Email re: Mother Taking the Greyhound Bus to the Hospital

Excerpt from an email to my BFF Jerry dated November 18, 2006. I'm eventually planning to post all the old email excerpts about my mother that I have, and I'll make a post that links to them all in chronological order of when they actually occurred. This excerpt corresponds to my retelling in The Time My Mother Went Crazy in the Hospital Waiting Room:

My mom called tonight to tell me that my dad is in the ICU.  Well, she actually called to complain that they aren't telling her over the phone why he is in there and to ask me to check into planes, trains, buses, and rental car possibilities to get her there tonight.  She wants to yell at them in person to tell her what is going on, and be a nuisance.  I actually think she wants a more dramatic way to fall ill, since doing it while on the road would be a major problem.  

 She went to the hospital today, she said.  I didn't ask why until later when she asked, "AREN'T YOU GOING TO ASK WHY I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL?!"  I obliged, and apparently her stools are black, and she said the doctor wants to do a colonoscopy.  This is silly since problems in the colon cause red blood and blood only turns black when it has gone through the digestive system (like when you have an ulcer), so the logical diagnostic would be an endoscopy (like a colonoscopy except from your mouth to your stomach), but whatever.  She does what she wants.  My dad and I each had one this year, so she must feel that she deserves one too.  I hope she enjoys the prep for it because it is a sickening experience.  Anyway, she ended up dissolving into tears about how everyone hates her and how her own brother said he won't loan her any more money to fund her insanity.  

She said her mother is even yelling at her now, and if her own mother yells at her, well, she might as well end it all now (these were her words).  I replied with random sympathetic sounds, but the word "irony" kept flashing in my mind.  She sobbed about how I chose my "daddy" over her, faking a whiny child voice on the word "daddy," and complained about how everyone hates her and I hate her too.  I didn't think any response I could give would help, so I sat quietly, flipping through my "The Daily Cocktail" book, trying to find something I have all the ingredients to make tonight.  

When she finally asked if I hate her, I don't think my "no" could have sounded much more callous, but I don't really mind.  I still answer some of her calls (though I admit we turned the ringer off on the phone), and she can't ask much more from me than that, as I see it.  I think she is still trying to get money from me though since when I found bus times and prices for her, her next words were about how she couldn't afford anything and how would/where would she pay for them.  I told her the station probably sells tickets.  If she shows up in Cleveland, my dad will be mad enough as it is.  I'm not paying to upset him.  ::sigh::

VA Hospital

I picked up a couple lists of donation requests from the library.  One was for the local VA, just little things patients might need like basic clothing and toiletries.  I’m going to buy some things to drop off next week.  It reminds me of my dad and all the time he spent living in the VA hospital, and I like the feeling that memory gives me.

I’ve been crying.  I don’t miss him I don’t think.  I don’t think I’m necessarily mourning him.  I’m sad about what his life might have been and the things he might have enjoyed but never tried.  

When my husband and I chose our new hometown and bought our house, we intentionally chose a location with a good VA hospital nearby that has a spinal cord injury unit.  My dad’s hometown VA didn’t have a spinal cord injury unit.  When I was growing up, because he was paraplegic, he had to leave the state every time he needed surgery.  Even in later years when a new VA SCI unit opened in our state, it was a four hour drive away.  That’s why he died in a hospital four hours away from home and anyone he knew.  So we chose an area with a good VA hospital with an SCI unit.  We moved halfway across the country.  We bought a house with a ground floor bedroom and bathroom that were meant to be his, right off of the living room and the bright, open kitchen and the giant deck he could’ve rolled out onto.  We have a three car garage that was meant to hold his van.  The local gym is wheelchair friendly, and I had imagined us going there together when he first started doing physical therapy at the VA and told me how much he liked it.  The gym has an indoor pool with a wheelchair lift, which I have never seen anywhere else before but knew such things existed because he had talked about how great it would be to have a pool with a lift when he first moved into the VA hospital and started expressing what I saw as hope about fifteen years ago. 

I thought we would have holidays together at my house.  I always imagined Christmas.  I was going to buy him one of those electric fireplace space heaters so he could keep his room as hot as he wanted all winter long.  I was going to cook him such good and healthy meals his diabetes would be under control.  The idea was that he could live with me because he was bed bound and needed full-time care, he could go to the nearby VA hospital for appointments and surgeries, and he could either continue living with me or move back to his own home if he ever got well enough to live alone again.  I wasn't trying to hold him hostage.  I just wanted him to stop threatening to let himself die of neglect in our old hoard house instead of staying in the nursing home because it wasn't the only option beyond living in the nursing home.  He could live with me.  And he seemed okay with that.  He was in on the plan before we ever moved.  The plan was why we moved here.

And once we moved and bought the house, he didn’t want any of it.  He wanted to stay in the hospital, occasionally shifting back home for a few weeks at a time until he had to be hospitalized again, shipped back across the state and then released to the nursing home to convalesce, where he spent most of the last years of his life lying in bed naked, watching basic cable and complaining about the food.  I wonder if he ever planned to move in with me. 

I believe I could’ve done a good job taking care of him.  Maybe I never could’ve made him happy.  It was just so wonderful seeing him hopeful in those first years after he moved into the hospital and away from my mother.  It gave me hope too.  I see now that it was probably the novelty of a new location and being away from my mom that brightened him up, but I thought it was a whole new him.  I thought maybe he'd had a depression that started to lift after moving away from Mom and the house, like I had.  

My husband and I have money.  More even than my parents, who collected more in disability payments than anyone else in the family could earn.  We have a comfortable home that is pretty well kept if I do say so myself and feels like a high-end hotel compared to the dilapidated house where I grew up and where my dad wanted to live.  We have access to pretty much anything we could want or need.  I thought it was going to be good with him here.

So, anyway, I’m going to buy some undershirts and underwear and toothpaste and things from Walmart to donate to the local VA hospital.  Is it ridiculous that the thought of the VA hospital makes me feel comfortable and homey in a way memories of my childhood home do not?  The hospital was where I had some of the best times with my dad.  That was where I saw him happiest.  Things were happening and changing when he was there, and it was usually the holidays when I was there.  I bought him gifts to make him comfortable, like a laptop and the mp3 player I filled with his favorite jazz albums, the accessories along with his cell phone that he stopped bringing to the hospital during his multi-week stays because he’d rather have been bored and cut off from everyone than take the chance they might be stolen.  I never understood that.  I was trying to make his day-to-day life more livable no matter the circumstances.  What's the point in saving everything for when you're not in the hospital when you spend all your time in the hospital?  I brought him his favorite restaurant foods to eat, and his face would light up.  Whenever I gave him something, a laugh would escape as he’d express delight and then say thank you, like he was so happy at what you’d brought him that he couldn’t just smile, he had to laugh.  He was always so good at receiving gifts.

Maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to visit him at the VA hospital all the time if he’d lived here.  Maybe I would’ve resented him for being so close I could visit every day when I have a daughter and husband who need me.  If he'd lived with me, he probably would've made our home less comfortable like he did my childhood home.  I remember not wanting to come home at all when I felt good because he was so often irritable or angry or yelling and I couldn't seem to make myself small enough in that house to feel like I was existing in space of my own.  But I wish he could’ve been happy longer.  I wish we could’ve spent happy times together living in the same part of the country.  I wish we could've celebrated holidays together without his being in the hospital and my being in a Holiday Inn.  I wish I could’ve been there when he died.

Small Update

I haven’t posted in a long time.  I’ve been feeling sad.  I’m okay and still functioning at a fairly normal level, but I’ve been having feelings I’d rather not feel.

I met my sister.  That was fine.  Apparently her parents even knew we were spending the weekend together.  My biological father apparently told her to tell me “hi” from him, which almost made me cry because I’d assumed he hated me for writing him a letter three years ago, introducing myself and subsequently upsetting his wife.  He still stays away, but it doesn’t sound like he hates me.  His wife still does though.  Because I wrote a letter once three years ago.  “Maybe when ten years have passed and she sees that her life hasn’t changed at all, she’ll be okay with it,” I told my sister.  But if she’s still mad after three years, I can’t imagine another seven will help.  I also can’t imagine him choosing to talk to me when it would upset his wife further and NOT talking to me only upsets me in my house where I cry in my shower alone.

A lot has happened this year.  I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it all.  I don’t even know where to start. 

Last night my daughter said about the fact that I don’t speak to my mother, “It’s not too late to make the right choice.”  I tried to explain, “This is the right choice.”  She’s never met my mother, only seen pictures.  My mother has required full time care on account of her crippling mental illness and prescription drug addiction for more than twice as long as my daughter has been alive.  Dante said she doesn’t really speak anymore, presumably for the same reasons, and no one else in the family can bear to deal with her anymore.  I don’t think I’m in the wrong here.  I thought my daughter understood when I explained that my mother has a disease that makes her say and do mean things, and she refuses to be treated for the disease. 

I don’t know what to tell her.  My mother is the only person I’ve ever actively cut from my life (my dad was a passive removal – I just stopped initiating everything – same with Dante honestly), and it was really hard and I was sooooo suicidal every time she’d call me to yell at me.  I lived in fear of the phone ringing, and I cried all the time and had trouble functioning.  How do you explain that to a 5-year-old?  Every day she tells me she loves me and asks me to marry her.  I don’t want to tell her how bad things can get with a mother.  I don’t want her to live in fear that things with us will turn out the same way.

Meeting My Sister for the First Time

I'm hesitant to write about this because, as largely unread as this blog is, it's not private.  My nearest and dearest are well aware of it, though they aren't interested enough to come here (they hear enough of this stuff in person), and I should assume any up-and-coming nearest and dearest will be clued into it too, which is why I don't talk much about my paternal half-siblings.  I want them to like me, even if they someday read my blog.

To recap, I was conceived with anonymous donor sperm.  The only half-siblings I've found so far are the two adult children my biological father raised with his wife.  I'm the only DC one I know of, though there are probably more.

When I found Joseph, my biological father, he seemed very concerned that I would out him publicly, tag his children in Facebook posts, or somehow stalk or inconvenience his family.  I forgive him for this because he doesn't know that's not my style (except for the stalking -- I'm an exceptionally quiet cyberstalker).  He didn't want to know me, but my half-siblings did.  I have spoken to my half-sister Simone once on the phone.  We text sometimes on holidays.  We're Facebook friends, as I am with my half-brother Hans.  It's a strange relationship.  I've always been afraid of being perceived as too forward or forcing myself on them.  Both have been welcoming and kind to me.  Neither have seemed particularly interested in me though, so I've tried to take their lead.  Our relationships cooled, which I think was actually a good thing because they feel more solid now.  I feel more vested.  I feel like I would have to make a misstep for them to strike me from their lives now, whereas I previously checked Facebook every day to see if they had spontaneously unfriended me yet.

Here's the point of this post.  Simone wants to visit me and stay in my house.  Right away.  I do not want this to happen.  I would like to meet her.  I would like to share a meal and talk for hours, maybe even spend the day together.  She is my sister, and she will be forever, no matter how this relationship plays out.  But we have never met in person, we've only spoken once, and I don't want to host her in my home.  I am self-conscious of my home, and I have a husband and child and dog to take care of in my home.  I want to be able to give Simone my undivided attention somewhere else.  I want to be able to decompress after we meet and be alone to process everything.  I declined her request.  I said maybe in a few months.  Want to set a date in a few months?  Maybe then I'd have time to get to know her enough I could handle it, though I didn't say that part.  She asked again.  It needed to be now.  To avoid saying no again -- but also avoid saying yes -- I asked what was going on and expressed concern.  I knew she had had a fight with her boyfriend.  I knew to a certain extent what this was all about because she posts a lot of information on Facebook, which I appreciate as a quiet cyberstalker.  We messaged back a forth and few times over the next couple of weeks.  Then she asked again if she could stay in my house.  I've gotten good at drawing boundaries over the years, but I never learned how to maintain a relationship with someone who might not want those boundaries in place.  At the advice of my best friend Jerry, who is good at complex interpersonal relationships, I did what Simone frequently does and didn't respond at all.  The next time we talk, I will -- like Simone frequently does -- pretend it never happened.  This might sound cold, but I think it's the kindest way I could handle this particular situation.  It's strange.  I feel like I'm relearning how to play a game I was never particularly good at.

