Fifty years ago this Christmas I was waiting; waiting for the new life that I had just learned was growing within me. And it was a death; a death for me and for everything I had known all my life, everything that mattered most to me and for any hopes and dreams I might have had for the future. The future looked dark indeed and without hope.
The man who was responsible for shattering my life had given me a German record as a Christmas gift. It was German folk music I was interested in; he gave me 'Weltschmerz' by Mahler; very appropriate and I've never been able to stomach Mahler since. Yesterday I listened to a trumpet player, my granddaughter's band teacher, play a Mahler piece at a noon hour concert in a beautiful old church with a pipe organ and marvelous stained glass windows. Mahler, he said, was one of his favourite composers. Maybe it's time to lay aside old prejudices and try again.
And this Christmas, I wait again. This time, I am waiting for death, and a future that promises a new life. My husband of more than 46 years is slowly slipping away from us. He hardly recognizes or acknowledges us anymore, has become a shadow of himself, and is tired unto death. When that long sleep comes that will give him rest, we will miss him but we are ready to let him go. Perhaps on the other side, there's a new life for him too. We hope so.
Fifty years is a long time to put your life on hold. I wanted to write, travel, meet people, have new experiences, sing, dance, enjoy life and spend many relaxed hours with friends, laughing and visiting. My husband's people didn't laugh very much and seemed to be suspicious of those who did. So be it. There are just the two of them left now who don't and won't talk to each other. The choices we make when we're young, haunt us when we're old.
My journey through life was not one I would have chosen, but the place at which I have arrived pleases me. I am glad to find myself where I am and who I am. What more can anyone hope for?
Friday, December 16, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
What If?
What if I had never become "pregnant outside of wedlock"? I would have gone to Library School in Vancouver, come back to Saskatchewan and been employed by the Regina Public Library. I would have moved in an entirely different circle of friends and lived a totally different life. I would have travelled, might never have married and would have become a writer in my spare time.
I would never have met some of the most important people in my life, would not have had the children, the grand children and great grand children I have, would not have been exposed to the United Church of Canada or its ideas and would not have become a Chartered Accountant. Life would have been more peaceful, more predictable and healthier but I would have missed many interesting and thought provoking experiences. I would not today be the person that I am.
I would not have chosen the life I have lived and I would not change it, if I could. Romans 5:3-5 "we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us." God's guidance and care has continually surprised me. My future lies in God's care even though I don't really understand the nature or meaning of "God".
I would never have met some of the most important people in my life, would not have had the children, the grand children and great grand children I have, would not have been exposed to the United Church of Canada or its ideas and would not have become a Chartered Accountant. Life would have been more peaceful, more predictable and healthier but I would have missed many interesting and thought provoking experiences. I would not today be the person that I am.
I would not have chosen the life I have lived and I would not change it, if I could. Romans 5:3-5 "we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us." God's guidance and care has continually surprised me. My future lies in God's care even though I don't really understand the nature or meaning of "God".
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Becoming and Overcoming
Change is difficult and gradual. Slowly I am becoming the person I think I would like to be. My life is filled with good things, a comfortable place to live, good and sufficient food to eat, more clothes than I need, and adequate interesting activities to fill my days. Still the underlying stress of uncertainty and impending change challenges me to overcome habits I have developed over the years in coping with stress.
For the most part, I have stopped using food to deal with feelings of stress and have been able to maintain a weight closer to what my ideal weight should be. I still have a few pounds to go and should be doing more walking to take off those last pounds. It's hard to get myself up and going; so often my get up and go just appears to have got up and gone.
My other coping strategy, a lifelong one, is more difficult to deal with. As a child, I would scratch the bridge of my nose until it bled and when the wound healed and a scar formed, I would scratch off the scar and again scratch until I bled. I don't know why I did this but it really annoyed my mother. The scar on the bridge of my nose is still there but now, I pick at the hairs that grow on my upper lip and on my chin until they bleed and form scars and when they heal, I start all over again. In 1982, at the suggestion of a friend, I began going to a salon at the old Eaton's store to have the hair on my upper lip electrically removed. The operator was newly trained and in a burst of over enthusiasm one week, she removed too many hair in one session and I developed a long lasting infection on my upper lip on the left side. Since that time, I have had recurring problems with ingrown and infected hairs on my lip and chin and in response, find myself daily picking at the hair on my face and the bumps of ingrown hair to try and remove them. The result is often bleeding and scars and a face that is constantly in the process of breaking out or healing. Somehow this reflects how I feel inside about myself.
