Des'ire's Story Chapter 12

October 5th 20051

The Coming Of My Mother’s End2

Dad called today with news that Gwen is in Maine, taken care of Mom after she had called Gwen from the hospital up there and said they wanted to put her in a nursing home, then asked Gwen to come and take care of her so she wont have to go to the nursing home. Enticing Gwen with, she has already put her house in Gwen’s name. 3

Apparently, she has cancer of the liver and has said she only has three to five months to live. Gwen left two weeks ago leaving her kids behind and drove right up there to be with Mom. Leaving everyone in Mass with the problem of who will watch her kids, while she is gone for so long. She asked Dad today to go to Mass, two weeks after leaving her 13 and 14 year home to watch her kids for three months or so, he said he couldn’t do it, he is still recuperating from the one week he spent down there three weeks ago. 4

What’s wrong with this picture?  Gwen, Mom’s prodigy child. Spitting self inner image of one another. Abandoning her children, beating them, yelling at them and cussing nasty words to them. Making them feel like her misery is their fault. As my father once described to me on the phone three weeks ago while he was watching Gwen’s kids and trying to take care of her after she got out of the hospital where she had major surgery in the brain area. That she is an ugly woman to live with. So I guess it is only fitting that Mom would leave Gwen with all her possessions. 5

He got upset and choked back tears as I said I was not going to the funeral. He yelled into the phone “You are going, your not going to end up like your mother, when she didn’t go to her father’s funeral.” Well her problems started long before her father died, so I’m not buying into that guilt trip. He said that Billy has already said he is going, I‘m sure he didn’t agree until after Dad got upset and started crying. Billy hates Mom even more than I do, the sheer mention of her existence, turns Billy into an angry and sarcastic person. So I know he did not willingly agree to go when first told he would be going. As Dad is not asking, he is telling us we are going. 6

30 years this woman has avoided and cared not a thing for my father, yet in his heart he still loves her to the point he never dated or married another woman. This is one of the things I admire about my Dad.  He doesn’t want me to end up like my Mom, but now I find I don’t want to end up like my Dad when it comes to Wally. And in my heart I can hear the cries to give Mom what she wanted most of me, my death. One last gift, one last sacrifice to please her aching need. 7

I can not grasp his heart's conviction that he will be there for her when she passes from here to where ever there is. This is a woman who treated her family like shit, cheated on him and severely abused his children. 8

I sit here wondering all these things and I have to question myself at this point, why do I still hold in my heart a love for my ex husband, Paul who was an abusive alcoholic. Over the years the way in which I love him has changed, it is no longer a love for a husband, but still he is to me family. When I left him I didn’t bother to try and hate him, I just let him go and went on with my life right into another abusive relationship and as I run from this relationship I want to hate him, to I don’t want to feel a thing for him. 9

It must be true that some abused children will grow up to find others to be with who will carry on the abuse.  But none the less I will be going to the funeral to please my father. But I can already feel the aching need building inside me, to lean over her open casket and slit the main artery of my neck and bleed all over her the hardships and pains she has instilled in me. 10

I ask myself now is it that she abused me as a child that I can not forgive or is that she has refused to see her children whom she has refused to have anything to do with except for Gwen for the past 20 years as she lies in a bed preparing to die, denying us our right to confront her with our feelings. One last dig to seal the pain she has inflicted into our souls so it can never escape. 11