In case you're reading this ever, Simone, I do want to know you.  You are interesting, and we have so much in common in spite of all the ways we're different.  I think we'd both enjoy taking absurd numbers of selfies together and posting them on social media for attention with various #sister tags.  I like you and want to know you better.  But I want to take things slow.  I know it's been over two years, but we've barely spoken in that time, let alone bonded.  I am afraid of being the rebound from your current relationship.  I am afraid the novelty of meeting a new sister and posting selfies together on Facebook will not be enough to make you feel better again and that you might end up upset or mad at me.  I can be a good friend, but we barely know each other, and I'm not the best person for this job.  We could talk over the phone, and I could listen and sympathize, but I'm not good at hosting guests.  I don't like doing it, and that's not about you.  I want to get to know you, but if I let you light a fire under this sister relationship, I am afraid it will explode.  You mentioned starting DBT once on Facebook.  I clicked "like."  It made me happy that you were getting the kind of therapy I had always thought would work best for you.  I wanted to express support in that small Facebook way.  You don't know that borderline personality disorder is one of my areas of expertise.  You don't know anything about the family that raised me (well, you might now, if you're reading this here).  I want to have a functional relationship with you, so I'm not letting this go too fast.  Maybe I could come visit you and stay in a hotel.  We could go out to eat and you could show me around.  This is the best I can do.

"57 Reasons I Hate My Mother": An Email

I was referring back to my old emails while writing the story of The Great Clean Out of '06 (or The Time My Mother Scammed the Poorest People We Knew), but I think this email might be better in its original form.  A few of the things I said at the time make me cringe in the rereading (e.g., repeatedly calling my mother a terrible person; calling the Gardner family "trashy" -- they remind me of Kenny's family from South Park, but still, it was unkind), but I prefer to keep it honest than to edit it to make myself sound better.  The first bullet points might sound familiar from other posts.

Dear Jerry,

It really relaxes my head to list off what is pissing me off about my mom, but I can understand how listening to someone complain can get old really fast (believe me -- I know), so feel free to skip the numbered section of this email.  Please note though that there is a shitload of crazy in there and you might find some of it interesting and/or amusing.  There aren't actually 57 reasons.  I just liked how it sounded.

1.  She called me repeatedly starting at 6am yesterday to tell me she wanted to fax me something.  I discovered later that she had started calling my cell phone at 5:30am.  She told me today that she had called about six other people before that because she couldn't find my phone number.  When each asked why she had called at such an ungodly hour, she got increasingly angrier.  I finally got her off the phone with less than an hour before I had to be at work.  The all-important fax was the name of a hotel in Cleveland, a wedding price list for the chapel in Cincy, and something that looked like spam and said something about 'girlfriends' on it.

2.  She called me tonight for her daily venting and to ask me to wire her $2000.  She said the car that was formerly mine -- which my brother ruined the engine on and then she tried unsuccessfully to give away -- was in the shop and wouldn't be leaving until she had $2k.  She said she hadn't planned on taking the $2k that my father had very carefully set aside in a money market account to pay their property tax, but if I wouldn't give her money, she'd be forced to use it.  Either she doesn't have access to the money market account, or my dad is completely unaware that she does and will probably have a breakdown when he finds out.  I hope for the former. 

Money she spent today:  her $2300 bed was delivered, and she had several scans run on her brain.  Tomorrow she is having an MRI, and she is having people come by to talk about installing automatic handicapped doors on the house. 

Do you know the Gardners (i.e., the very nice Tim Gardner's mostly -- not all, but mostly -- trashy family)?  Otherwise known to me as the poorest family in Cincy?  Well, my mom owes them money.  She told the youngest children and their boyfriends that she would pay them each $100 and all the candy they could eat to clean out her basement but that she would have to give them IOUs and pay them later (she mentioned this part after they arrived).  She also said she'd pay them to get my brother's car out of the shop.  Apparently their father called and yelled at her because his children had to put gas in the car to get it to her, and so far, they have made negative money.  She also offered the pregnant teenager Mikaela and her boyfriend a $1000 IOU to go to Queens and drive back the $3000 van she is still hell-bent on buying.  Mikaela backed out because she is in her 3rd trimester and recently learned that she isn't supposed to be flying.  My mother is a terrible person.  

By the way, I didn't give her the money.  I told her truthfully that I don't have that much money in my checking account.  There is no reason for her to ever know that I have a high-yield savings account and an 18-month CD because she is never ever getting her hands on them.

3.  She announced in church last Sunday that she needed help cleaning out her house and that she would pay people by giving them bags of candy and praying for them (I'm serious).  She was angry and resentful that people who were "supposed to be [her] friends" didn't chip in, and even "the Mormons," some new-ish neighbors who had once said, "If there is anything we can do..." didn't help (apparently "if there is anything we can do..." now constitutes some sort of binding verbal agreement).  Only two people came, a couple from church who we've known for decades who are around my parents age, maybe a little older.  When they asked if there was anything they should bring, she asked for Rubbermaid storage containers.  She told the woman how she wished she could scrub out the bathtub but that her fingers just weren't strong enough.  The woman scrubbed the bathtub clean for her.  I don't think it had been scrubbed since the mid-'90s.

4.  After she bitched about having to wait until tomorrow for the scans of her brain and after I denied her request for $2000, she told me she had no idea if my dad had had his surgery today or not.  She hadn't called the hospital to find out.  She said she had tried the hospital in Cincinnati and expected them to transfer her to the hospital in Cleveland but they hadn't.  Not sure why she didn't call the number she has for another division of that hospital in Cleveland, but apparently she gave up quickly.  That's when I told her that I had actually bothered to look up the hospital's phone number and talk to my dad's nurse, who said he was recovering in his room and doing fine.  My mother seemed genuinely shocked, though I'm not sure about which part.

5.  She tells the same stories ("complaints" might be a more accurate term) every time she calls me.  I think she tells everyone the same thing and actually forgets who she's told her shit to each day.  That, or she just doesn't care.  That's fairly likely, actually.  She is such a terrible person.  I really can't stand her.

6.  She has decided that as soon as my dad gets out of the hospital she will give him an ultimatum that either he treat her "like a human being" or she is divorcing him.  She said she has a terminal illness and life is too short to spend it unhappy.  What a lovely lesson to learn after wasting all of your youth, beauty, and money.  I am thankful for her sometimes.  Watching someone close to you make such catastrophic mistakes helps prevent you making so many of them, and sweet jesus, she covered a lot of them for me.  I honestly believe that, while I might not be a better person for having known her, I behave better for having dealt with her.

