Streaky reflections from Brisbane Water Drive Koolewong
Was going to blog a stack of walkies photos today but there's a post I've been trying to get off my chest for a bit and now is the time.
Mum
My mother died 18 months ago. She had cancer and went twenty years ahead of her time.
Technically it was the cancer that killed her but there's a bloody good chance she would have beaten it if she'd got a bloody divorce.
I never understood my mother. She was a person of normal intelligence, not an idiot, she got along with people, she appeared to outsiders to be living a normal life. But behind closed doors she was the monster's keeper.
She threw her life away. She spent her entire adult life keeping my father out of the mental hospital. She refused to admit he was barmy. She spent her every waking moment pretending he was normal, that the daily foaming-at-the-mouth rants and the bizarre behaviour were "just his way".
Why? What the fuck was there that could possibly be gained from keeping an aggressive fuckwitted unmedicated nutter at large in the community? What possible advantage was to be had by his never being medicated?
It's not like she was happy when he was normal. Even when he wasn't having an episode, way back twenty years ago when he was still sane some days, even then he was a horrible prick.
What the fuck was wrong with her? What had gone so fundamentally fucking wrong that she thought staying married to an abusive nutter was worth doing?
I loved my mother but I will go to my own grave wondering what the fuck she thought she was doing.
3 comments:
I'm sorry for your loss, Spike. I had similar questions about my mom and dad - but more self-absorbed. Why did she not protect us from him, get us away from him...no answers. Dad died twelve years ago - took almost a decade for me to be able to pity him. I remember everything, but only call up the better memories now, usually, with sympathy for all the things he wanted and couldn't find - his good intentions and not the twisted ways they were manifested. Mom is still around, starting to forget what day it is, forget her address, not too bad but signs of things to come, and I hope I can manage to think about her, while she's still present, the way I can finally think about him more than a decade after his death. With that kind of sympathy and willingness to let the past be past.
Blah, blah, blah.
Glad you posted that.thowness
Well said. Thanks for putting it out there, Spike.
Time IS the answer but I doubt you want to hear that at this point.
Just be sure to do what is best for you.
Onward and
yada, yada, yada
Thank yer both.
The thing that shits me even more than her throwing her life away on that unmedicated fucktard is that she spent most of her time and energy catering to his whims and so we never really knew who she was.
Suzanne, write her address on her hankie or on a string round her neck.
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