Pills and Rivers and......

I spent many years being afraid of my mother. People thought we were extremely close because I am the youngest and the only girl. It was a weird situation. I was afraid of her, but I did not want to be away from her.

When I was nineteen, I finally began to understand and separate the fear from the love. That was the first time my mother openly attempted suicide in front of me. I used to find suicide notes stuck in my books. I always kept books I loved and would re-read them. By the time I found a note, she would be over whatever it was. Nothing was ever said. Talk about a surreal life. This night she was upset because I had gone out with a group of friends......and one boy that I was interested in.......there was a fender bender so it was about 12:30am when I got home. My mother flew at me in a rage (sounds trite, but that is exactly how it was). Then she went into the kitchen and started swallowing pills. At that time we lived just across the street from someone she worked with who she admired. I started to go across and ask the woman for help, and my mother went totally crazy, crying and holding the door so I could not go out. BUT, it was only because she did not want any outsider to know. This was the epiphany for me. My mother was doing this for attention, nothing more. I stood there...stunned... looking at her....she went into the bathroom and made herself throw up.

Later, for the first time ever, I talked to my oldest brother's wife about it. That is when I found out that my mother had done this often. Apparently she used to say she was going to drown herself. Or, take pills. It is almost certain that I heard this from the time I was an infant. People will do and say anything in front of babies and small children. They think if babies can't understand the words,they won't understand the emotions. Then afterwards, when everything is relatively okay, nothing is said, because if you don't give voice to it then it just goes away.

I understand why my mother was the way she was. She spent her life filled with guilt for surviving the car/train wreck that killed her family. My mother was fourteen when the car her family was riding in was hit by the mail train. The last thing she remembered is telling her four-year old brother that if he did not sit still the man in the train would get him. He lived four hours. Her mother, father and sister were killed instantly. She inherited the family farm of 140 acres and a substantial settlement from the railroad. At fifteen she married my father, a JW....and an alcoholic. At twenty she had two boys and had just buried her third baby. He lived eight days. My father sold the last of the farm for a car that year. He had already piddled away the settlement.

My mother had resisted becoming a Jw for about twelve years after marrying my father. My father moved her and my brothers about six hours away from their hometown and anyone she had every known. A Jw sister convinced her that her dead baby's salvation depended on her actions. Also, my mother was lonely and this woman befriended her.

Becoming a Jw prevented my mother from getting the psychological help she needed. Her guilt led to phobias, low self-esteem, a false sense of superiority, double-mindedness, and a condemning nature. She loved to talk about the lady down the street who was doing the same things she was doing. It was as if she talked about the 'sin' of someone else, then it negated HER sin.

My mother died in 2002. During my mother's last hospital stay, she finally accepted that she was dying. She was terror-stricken. One night she thrashed around in the bed, clammy and sweaty, breathing hard. She would almost say something then stop and rock back and forth. I told her that whatever she was afraid to say could not be as bad as holding it back was. Finally, she said........'I did the best I could'. Such is the 'peace' of Jw salvation.