Okay, I'm finished with my list for today.  The good news, in addition to the fact that my dad's surgery went smoothly, is that I've been researching Ohio divorce law and Ohio is an "equitable-distribution" state.  This means, among other things, that upon divorce, the debts are divided up as fairly as possible to whomever created them.  My dad would still have tens of thousands of dollars worth of marital debt -- debt they earned jointly, like the mortgage -- but it would most likely free him from her mounting hospital bills.  The only thing really working against him is the fact that he is their sole source of income and a judge might determine that he stands a better chance of paying it off.  However, if he sues for divorce and cites the financial insanity -- and other insanity -- as cause, he might be able to get rid of those debts and of her, though I'm sure he'd have to pay alimony out of his significantly lighter check.  Also, there is a 90% chance (probably better) that he would get the house and would then be able to stop her from calling more and more people to do more and more expensive things to it.  Then I'd only have one parent spiraling out of control, and as long as she doesn't come knocking on my door (hell, if the pizza delivery guy can't find it, why should she be able to?), she can do whatever she damn well pleases.  Michael and I will move to Arizona where the schools are good, the property taxes are reasonable, and the weather is fine, and my dad can sell everything he owns and get a little house not too far away in the desert, the only place it seems he has ever been happy.

I am so looking forward to our Cleveland adventure.  Do you have any ideas for where we should eat?  The CDs I ordered for my dad arrived yesterday, so I now have some 15 CDs worth of jazz to upload onto his new mp3 player.  Plus, I consequently have a new $200 jazz collection.  Which is actually not bad.  I used to hate the stuff, but I think it must have seeped into my brain as a child because so much of it is familiar to me now, and hearing it is really soothing.  "Willow Weep For Me" and "Misty" always make me think of my dad because they are the two songs he played on his guitar every damn day for as long as I can remember.  I actually like them now, I guess because I hadn't heard them in so long.

It'll be good to see him, and I know there's a selfish reason behind it, but I love giving him gifts.  He's so good at receiving gifts, and I love that I know he'll really like this one and that maybe he won't be so sad or so lonely because he'll have something pretty and familiar to listen to and he'll know that it came from someone who loves him and wants him to get well.  I'd better head to bed since it's getting really late.  Be thinking of fun ways to spend our evening together.  There should definitely be mischief involved at one point or another, though I'm not sure how so.  I hope to talk to you soon, my best and favorite friend.  -- C

P.S.  #7)  She got upset when I told her after 11pm that I needed to go get ready for bed because I have work in the morning.  Michael says I should set the fax to call her in the middle of the day and wake her up and see how she likes it (ha!).  -- C

The Essay Contest

When I was in second grade, I won first place for writing in my school's "Reflections" contest.  The theme that year was "I Have a Dream" or something similar.  To be honest, I can't remember a single year the theme wasn't some variation on "my greatest wish."

The topic of my original essay was an imagined vacation to Walt Disney World, which was at that time my greatest wish.  I had never been on a trip before, and I was obsessed with the idea.  My mother told me it would never win.  She said I should write that my dream was for my wheelchair-bound dad to be able to walk again.  Tearjerkers win, she told me.  I was skeptical.  I thought it sounded boring and untrue, but she made me a deal:  either I would win first place, or she would give me $20.  I accepted her challenge.  I ended up winning.

My essay went on to compete in the statewide competition, and I came in second.  The boy who won first place had a dead father, and his tearjerking dream was to build a telephone to heaven.  (Why aim so low, Kevin?  Don't you love your dad enough for imagined necromancy?)  This was my first experience with winning awards out of pity, but I began to understand the system pretty quickly.

I was invited to Cleveland to read my essay aloud and accept a small trophy at the awards ceremony along with the other winners from across the state.  My school's PTA president and vice president wanted to attend as well, each of whom had a child in my class who also wanted to come.  We piled into the PTA president's minivan and trekked across the state as a group. 

I read my essay and accepted my trophy.  Everyone congratulated me and told me I had done a good job, which was pretty much what I lived for.  We went back to the hotel to change into casual clothes before finishing off the day with some sightseeing.  I had packed what I felt was my most fashionable outfit:  an oversized t-shirt with butterflies on it and white capri pants.  It was something Stacey from The Babysitter's Club would wear, I'd thought in a satisfied way as I'd packed it.  It was too cold for capri pants though, so I wasn't sure what to do.  I came out to the main room of the suite where my mother and my friends and their mothers were sitting.  When my mother saw my outfit, she got angry.  "Is that seriously what you packed?!  Did it not occur to you some of us might want to leave the hotel room?!" she yelled.  I looked over at my friend Gretchen, dressed sensibly in a new-looking, well-fitting, warm-looking outfit.  It was much nicer than my casual wear.  I didn't own a thing like it.  Why didn't I own a thing like it?  Why hadn't I known it would be too cold for capri pants?  Gretchen averted her eyes from mine while her mother did her hair and my mother shamed me.  I didn't blame her.   It was awkward for all of us.

After rifling through my bag and deeming everything I had packed useless and unwearable, my mother instructed me to change back into the clothes I'd worn on the drive across the state the day prior.  "This will have to do," she sighed at the well-worn t-shirt my brother had brought me back from a trip to New Mexico and the multicolored paisley parachute pants my mother had bought me because they looked like her own.  She went through a phase for a couple years where she wore exclusively wildly colored, patterned rayon pants and bought the same for me. 

In hindsight, I think it's impressive I had as many friends as I did, considering how I looked and dressed.  My personality must have been sparkling.

Wedding Planning

I got engaged in my mid-twenties.  Michael* and I had known each other for five years, dated for four, and lived together for two.  I didn't know how to tell my parents we were getting married.  I was nervous about their reactions.  Michael called his parents excitedly to tell them the news.

A few days or possibly weeks after our engagement, I told my mother over the phone.  "I didn't realize you were serious about him," she said.  She told me I was too young to get married.  

Wedding planning was stressful and awful in many ways.  What I wanted, what my mother wanted, and what Michael's mother insisted upon were very different things (Michael didn't particularly care what we did).  I had been saving up for my wedding since my first job out of college.  I knew if I left it until I was engaged I wouldn't have enough time to save up enough money to fund it myself.  I figured since my parents wouldn't put up anything and my fiance's parents might go by the "bride's family pays" rule, I should plan to bankroll it myself.  Michael and I ended up funding it together, but he was delighted by my forethought.  Michael's parents ended up funding something too, but that was because they wanted to hold their own separate wedding for us over which they'd have complete control, and we told them we didn't care as long as they paid for it themselves.  (They're actually lovely people.  We get along really well.  But if you give them an ounce of power... I didn't know the ramifications back then.  It was a dark time.)