Sometimes I feel great and other times, I remember all the times in my past when people treated me badly and I end up bashing myself. My husband, in the last years, as he was going through the stages of cognitive impairment and then dementia, was one of the offenders that affected me the most. His sisters didn't help. Those days are gone but they still haunt me. How I would like to be rid of the ghosts of the past. I will probably never be totally rid of them but hopefully, the bad memories will fade and be replaced by good experiences. Old scars mainly hurt when they're disturbed and we all have scars.
For the most part, I have stopped using food to deal with feelings of stress and have been able to maintain a weight closer to what my ideal weight should be. I still have a few pounds to go and should be doing more walking to take off those last pounds. It's hard to get myself up and going; so often my get up and go just appears to have got up and gone.
My other coping strategy, a lifelong one, is more difficult to deal with. As a child, I would scratch the bridge of my nose until it bled and when the wound healed and a scar formed, I would scratch off the scar and again scratch until I bled. I don't know why I did this but it really annoyed my mother. The scar on the bridge of my nose is still there but now, I pick at the hairs that grow on my upper lip and on my chin until they bleed and form scars and when they heal, I start all over again. In 1982, at the suggestion of a friend, I began going to a salon at the old Eaton's store to have the hair on my upper lip electrically removed. The operator was newly trained and in a burst of over enthusiasm one week, she removed too many hair in one session and I developed a long lasting infection on my upper lip on the left side. Since that time, I have had recurring problems with ingrown and infected hairs on my lip and chin and in response, find myself daily picking at the hair on my face and the bumps of ingrown hair to try and remove them. The result is often bleeding and scars and a face that is constantly in the process of breaking out or healing. Somehow this reflects how I feel inside about myself.
Sometimes I feel great and other times, I remember all the times in my past when people treated me badly and I end up bashing myself. My husband, in the last years, as he was going through the stages of cognitive impairment and then dementia, was one of the offenders that affected me the most. His sisters didn't help. Those days are gone but they still haunt me. How I would like to be rid of the ghosts of the past. I will probably never be totally rid of them but hopefully, the bad memories will fade and be replaced by good experiences. Old scars mainly hurt when they're disturbed and we all have scars.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Why?
Why did my husband marry me? I married him in order to be able to get a job so I could support my child. I was fired from my job because I had a child so marriage seemed to be the only solution. Apparently the people of the town where I was teaching thought so as well because there seemed to be a fairly active movement to get my husband and me together. I was continually informed "what a great catch" my husband would be and the couple I boarded with actually took steps to discourage the young man I was dating and facilitate my husband's efforts to date me.
When my husband, with a reputation as a confirmed bachelor, proposed to me two months after I was fired from my teaching job and two weeks before I was leaving town to spend a year in Toronto attending library school, I accepted his proposal but didn't believe he would actually go through with it. I expected that in a few months he would have forgotten all about me. When I look back now, it wasn't me he was so attracted to; it was what I represented for him. He was looking for a home, a family and a social life of his own, he was looking for freedom, and marriage to me would be the gateway to what he wanted in life, particularly as I already had a family.
He got what he wanted out of marriage in spite of his mother's and his sisters' efforts to take it away from him but I had hoped for a closeness and a sharing in the long run that we never achieved. My husband always carried within him a deep seated sense of unease and unworthiness that kept him from enjoying life to the fullest and interfered with the intimacy of family life that we should have been able to enjoy. He couldn't trust me and so I couldn't trust him. I kept waiting for things to get better and then they got worse.
Last week we talked about the relationship between him and his sister, his only surviving sibling and the fact that he never hears from her. It's too late for her to change, he said, and for him, it was also too late to change. He did change in many ways, but some things he was simply unable to change. We do have choices in life but sometimes, too many doors have closed and choices we have made in the past limit us so severely that we can no longer choose the things we would like to choose. Of, course, theoretically, change is always open to us, but practically, we don't make the effort that would be required and we stay the course in spite of the fact that it may be the worst thing for us. How strange, how sad.
