew. He was so very patient with me, even when I would get the fish hook caught in his ear. I have never met another man like him.

When he became ill, doctors thought it was tuberculosis. He had to go away and stay in a sanatorium for a year. Later, he was correctly diagnosed with emphysema. He did finally come home, but things would never be the same. It would be three years of agony suffering with emphysema. He had surgery that split him open from the front to the back like a gutted fish. It was awful seeing him like that with hundreds of stitches. He did finally come home, but things would never be the same again. It would take three long years of unconquered pain for Papaw as he slowly perished from this disease.

I remember his final days spitting up blood, coughing, hacking, gasping for air and in so very much pain. The doctor finally admitted him to the hospital. I waited and waited for my turn to see Papaw. Days passed and there was no improvement. You know how you can just tell by looking at people's faces that something is wrong; studying my Papaw's face, I knew then what I did not want to accept...what I did not want to know. The end was near.

At night, I got down on my knees and begged God to spare his life. I even tried to bargin for his life, but that was not in God's plan for that day. I was angry with God for a long time because I did not understand death and what it means.

The last time I went into Papaw's room, I was so glad to see him. Something looked different about him. I could see it in his face. I sat quietly and then we briefly talked, and then he took his last breath and was dead. My life as I knew it changed in that moment. How could Papaw die and leave me? I needed him and now he was gone. I was twelve years old and I had the air sucked out of me. I couldn't live with out him. I did not want to live without him. He was the most important man in my life and I loved him with all my heart.

Why does everyone I love die or leave me?

Part One...

Growing up as a child, my first experience with death was my beloved orange striped cat, Tomboy. Since we lived in an apartment, we could not have a dog, but a cat was OK. This cat was my best friend and he would sleep with me every night under the covers to keep me warm.

When he got sick, momma and Ben, my third step-father, took him off to who knows where? There was no money for a vet. I watched from the third floor apartment stairway crying as they took him down the stairs and out the door. I never saw him again. My heart was broken. It was horrendous seeing him hauled off as he yowled in fear fighting for his life. I was ten years old and that memory has stayed with me all my life. To this day, the death of a beloved pet hurts as much as it did then.

Christmas memories

Why I hate the holidays...
There are no happy memories of Christmas from my childhood. Christmas time should have been a season of great joy and excitement for a young girl. Instead, it was a time overwhelmed with brutal sadness, loneliness, and disappointment. It was an emotional roller coaster living with Mary Lou. She was all or nothing with her emotions. Up one day and rock bottom low the next.

There were only sad songs and a drunk mother.
The only constant in my childhood was inconsistency. Nothing ever stayed the same for very long.

Mamma's second husband , Bill, had just divorced her, and we moved in to a dark, cold rental house by the railroad tracks. Every time a train went by the roller shades flew up with the speed of lightening, the beds rocked back and forth, the house rattled and the ground rumbled. It felt like a tornado had it. Maybe the house knew something we did not know?

I know that you're not suppose to sing Christmas carols in June, but we did and that did not stop momma from her usual crazy antics. There were no traditions like normal people. We never knew what to expect, so we had no sense of normal. One thing that was always the same was the weekend we would buy our fresh Christmas tree. It was always cold, raining and late at night when we looked for our tree. The tree was always too tall and we would have to cut branches off to make it fit in the apartment. What a tree! It always looked beautiful to me.

My sister and I had tried to decorate the tree, but we were mad with one another. So we started to fight a little, then we pushed a little more and before we knew it that big tree had fallen over in to shambles. By then Candy and I were laughing so hard, but momma came in and said for us to finish our fight. She gave one of us a belt and the other a pointed high heeled shoe. Whew! What a horrible mess we made and she wanted us to finish it? To this day that was one of the worst Christmas days of my life.

Latch key kid...

I spent the better part of three years locked in the bathroom at home after school because I was afraid that someone was breaking in our house. I was a latchkey kid and I never felt safe. Everything spooked me because of some previous experiences of creeps trying to get me. If there was a creek or a bump off to the bathroom I went to stay till momma got home from work. Once in the bathroom, the sounds were intensely magnified, and I became even more frightened. Then I saw Psycho and I refused to ever shower home alone for twenty years.

Bed wetting

I wet the bed when I was a little kid. I wet the bed almost every night and I was beat with a belt for something that I had no control over. I was born with a birth defect in my bladder. I had major surgery when I was six years old, but even after surgery I still wet the bed and I still got beat. I lived in fear.

I lived in fear of my mother finding out that I had wet the bed, so I would get up in the middle of the night and get towels and clean sheets and change my bed. It was a nightmare to be embarrassed and humiliated by my mother. She would haul my mattress outside on the front porch for the whole neighborhood to see. She seem to take pleasure in hurting me. She would scream and cuss at me. She married Bill, our second step-father because I needed surgery and he had insurance. I was a very angry girl due to the abuse from my mother. Bill stayed about a year and then they divorced.

She did not let up even when the doctor explained that I had no control and could not help myself. I felt she thought I could control it. She would wake me up and insist that I go to the bathroom. Part of the problem was I could not go because I was so tensed up and then when I would go to sleep and relax, then I would wet my bed. Of course the tension in our house was so thick...barely palpable. My mother was in my face all the time about this problem. I felt like I was her scapegoat. She was a bully.

I was never allowed to spend the night out because of this problem. On the few occasions I did spend the night out, I had to take this huge, ugly plastic sheet to put under the sheets in case I had an accident. Eventually, I stopped going to my daddy's home because his new wife did not like the bed wetting. I felt so bad about myself and to add insult to injury there was my mother's never ending torture. She seemed to take great joy in destroying my self esteem. One thing I made up my mind to do was not to show any fear or tears or the fact that she hurt me. I thought I could beat her at her own game, but little did I realize that she really did a number on me and I was desperately screwed up.

For the next twelve years I spent every Friday afternoon being dilated at the urologists office. For those of you that have never experienced this, well it hurts, it's embarrassing, and then the doctor puts this fluid in your bladder and you pee a funny color. I was in and out of the hospital several times. FYI, anything involving the bladder or kidneys hurts. Big needles to this day scare the heck out of me.

I was never allowed to swim in public water or the ocean because infection was too great a risk. I felt singled out at school because I had to drink eight glasses of water and take twenty horse pills a day. Some of my teachers understood , but some did not and I would wet my panties because I was not allowed to go to the restroom. I would rebel and not take my meds and hide them. I was beat for that. I could make no correct decision that pleased mother. I felt like she hated me.

So when my son kept wetting the bed beyond the normal age, I just acted like it was no big deal so he would not feel bad. I never told him how I was treated. I just expressed my love to him and eventually he outgrew it. How hard was that? For me not hard at all because Love conquers all.

My mother died when I was thirty-seven years old and that night I wet my bed. Just a little bit, but none the less, I still wet my pants. I woke up in a panic; for a moment I regressed to my childhood, then I realized where I was. This freaked me out that I did that. Where did that come from? Maybe, I was finally through with her bullying and the abuse and I could finally just relax. Maybe, I just wet myself to say I am done with you mother. I loved her and yet I hated her at the same time.