I could remember my mother badmouthing other people's weddings since I was a child.  She seemed affronted whenever people served full meals at their wedding receptions.  Our family weddings were usually ten minutes long and featured cake and punch at the end.  No meal, no dancing, no alcohol of any kind.  Just vows, cake, and go home.  More than that and she accused people of being "frou-frou" and putting on airs.  Michael's family considered wedding planning a competitive sport and a chance to show up other family members, as I later learned.  "Ooooh, real champagne.  This wedding is so much nicer than Amy's was.  Isn't it?"  

My ideal wedding would have been elegant and featured cocktails and rich food and dancing.  There would be lots of flowers, and it would be held in the evening and go until after dark, unlike the afternoon weddings in my family.  We didn't know where to start though.  Michael and I lived a thousand miles away from our parents, who lived hundreds of miles away from each other.  We looked at some locations near our home in New York City.  They were very expensive, but they would allow me to be involved in the planning without taking undue amounts of time off from work.  My mother wanted me to hold the wedding in my hometown so all the family could attend.  None of my family would be willing to travel except maybe my mother.  I mentioned looking at local wedding venues to my dad, and he told me he didn't care where we held the wedding, that while he couldn't travel for the wedding, he didn't have any particular desire to attend anyway.  I learned later that this was a lie.  He was very upset at the insinuation that I might have my wedding near my town instead of his.  He had apparently wanted me to feel very strongly that I must hold the wedding close to him because his attendance was important.  But he wanted me to feel more strongly about him being there than he did, and I simply did not.  To be honest, I didn't want either of my parents there.  I'd never tell them that though.

I knew my ideal wedding wouldn't work with my actual family.  I wouldn't be comfortable getting married in front of my parents, or Michael's, for that matter.  It just felt weird.  Short of recasting my family, my secondary wedding of choice would have been what I called a "Kids Only" wedding.  Michael's and my friends and his family members who are our contemporaries would be the only invitees.  No one would judge us or say I looked fat.  No one would yell at us.  I wouldn't have to worry that my virgin mother would want to talk to me about the impending wedding night.  It would be like eloping except with friends present.  But I knew the "Kids Only" wedding wouldn't work either because our parents would be so angry at being excluded that we'd effectively trade in a few months of grief for many years of shamings.

I gave up.  I told my parents we'd hold the wedding in their town.  Michael's family was willing to travel.  I made the mistake of telling my mother that I knew it was the only way Dad could attend, and she told me that was a terrible reason to hold the wedding there.  I should have been having my wedding in their town so that my maternal grandparents could attend.  Sure it's the same town and convenient to all of them, but clearly I don't love my grandparents and she was going to tell them so! She would tell them the truth about me!  So that happened.

I knew my wedding was going to be a bad experience, so I decided I should at least keep it inexpensive.  My mother used to complain that, when she got engaged to my dad, her father had told her, "Here's $100.  Go have a wedding."  They had been poor, and I guess my mother hadn't saved up anything toward her wedding in the years she'd been working, so she had had a cheap wedding.  Ceremony in the church where we both grew up, cake in the church basement afterwards.  I told my mother she could plan my wedding.  It would be in our hometown, and I would pay for it.  She had a budget of $5000 to work with.  I thought this would make her happy.  It was a truly terrible move on my part.

I knew $5k wasn't much for planning a wedding anymore, so I told my mother I wanted a ceremony in the church where we'd both grown up and a reception in the church basement, just like she'd had.  She'd need to pick out a cake and flowers, which seemed simple enough.  She'd always scorned "fancy" desserts, so I felt sure she would choose a basic cake flavor like vanilla or chocolate that wouldn't offend anyone.  I didn't really care how any of it turned out.  I knew I had to tell her it was great no matter what.  That was how she raised me.  I just didn't want anyone to yell at me anymore.

In hindsight, it seems weird that I turned the reins of wedding planning over to my mother AFTER she told me she was going to poison my grandparents against me.  But then again, maybe it's not so weird.  I would have done pretty much anything to avoid "getting in trouble."  It didn't matter that I was a financially independent adult living a thousand miles away from my parents.  I just wanted my mother to be happy and love me and not yell at me anymore.

My mother seemed excited to plan the wedding she'd never had.  She immediately started looking for new venues.  She found an outdoor location on a major highway in our town.  I didn't want an outdoor wedding, and based on what I knew of that highway, I could only envision the local Hooters surrounded by loud traffic.  I didn't want her to find a new venue.  I knew every venue I'd explored cost exponentially more than the church.  She said she loved the place though and wanted to fax me pictures.  I asked her to send me prices.  She said it didn't matter and she would pay for everything with the money she was getting from refinancing the mortgage on the house (as referenced in A List of Mom's Antics). 

She demanded I fly home so I could taste cakes.  I told her I trusted her to pick something.  If she liked it, I'd like it.  Something basic like vanilla or chocolate would be good.  She said no, they have so many flavors and fruit fillings, I needed to taste them all.  During this time, my mother would call me at odd hours in a variety of moods.  Once she called me around 6am because she wanted to know how to fax me information about wedding venues.  She said she had lost my phone number, she seemed upset at me for that, and she said she had spent the last hour calling people, waking them up, and asking if they knew how to reach me.  She isn't an early riser, and I am confident she hadn't been to bed yet.  Other times I would come home from work to a happy morning voicemail chattering away about wedding cakes and an afternoon voicemail calling me a ungrateful little bitch who she "didn't raise this way."  I never knew what to expect.  This was around the time I started drinking.  It helped me stop shaking, which I had started to do every time the phone rang.