When my husband, with a reputation as a confirmed bachelor, proposed to me two months after I was fired from my teaching job and two weeks before I was leaving town to spend a year in Toronto attending library school, I accepted his proposal but didn't believe he would actually go through with it. I expected that in a few months he would have forgotten all about me. When I look back now, it wasn't me he was so attracted to; it was what I represented for him. He was looking for a home, a family and a social life of his own, he was looking for freedom, and marriage to me would be the gateway to what he wanted in life, particularly as I already had a family.
He got what he wanted out of marriage in spite of his mother's and his sisters' efforts to take it away from him but I had hoped for a closeness and a sharing in the long run that we never achieved. My husband always carried within him a deep seated sense of unease and unworthiness that kept him from enjoying life to the fullest and interfered with the intimacy of family life that we should have been able to enjoy. He couldn't trust me and so I couldn't trust him. I kept waiting for things to get better and then they got worse.
Last week we talked about the relationship between him and his sister, his only surviving sibling and the fact that he never hears from her. It's too late for her to change, he said, and for him, it was also too late to change. He did change in many ways, but some things he was simply unable to change. We do have choices in life but sometimes, too many doors have closed and choices we have made in the past limit us so severely that we can no longer choose the things we would like to choose. Of, course, theoretically, change is always open to us, but practically, we don't make the effort that would be required and we stay the course in spite of the fact that it may be the worst thing for us. How strange, how sad.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Change
These last six years have been a time of tremendous change for me. My mother died, my husband's sister and her husband, who had been such a large part of our life for more than twenty years, died and four days after his sister died, my husband fell, went to the hospital and never came home again to live.
I sold my house, disposed of much of my furniture, bought some new furniture, bought new dishes, new bed linens, new towels, new tablecloths and new curtains. I bought a new car, moved to an apartment, made new friends, lost ten pounds and got rid of much of my old wardrobe and replaced it with clothes two sizes smaller. I changed my hairstyle and got a perm and am trying to rediscover who I am, now that I am no half of a partnership but just me, alone, doing my own thing, eating what I want, when I want, sleeping when I want, getting up when I want, listening to the music I want to hear, reading what I want to read, occupying myself with the hobbies that I want to enjoy, engaging in the activities that I enjoy and socializing with the people I want to socialize with. My, that is a lot of I's and wants.
In marriage, my husband's interests and wishes seemed to come first and it was easier to accede to his idea of how to live than to insist on doing things my way part of the time. I feel like a pillow that has been sat upon too long and finally is returning to its own shape when the weight that kept it down disappears. Maybe that isn't how marriage should be but somehow, that's how it became. So many things were not open for discussion and eventually, there was not much left to talk about except "What would you like for dinner today?"
I had hoped for more sharing in marriage, but when you have been betrayed by those closest to you, as my husband had been, it's hard to trust and without trust, there can't be much sharing. The outward man presented to the general public and the inward man who lived with me were so different from each other as to be almost unrecognizable. "Free to be me" was something my husband never felt. Where he is now in the nursing home he is totally accepted just as he is but there is so little left of what he was. He feels loved and loves the staff in return but he is very tired. Sometimes we get a smile out of him but mostly he seems miles away from us. Our granddaughter dreamt she saw him walking. When I told him, he got tears in his eyes. The tears come to him as quickly now as the smiles. We're losing him in bits and pieces and there's no returning, ever.
I sold my house, disposed of much of my furniture, bought some new furniture, bought new dishes, new bed linens, new towels, new tablecloths and new curtains. I bought a new car, moved to an apartment, made new friends, lost ten pounds and got rid of much of my old wardrobe and replaced it with clothes two sizes smaller. I changed my hairstyle and got a perm and am trying to rediscover who I am, now that I am no half of a partnership but just me, alone, doing my own thing, eating what I want, when I want, sleeping when I want, getting up when I want, listening to the music I want to hear, reading what I want to read, occupying myself with the hobbies that I want to enjoy, engaging in the activities that I enjoy and socializing with the people I want to socialize with. My, that is a lot of I's and wants.
In marriage, my husband's interests and wishes seemed to come first and it was easier to accede to his idea of how to live than to insist on doing things my way part of the time. I feel like a pillow that has been sat upon too long and finally is returning to its own shape when the weight that kept it down disappears. Maybe that isn't how marriage should be but somehow, that's how it became. So many things were not open for discussion and eventually, there was not much left to talk about except "What would you like for dinner today?"
I had hoped for more sharing in marriage, but when you have been betrayed by those closest to you, as my husband had been, it's hard to trust and without trust, there can't be much sharing. The outward man presented to the general public and the inward man who lived with me were so different from each other as to be almost unrecognizable. "Free to be me" was something my husband never felt. Where he is now in the nursing home he is totally accepted just as he is but there is so little left of what he was. He feels loved and loves the staff in return but he is very tired. Sometimes we get a smile out of him but mostly he seems miles away from us. Our granddaughter dreamt she saw him walking. When I told him, he got tears in his eyes. The tears come to him as quickly now as the smiles. We're losing him in bits and pieces and there's no returning, ever.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Living in Limbo
I'm married but I don't have a husband, or is it that I have a husband but I'm not married? It's strange, this living in limbo, neither married or single. I asked my husband many years ago why he married me and he said, "I don't know." (It's something he says quite frequently now.) I suppose at the time it seemed like a good idea. He wanted a home, a family and a social life of his own. Marriage would provide those things. Unfortunately, he didn't want anything else to change.
Change brings change, you gain some things and lose some others and in his case, he lost some of his family connections. Some of the family connections that he lost had been very damaging but he regretted losing them all the same. His brother-in-law had warned him before his marriage to beware of his sister and her husband as they were likely to cause trouble, and they did. Now, 46 years later, my husband and that sister are the only surviving members of the family and they have had no contact for most of our married life. The last contacts we did have were not pleasant. In three days this sister will be 90, surely a cause for celebration, but we are as dead to her. How sad to live so long with such venom and bitterness against those who should mean the most to you. Whatever happened in their growing up years on the farm must have left scars that cannot be erased. My husband remembers only the good of those years and she remembers only the bad. Who will go first? What legacy will they leave the next generation? We don't live to ourselves and when we try, it doesn't go well. May their souls rest in peace at the end.
Change brings change, you gain some things and lose some others and in his case, he lost some of his family connections. Some of the family connections that he lost had been very damaging but he regretted losing them all the same. His brother-in-law had warned him before his marriage to beware of his sister and her husband as they were likely to cause trouble, and they did. Now, 46 years later, my husband and that sister are the only surviving members of the family and they have had no contact for most of our married life. The last contacts we did have were not pleasant. In three days this sister will be 90, surely a cause for celebration, but we are as dead to her. How sad to live so long with such venom and bitterness against those who should mean the most to you. Whatever happened in their growing up years on the farm must have left scars that cannot be erased. My husband remembers only the good of those years and she remembers only the bad. Who will go first? What legacy will they leave the next generation? We don't live to ourselves and when we try, it doesn't go well. May their souls rest in peace at the end.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Healing And Transformation
Sunday, April 3, 2011. Our Adult Education class at church discussed healing today. Several people in the class had experienced major healing in the past, myself included. Two aspects of healing that I hadn't given much previous thought to were the transformation in thinking and attitude that takes place in you mentally and emotionally when you go through an experience of healing. You are never the same person again afterwards. I knew that but just sort of accepted that's the way it was now. When I was offered healing, I remember wondering how my husband would react to the changed person I would become when I was healed and once more myself. However, I had a young child to bring up and I wanted to be there for her.
When others talked of having a similar changing experience, we decided transformation was a part of healing. That brought us to the question Jesus always asked before healing someone, "Do you want to be healed?" I always found the question strange because I assumed that naturally someone who was sick or disabled would want to be healed. Not necessarily! We all knew people for whom sickness was so much a part of their identity that they would not be able to bear to give up their sickness. They were aware that becoming healthy would involve change and they preferred the sick identity and the special privileges it bestowed on them, or seemed to.