My high school friend Allie, who had declared herself maid of honor and who I was too afraid of to tell no, asked if she could help with the wedding planning.  I said okay.  I would divide up the planning between her and my mother, who seemed overwhelmed and increasingly mentally scattered anyway.  My mother, however, was outraged at the suggestion that I might take away any of her responsibilities.  She said Allie could plan the whole wedding for all she cared.  She was done being treated this way.  The wedding was off.  She didn't raise me to be this ungrateful.  Allie took over attempts at planning for a little while, but it didn't get any easier.  I couldn't handle it anymore.  I was afraid of both women, and I just wanted it all to be over.  I put the entire wedding on hold for almost a year.  When I felt ready to approach it again, I looked up wedding planners online and called one whose gallery of wedding photos looked nice.  It was one of the best decisions of my life. 

Wedding planning changed dramatically as soon as I talked to my wedding planner, Lisa.  She was polite, easy going, and knew how to plan an event.  Her taste was similar to mine, as evidenced by the photos on her website, so I basically just gave her some pictures and ideas of things I liked and she showed me what she thought we should do.  I usually agreed.  Easy.  Fun.  All the leg work was hers, and she didn't yell at me once.  "Are you really this easy?" she would ask when I agreed with her choices or trusted her professional judgment on something.  "This is unreal."  Lisa was a godsend.  She even helped me with my parents.

The wedding ended up being much more expensive and much more elegant than what I'd previously planned, but we had enough saved up.  It was more like my "ideal wedding" scenario except with my family present.  There was an open bar, dinner, an elaborate tiered cake, dancing, and even chair covers, which inexplicably cost $800 to rent for the night but really brought the rooms together.  Allie was a musician and remained in charge of the ceremony music, which was coincidentally the biggest source of stress for me in all the wedding planning.

I knew I had no control over my mother's behavior -- or anyone's but my own -- so I set myself two manageable goals for the wedding day:

1. I would be a happy, gracious bride.  I didn't have to actually enjoy the day or "be fully present" or anything tricky like that.  I just didn't want to give anyone cause to say I was "being a bridezilla" or to talk smack about me.  If someone talked smack about me, I wanted their listeners to be able to look over at me, see me smiling and happy and thanking everyone for coming, and think that the other person was unnecessarily being an asshole; and
2. Be legally married by the end of it.

My husband and I made a few contingency plans in case my mother tried something at the wedding.  In addition to the wedding planner, who would keep my newly divorced parents away from each other, I enlisted two close friends and bridesmaids to act as a buffer between my mother and me.  If my mother tried to engage me in a lengthy conversation, scream at me, cry at me, or do anything that might be hard for me to cope with at my own wedding, they would step in.  They would engage her in conversation, invent a reason I was needed elsewhere, and allow me to extricate myself gracefully. 

We also needed a contingency plan in case my mother faked a heart attack.  I've posted here before about my mother faking a heart attack while I was home on break from college and on the phone with my boyfriend (now husband).  Because I think there is a decent chance she faked that heart attack because I was paying attention to my boyfriend instead of her, I was very concerned she might fake another one at our wedding.  What then?  We'd be out thousands of dollars and still unmarried at the end of the day.  Being married was one of my two goals for the entire day.  If I ignored her or said, "It's okay, everyone, she's just faking!" I'd look completely heartless, regardless of if I was right.  Looking like a happy, gracious bride was my only other goal for the day, so I couldn't very well act like a harpy.  "Canceled wedding" and "heartless daughter" both sounded like outcomes my mother would potentially consider a win, so we enlisted more help.  Fortunately, quite a few of my husband's and my friends from college are doctors.  Two different doctors volunteered to leap to my mother's aid in the event of a fake heart attack or other unforeseen ailment, give her a quick once over, call out to the room, "It's okay, everyone!  Carry on with the wedding!  She's in good hands!" and remove her from the premises for further care.  Should anyone present insist on halting the wedding for her, the doctors would insist that we carry on, so we would.  Doctors' orders.

My mother called me to RSVP for the wedding.  I hadn't heard from her in awhile.  She sounded good.  Feeble, but not angry.  I think she'd been depressed.  I think that was usually what prompted her to stop calling me for weeks at a time.  We had a pleasant exchange.  There was lightness in her voice, like she was trying for me, almost like I wasn't her offspring at all.  She warned me she wouldn't look good at the wedding.  "You always look good to me, Mommy," I said, which made my skin crawl, but I felt it was expected of me.  She told me about all the gifts she'd bought me to take on my honeymoon.  She said she had packed an oversized suitcase full of bathrobes and slippers and massage oils and heart-shaped things she had found in the Target dollar aisle.

She said her parents wouldn't be attending my wedding.  My grandfather hadn't attended a wedding in decades, and she said my grandma didn't want to embarrass me with how poorly she gets around.  I insisted she wouldn't -- embarrassing me with someone else's poor mobility is not a thing that has ever existed -- but I'm sure my insistence was moot.  I don't know why my grandmother wouldn't attend -- maybe my mother had successfully turned her against me, or she was self-conscious, or there weren't enough able-bodied people to accompany both her and my mother to the wedding, or Grandpa didn't let her out of the house anymore, or she didn't want to be out in public with my mother -- but I'm confident any reason my mother gave me would be one she'd contrived herself for her own purposes.  Historically, her purposes tended to be guilt or alienation.

Michael and I flew to my hometown a few days before the wedding.  They have a waiting period for marriage licenses there, so we put the extra days to good use and spent our time swimming at the hotel pool and relaxing.  The stress still managed to run me down, and I fell physically ill like I had for my high school graduation.  My dad was delivered from the hospital across the state two days before my wedding.  I spent the day with him, taking him out to lunch and to pick up his tux and rented shoes for the wedding.  It was a difficult day, but I don't remember how much was from being with him and how much was from being sick and exhausted and wishing I could be asleep.  I remember him mostly being nice, but it was still unexpectedly hard spending the day with him in person.  He knew I was sick, but he wanted me to accompany him to his haircut too.  I didn't say no.  I was afraid I'd make him mad at me.  This seems to have been a major theme throughout my life up to that point.

I was taken aback when I saw my mother at the wedding.  One of her younger brothers had brought her and was pushing her in a wheelchair.  She had lost about 80 lbs from starving herself and sleeping all day in the months leading up to and surrounding her divorce, and she said she had trouble walking (as detailed in More Motherly Antics).  What the doctors called muscle atrophy from her months of staying in bed -- cured with some regular exercise over time, they assured her -- she insisted was an undiagnosed degenerative disease that would soon leave her bedbound like my dad.  Hence the wheelchair.  She wore an old knit pair of pants and top that she used to wear to the laundromat when I was younger.  Her hair was greasy, not just at the roots but all the way through, as though she hadn't washed it in weeks.  She wore no shoes.  She looked twenty years older than the last time I'd seen her, she was wild-eyed, and I also had a sort of visceral fear reaction to her at that point from the years of random screaming phone calls and voice mails.   