My husband, as the second youngest in his family, was bullied by his mother and some of his older siblings. His father died when he was 14 and he had a great fear of being deserted by his family if he displeased them, a fear that turned out to be well-founded when he took the major step of getting married and leaving his mother to live on her own. His sister told him that this action on his part caused his mother the same grief she had gone through when her husband died 22 years previously. (There are probably some Freudian implications there but that's another story.) She subsequently stopped talking to him for 10 years and one sister and one brother never talked to him again.
When his oldest sister, who was talking to him and depended on him to look after her, died, he fell and bruised his hip after coming home from her viewing and the next day had a stroke that put him in hospital and resulted in permanent placement in a nursing home, although it wasn't a major stroke. It seemed to have something to do with her death, with unresolved guilt for wanting to have a life of his own, and with an unwillingness to change his thinking to accept that what his family did was wrong and they actually did do these cruel things to him without him deserving to be treated badly. The messages they had given him over the years had been so internalized that when there was no one left to criticize him, he ended up punishing himself on their behalf.
To be healed would have involved accepting a view of his past that he found unacceptable, changing and transformation that was too overwhelming to contemplate. And so he is dying, bit by bit, no longer able to walk, stand or sit upright without assistance; unable to lift a morsel of food to his mouth, unable to hold a cup to drink and hardly able to suck a straw. Voodoo spells couldn't have destroyed him more effectively, but it was all done so subtly, under the guise of love; a deadly love indeed! His time, I fear, is short but oh, it didn't need to be like this.
When others talked of having a similar changing experience, we decided transformation was a part of healing. That brought us to the question Jesus always asked before healing someone, "Do you want to be healed?" I always found the question strange because I assumed that naturally someone who was sick or disabled would want to be healed. Not necessarily! We all knew people for whom sickness was so much a part of their identity that they would not be able to bear to give up their sickness. They were aware that becoming healthy would involve change and they preferred the sick identity and the special privileges it bestowed on them, or seemed to.
My husband, as the second youngest in his family, was bullied by his mother and some of his older siblings. His father died when he was 14 and he had a great fear of being deserted by his family if he displeased them, a fear that turned out to be well-founded when he took the major step of getting married and leaving his mother to live on her own. His sister told him that this action on his part caused his mother the same grief she had gone through when her husband died 22 years previously. (There are probably some Freudian implications there but that's another story.) She subsequently stopped talking to him for 10 years and one sister and one brother never talked to him again.
When his oldest sister, who was talking to him and depended on him to look after her, died, he fell and bruised his hip after coming home from her viewing and the next day had a stroke that put him in hospital and resulted in permanent placement in a nursing home, although it wasn't a major stroke. It seemed to have something to do with her death, with unresolved guilt for wanting to have a life of his own, and with an unwillingness to change his thinking to accept that what his family did was wrong and they actually did do these cruel things to him without him deserving to be treated badly. The messages they had given him over the years had been so internalized that when there was no one left to criticize him, he ended up punishing himself on their behalf.
To be healed would have involved accepting a view of his past that he found unacceptable, changing and transformation that was too overwhelming to contemplate. And so he is dying, bit by bit, no longer able to walk, stand or sit upright without assistance; unable to lift a morsel of food to his mouth, unable to hold a cup to drink and hardly able to suck a straw. Voodoo spells couldn't have destroyed him more effectively, but it was all done so subtly, under the guise of love; a deadly love indeed! His time, I fear, is short but oh, it didn't need to be like this.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Saying Good-bye
People regularly ask me, "Does he still know you?" And I've always been able to say, "Oh, yes, certainly he knows me." Today I would have to say, "I don't know."
My daughter with her husband and her 13 year-old daughter and I were up to see my husband this afternoon for a visit and to take him to church. We hadn't seen him for a week; my car went in for repair on Tuesday morning and was still not ready and they only come once a week. There were no signs of recognition when we walked in.
I asked if he was ready to go to church and he replied, "Yes." I asked if he wanted a chocolate before we went to church and he replied, "Yes." His home church for 33 years was doing the service and he stared at the lady who was leading the service and whom he has known since 1962 as though he thought he should know her but there was no comment.
After the service we went to the cafeteria for tea and when I asked if he wanted puffed wheat cake or rice krispie cake, he responded with "Rice krispie cake." When I told him I had completed his income tax return and how much his tax refund would be, there was no comment or change of expression on his face. He ate the rice krispie cake as I popped each little piece into his mouth and then ate the two pop tarts that our friend had brought for him. He gestured toward his cup to indicate that he wanted his tea and drank all his tea when I lifted it up for him.
After an hour, we took him back to his room and said our good-byes. Again, there was no reaction and his attention was focussed on the TV which we had turned on for him. My daughter said this was similar to their experience for the last two or three visits.
I had my hair permed on Wednesday which changed my look enough that a number of people commented that they hadn't immediately recognized me. We wondered if my husband would know me. Constantly changing staff members work with him at the nursing home. I don't know that he didn't think I was one of them.
My mother didn't recognize me at the last either. My husband would have to tell her that I was there with him. For him to realize who I am, the staff will probably have to tell him "Your wife is here to see you." I always felt he didn't really know me; now it's certain. Good-bye, my love, good-bye. Will we meet again? Who knows.
My daughter with her husband and her 13 year-old daughter and I were up to see my husband this afternoon for a visit and to take him to church. We hadn't seen him for a week; my car went in for repair on Tuesday morning and was still not ready and they only come once a week. There were no signs of recognition when we walked in.
I asked if he was ready to go to church and he replied, "Yes." I asked if he wanted a chocolate before we went to church and he replied, "Yes." His home church for 33 years was doing the service and he stared at the lady who was leading the service and whom he has known since 1962 as though he thought he should know her but there was no comment.
After the service we went to the cafeteria for tea and when I asked if he wanted puffed wheat cake or rice krispie cake, he responded with "Rice krispie cake." When I told him I had completed his income tax return and how much his tax refund would be, there was no comment or change of expression on his face. He ate the rice krispie cake as I popped each little piece into his mouth and then ate the two pop tarts that our friend had brought for him. He gestured toward his cup to indicate that he wanted his tea and drank all his tea when I lifted it up for him.
After an hour, we took him back to his room and said our good-byes. Again, there was no reaction and his attention was focussed on the TV which we had turned on for him. My daughter said this was similar to their experience for the last two or three visits.
I had my hair permed on Wednesday which changed my look enough that a number of people commented that they hadn't immediately recognized me. We wondered if my husband would know me. Constantly changing staff members work with him at the nursing home. I don't know that he didn't think I was one of them.
My mother didn't recognize me at the last either. My husband would have to tell her that I was there with him. For him to realize who I am, the staff will probably have to tell him "Your wife is here to see you." I always felt he didn't really know me; now it's certain. Good-bye, my love, good-bye. Will we meet again? Who knows.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Controlling People
Another piece of the puzzle to fit in and the larger picture begins to emerge. Maybe I don't have all the pieces yet, I probably don't, but I have enough to see the picture that was always in the background. I am now reading the last book of the books I ordered from the library in order to gain a better understanding of bullying people and controlling people. Bullies have a need to control and controlling people have a need to define you in their own terms, not as you see yourself, but as they want you to be. My mother, my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, my husband; all themselves victims of controlling parents who perpetuated the cycle of controlling behavior that made them what they were; less than they could have been and damaging to those they were trying to control.
Control institutionalized in church, school, society, is reflected in family life that damages and destroys relationships and creates lonely, unhappy people. Acceptance of others as they are is the opposite of control and doesn't happen with controlling people. At the same time that the controlling person doesn't really see or hear others, he or she never sees themself for what they are or what they are doing. The controlling person is a good person, a nice person, and so it follows that everything they do is nice and good, no matter how truly awful. Having eyes they do not see, having ears they do not hear, and having deadened their own feelings, they feel empathy for no one.
I feel more myself than I have felt for many, many years. Those who were bent on controlling me are gone; I can relax, breathe, laugh, sing, dance and be myself without fear of repercussions for showing publicly what was always there, inside, hoping to get out someday. How sad for those whom I could have loved if they had let me be me. Love and trust go hand in hand and you can't trust the one who tries to redefine you as what you are not. Free to be - me and you. So many things make sense now as I look back. Well, not exactly sense, they weren't good sense then and still aren't, but I am coming to an understanding of the "what" even if the "why" is still incomprehensible.