I shut away all my thoughts and put on my happy mask.  My in-laws were there in their evening finery, along with the wedding party and almost everyone else.  I knew my mother stood out.  I knew my in-laws, who had never met her before, would ask Michael what was wrong with her.  If anyone had asked me, I would have smiled sadly and said in a quiet, rueful voice, "She's severely mentally ill.  She refuses any kind of treatment.  It's really good to see her though," and silently dared anyone to judge me.  I was the gracious, happy bride, dammit.  No one asked though.  I think they could tell.

I hugged my mother and thanked her for coming.  I treated her the way a happy, gracious bride would treat her loving mother.  It was a part in a play.  She smiled and told me I looked beautiful.  If there was more to the exchange than that, I don't remember it.  My uncle wheeled her away while I greeted other guests.  I don't know what my uncle thought of that day.  I remember he wore jeans as he always had and he didn't smile, not even in the photos.  He was never an overly cheerful guy, but he used to smile and laugh with family.  I don't know if my mother had poisoned him against me as she had promised to do with her parents or if he just didn't want to be there.  I also know now that he had a cocaine problem, in addition to his diagnosed mental illness.  He died the next year of a heart attack.  He was barely fifty.

My dad got lost on the way to the wedding.  The ceremony and reception were held in our hometown, but I hadn't lived there since I was a teenager, so I didn't know driving directions particularly well.  My dad had lived there almost his entire life, but he got lost, so he called me from his van, screaming to give him directions from his current, unknown location.  I remember standing in the parking lot in my wedding gown and veil, fighting back tears, trying to orient myself in such a way that I could somehow help him and make him stop yelling at me.  I thrust my phone at the wedding planner and begged her to help.  Wedding planners are amazing.  I assume she was able to give my dad directions or at least talk him through his period of lostness (our town isn't that big, he would have found the venue eventually), but the most important thing she did was deflect the screaming from me while I composed myself. 

Most of my extended family members didn't attend, even tables full of cousins and their children who had RSVPed "yes."  I don't know why.  Maybe they do that with all weddings.  A few of my favorite cousins came though -- Uncle Charles's children -- even one who had to travel to be there.  They even gave us wedding gifts.  I was very touched and happy to see them.

None of the contingency plans surrounding my mother ended up being necessary.  She behaved perfectly.  No fake heart attacks, no loud pronouncements of who would be a more appropriate match for her daughter, as she had made at my college graduation.  As my husband and I stood outside the reception hall waiting for the wedding planner to cue us for our grand entrance as a married couple, my mother and her brother were leaving.  She has a long history of leaving events early, but not usually quite that early.  She took me aside and said something nice.  I don't remember what it was.  "Beautiful ceremony," maybe.  She was crying, and I'm not sure why.  That's the part I remember.  Maybe they were happy tears, but she was never the type for those, and it seemed she was crying hard.  My thought at the time was that she was upset I'd foiled her attempt to make me look like a terrible daughter who didn't take enough care of her mother to ensure she was bathed and properly dressed.  Maybe I don't give her enough credit.  Or maybe she was too high to be that self-aware.  She did appear to be high.  I said something nice back, and then they left.  I never spoke to either of them again.

The reception was beautiful.  I accomplished my two goals for the day, and I even had a good time dancing and talking with my friends and family.  I also have photographic evidence of the last time I saw my mother.  No one can convince me she wasn't wild-eyed or that I'm remembering it all wrong.  I have the pictures to prove it, and my closest friends were witnesses.  No more gaslighting me that she is really okay or that the real problems are all my own.  For all these reasons, I consider my wedding a win.

*Not his real name.

Grandpa Was a Bastard

My maternal grandfather was born out of wedlock in the 1920s.  He grew up with his mother and two maternal half-siblings.  His mother married several times over the course of her life, and she worked as a washerwoman when she was between husbands.  Grandpa's father was a widower who left his children with his parents when his wife died.  He went on to live in local boarding houses and impregnate women in the area.  But I didn't know any of these things when I started looking for their names.

My cousin's letters from our grandmother mentioned some of my grandfather's half-siblings' names.  She said Grandpa hadn't really known his father, so he ran away from home at the age of 14 to find him.  He learned that his half-siblings from his father's marriage had moved to California, so he traveled half-way across the country to find them.  Using the names in her letter, I found them too.  Census records showed that their father had been in their hometown all along.  I wonder if Grandpa found him when he got back home.  I wonder if he ever found him.

Grandma's letter mentioned another paternal half-sibling showing up at the house when Grandpa was in his sixties.  She was another illegitimate child.  She had already found the California half-siblings, the legitimate ones, and they had pointed her in my grandfather's direction.  Grandma didn't mention her name in her letters.  Much like my own half-siblings, she would have to take a mass market DNA test for me to find her now, if she's still alive.  Much like my own half-siblings, we don't know how many more are out there.

Since Grandpa had taken his father's surname and his parents were never married, I had no idea what his mother's first or last name had been.  I couldn't find a single census record with my grandfather on it until after he married my grandmother, and there is no evidence that he even existed by that name until he enlisted in the army during WWII.  Grandma's letters did mention his maternal half-siblings' first names though, so I took the names I had and enlisted help from an internet forum.  Someone who is better at genealogical research than me found them as children living with their mother in the right area under a different surname.  The next census showed them at the same location but with yet another surname.  They were simply listed with whatever married name my great-grandmother had at the time, which explained why it had been so hard to find them.  In reality, all my great-grandmother's children had different surnames and different fathers.  All were dead by the time I found this information. 

I was surprised to learn my great-grandmother had lived in the same city as my family until she died when my mother was a teenager.  My mother had never mentioned her.  She had inherited her middle name from her.  I wonder if they ever met.  According to her death certificate, she had died a couple of days before she was formally pronounced dead.  I think this means she wasn't found immediately.  I haven't been able to find a headstone for her or any evidence of a burial or an obituary. 

I found some old photos of my great-grandfather that had been posted on Ancestry.com by descendants of his legitimate children.  I have his nose.

A List of Mom's Antics While Dad's in Hospital

My best friend ran across and forwarded me an old email I had sent her in the days after my dad went into the hospital, but before the convict story or my taking over my parents' finances or their divorce or my wedding.  It details some of the little things I had forgotten. This email was dated November 8, 2006.

So my dad is in the hospital in Cleveland for the foreseeable future, which puts my mom back in charge of the finances (Dad had come up with a system for paying everything when she stopped paying bills, eating, and getting off the couch).  He had started digging them out of debt so that they were projected to actually be free of debt in five years.  Here is what my mom has done since he has been in the hospital:

1.  decided she has NPH, or Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus
2.  went to the emergency room 3+ times
3.  decided to sue Cincinnati Medical Center for putting her in a psych ward and ignoring her NPH back when she stopped eating and getting off the couch
4.  found out she doesn't have NPH
5.  decided she had multiple sclerosis
6.  bought herself a $2300 bed and explained "if I've got a disease that will make me bed-ridden, I want to be comfortable.  I deserve this." 
7.  found out she doesn't have multiple sclerosis
8.  fell down and "broke [her] nose"
9.  bought a motorized scooter and explained that "walking is obviously hazardous to [her] health"
10.  made arrangements to buy a $3000 van from a woman in Queens so that she will have something to ride in when the degenerative disease gets into full swing (as she said today, the doctors ruled out NPH and MS, but she could still have Lou Gehrig's disease, Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Parkinson's, or any other number of diseases that she has heard of on television -- she listed more but I can't remember them all)
11.  tried to convince me to drive said van from Queens to Cincinnati.  I said no, and she has decided my cousin will leave his job, wife, and young children to do it for her.  I'm pretty sure he doesn't know about this yet. 
12.  decided she could get Medicaid and cheap drugs if she divorced my father, so she went to see a lawyer about a "quickie divorce" while Dad is in the hospital
13.  saw an ad for refinancing home equity loans on the way to the lawyer's office and decided to do this instead
14.  demanded that my father get a fax number where she could send him the paperwork in the hospital so she could get his signature and refinance the loan the next morning.  got angry when she was told the fax wasn't coming through and said they (nurses?  I'm not sure who had the fax machine in the hospital) were lying.  found out two days later that her fax machine is broken.
15.  cancelled the non-profit program that had arranged for them to be out of debt in five years, because it was "too expensive" (note:  all money being paid into this program was paying off debts)

Where Are They Now?
Today she has decided she will use the $40,000 she expects from refinancing their home equity loan to fix up the house ("so I have somewhere nice to live when your dad dies"), to purchase back her parents house that they just sold for $35,000 and give it to them as a surprise gift ("yes, it will cost more than they sold it for, but it will be fixed up"), and to hire a personal care aide for herself since she will need someone to dress and feed her when the degenerative disease -- whichever one it happens to be -- finally kicks in.

My dad is pretty panicked in his hospital room in Cleveland with no way to do anything about this.  He never really paid attention to the finances before she gave them up, at least not to my knowledge, so it's distressing seeing him in this situation.  He doesn't know about 80% or so of the list above, and I want him to be aware of the stuff he might be able to prevent, but I don't want to freak him out since I think he'll heal faster if he calms down.  I'm glad for my situation, being out of there and all, but I wish I could do something to keep her from ruining the rest of his life.  I'm not sure what kind of situation they'd each be in if they did divorce -- surely the alimony would ruin them both, and he'd still be saddled with the debt she racked up.  Oh, and I forgot to mention that, shortly before #1 on the list, my mom canceled her medical insurance.

I made Thanksgiving travel plans finally and determined that I would not be able to tolerate actually being in the same house as that woman without snapping (I've been really docile on the phone -- you'd think I was on Valium or something, but in reality I just try not to pay too much attention to what she is saying), so I'm staying in a hotel in Cleveland and spending a few days with just my dad and fiance.  The hotel has an indoor pool, and there are a few restaurants in the area (it's in the outskirts of the city and we plan to stay in that area), so Michael* and I figure when we aren't hanging out at the hospital, we can pass the time in a leisurely fashion, and the hospital will probably be pretty calm too.  I'll miss not seeing friends in Cincy, but I really would not be able to handle her, plus she was insisting on accompanying me to Cleveland on the one day I'd get to see my dad.  It just wouldn't have worked.  I was really good today when I told her though, because when she accused me of loving him more than her and of not wanting to see her, I laughed and said, "You're being silly, Mommy," and explained calmly that my father has cancer and is in the hospital 4 hours from anyone he knows.  Even she knew that her retort of "that's what he wants!" was weak at best, and that her argument that he doesn't like people only holds for people he dislikes, like her.  

* The fiance.  This is not his real name.

How My Mother Spent My College Fund: Part 2

When I turned sixteen, my social security checks started coming in the mail addressed to me instead of in care of my mother.  My mother was very angry when that happened.  She took care of me anyway, she said, so why did I need money?  Now she wouldn't get checks addressed to her name at all.  The checks made out to my dad still went into their joint account for her full use, but it wasn't the same.

My parents continued to let me live in their house rent free and eat their groceries and use their utilities, but I took over paying for my own makeup, entertainment, gas for my car, car insurance, just-for-emergencies cell phone and plan, and clothes, which I bought at second hand stores.  I'd always been more of a saver than a spender, so I socked away everything I had leftover into a bank account my mother had opened with me when I turned sixteen.  Birthday money and savings from summer jobs went in there too.  It would be my new college fund -- the one I saved up all by myself.

The summer before my senior year of college, my mother took me on a trip to visit the colleges I was considering attending.  It was a multi-city tour that spanned 1500 miles.  We went sightseeing, ate expensive food, and even saw Broadway shows.  By the time we got home, I'd picked my first-choice school.  It was expensive, but my mother was adamant that price wasn't a factor -- I'd been a straight A student and I deserved to go wherever I wanted to go. 

When I next checked the balance of my bank account, it was almost empty.  I'd saved thousands of dollars since opening it, but now it held about $50.  I went to my mother in a panic.  She explained that she had needed the money to pay for that extravagant college visit.  "I spent it all on you," she said, so I had nothing to complain about.  She hadn't taken my money.  I'd just spent it all without realizing it.  "I'm going to be paying for all your college anyway," she said.  "You wouldn't have been able to pay for it yourself."  The meager amount I'd saved up shouldn't matter.