Control institutionalized in church, school, society, is reflected in family life that damages and destroys relationships and creates lonely, unhappy people. Acceptance of others as they are is the opposite of control and doesn't happen with controlling people. At the same time that the controlling person doesn't really see or hear others, he or she never sees themself for what they are or what they are doing. The controlling person is a good person, a nice person, and so it follows that everything they do is nice and good, no matter how truly awful. Having eyes they do not see, having ears they do not hear, and having deadened their own feelings, they feel empathy for no one.
I feel more myself than I have felt for many, many years. Those who were bent on controlling me are gone; I can relax, breathe, laugh, sing, dance and be myself without fear of repercussions for showing publicly what was always there, inside, hoping to get out someday. How sad for those whom I could have loved if they had let me be me. Love and trust go hand in hand and you can't trust the one who tries to redefine you as what you are not. Free to be - me and you. So many things make sense now as I look back. Well, not exactly sense, they weren't good sense then and still aren't, but I am coming to an understanding of the "what" even if the "why" is still incomprehensible.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Marriage - Second Stage
My husband missed his oldest sister and his mother in spite of the way they had treated him. He blamed their actions on his other sister's husband, somewhat far fetched since this brother-in-law had no reason to trouble himself to do anything for his mother-in-law, whom he despised, or his wife, whom he abused. The brother-in-law did nothing to stop his wife and mother-in-law but certainly did nothing to instigate their behavior. He was not a good man or an honest man, but also not a stupid man who would not have taken a course of action that would result in harming himself. The mother's actions cost her many thousands of dollars, money she really didn't have.
My husband was not willing to take the first step to reestablish contact with his sister or his mother and it was obvious that they would not make the first move so I wrote to both of them, offering friendship and hospitality. Friends invited us for a fowl supper in my husband's home town, knowing that my husband's mother would attend. At the supper, as we walked by my mother-in-law's table, she turned and invited us to come to her house for tea together with her daughter and her daughter's new husband. We introduced her to her grandchildren, by now about 8 and 3 and went to her house for tea. From then on, we visited with her and her daughter regularly but the events of the five years previous were never mentioned, there was never an apology, and I was never spoken to or answered directly if I said something.
My husband enjoyed his job as farm manager, a house came with the job, and we were able to establish ourselves financially during the nine years on the University farm. When the management changed and my husband began to have accidents, I knew it was time to move on. Before our marriage, my husband had accidents of varying severity whenever he was severely stressed, as when the three long-term romantic relationships he had been involved in ended. Unable to stand up for his own rights, he took out his frustration on himself and hurt himself, accidentally. There had been no accidents for the first twenty years of our marriage so it was time to move even though it created some financial insecurity.
We bought a house in town, a house that became our home for the next 27 years. A few months after leaving the farm, my husband had a new job working on the farm for Agriculture Canada, where he stayed until he was 67 quite happily. After my retirement, we began spending a month every year visiting my husband's older brother, who had been with the Armed Forces in Germany while some of the rest of the family were sticking it to my husband, and who lived on Vancouver Island. For twenty years, my husband and his brother got together at least once a year and sometimes twice a year.
The year after we bought our house in town, my husband's oldest sister and her husband bought a house four blocks from our house. They had no children and our family became their family. When my sister-in-law's second husband died, she never regained her enjoyment of life. Life for her had revolved around her husband and the things they did together. Two years after her husband's death, she moved to a care home with the assistance of our family and by the end of that year, she was gone. Four days after her death, my husband had a stroke that kept him in hospital for 7 weeks and that resulted in him becoming a permanent resident of a nursing home. He never came home again.
Two years and 70 days have passed since that night when my husband fell and couldn't get up again. He had been slowly deteriorating since the April, now eleven years ago, that he picked up a parasite on the way home from BC, passed out after becoming very dehydrated, fell and suffered a concussion. He spent 5 days in hospital but was never the same again.
Three strikes and you're out, they say. It's been two strikes. Now there's one to go. When I visited him this afternoon, the promise of chocolate brought a smile to his lips momentarily and then he closed himself off again. So this is good-by? I kept waiting for things to get better, and then they got worse. It could have been better, but it could have been a whole lot worse. We did the best we could with the resources and the knowledge we had. There were lots of times of tears but there were more times of laughter. Thanks for the ride. It's been good. Good-night, my love.
My husband was not willing to take the first step to reestablish contact with his sister or his mother and it was obvious that they would not make the first move so I wrote to both of them, offering friendship and hospitality. Friends invited us for a fowl supper in my husband's home town, knowing that my husband's mother would attend. At the supper, as we walked by my mother-in-law's table, she turned and invited us to come to her house for tea together with her daughter and her daughter's new husband. We introduced her to her grandchildren, by now about 8 and 3 and went to her house for tea. From then on, we visited with her and her daughter regularly but the events of the five years previous were never mentioned, there was never an apology, and I was never spoken to or answered directly if I said something.
My husband enjoyed his job as farm manager, a house came with the job, and we were able to establish ourselves financially during the nine years on the University farm. When the management changed and my husband began to have accidents, I knew it was time to move on. Before our marriage, my husband had accidents of varying severity whenever he was severely stressed, as when the three long-term romantic relationships he had been involved in ended. Unable to stand up for his own rights, he took out his frustration on himself and hurt himself, accidentally. There had been no accidents for the first twenty years of our marriage so it was time to move even though it created some financial insecurity.
We bought a house in town, a house that became our home for the next 27 years. A few months after leaving the farm, my husband had a new job working on the farm for Agriculture Canada, where he stayed until he was 67 quite happily. After my retirement, we began spending a month every year visiting my husband's older brother, who had been with the Armed Forces in Germany while some of the rest of the family were sticking it to my husband, and who lived on Vancouver Island. For twenty years, my husband and his brother got together at least once a year and sometimes twice a year.
The year after we bought our house in town, my husband's oldest sister and her husband bought a house four blocks from our house. They had no children and our family became their family. When my sister-in-law's second husband died, she never regained her enjoyment of life. Life for her had revolved around her husband and the things they did together. Two years after her husband's death, she moved to a care home with the assistance of our family and by the end of that year, she was gone. Four days after her death, my husband had a stroke that kept him in hospital for 7 weeks and that resulted in him becoming a permanent resident of a nursing home. He never came home again.
Two years and 70 days have passed since that night when my husband fell and couldn't get up again. He had been slowly deteriorating since the April, now eleven years ago, that he picked up a parasite on the way home from BC, passed out after becoming very dehydrated, fell and suffered a concussion. He spent 5 days in hospital but was never the same again.
Three strikes and you're out, they say. It's been two strikes. Now there's one to go. When I visited him this afternoon, the promise of chocolate brought a smile to his lips momentarily and then he closed himself off again. So this is good-by? I kept waiting for things to get better, and then they got worse. It could have been better, but it could have been a whole lot worse. We did the best we could with the resources and the knowledge we had. There were lots of times of tears but there were more times of laughter. Thanks for the ride. It's been good. Good-night, my love.
Marriage
Time seems to stand still and everything seems a bit unreal. My head knows the end is near but my heart doesn't want to believe it. 45 years +.
We were married on a Monday, on Tuesday we had our wedding pictures taken and left for a three day honeymoon to Waskesui Park north of Prince Albert. It was cold and we had practically the whole park to ourselves. It was lovely. Friday we returned to attend my 10 year high school reunion and that evening we got back to our married home to find the whole house in a mess and not a clean sheet in the whole place to sleep on. I opened some wedding presents to find clean sheets for the night and we spent the next two weeks cleaning, painting and repairing to make the place fit to bring a child into.
His mother came back on my brother's birthday which we had gone to my parents' home to celebrate. It was the last time I saw him alive. She was furious that we hadn't been there to take her the two blocks from the bus depot to her home, she was furious that we had cleaned and painted and got replacement furniture while she was away, and she was furious that my three year old daughter had been sleeping in her bed while she was away because there was no other place for her to sleep. She refused to speak to me and didn't speak to me for the rest of her life, another 24 years. After 10 days, we moved to a house we had purchased in the neighbouring town and began a happier stage in our life.
Unfortunately, the cleaning and stress had brought on another attack of rheumatic fever and I was unable to do much work in our new home. I kept my child fed and made supper every day and the rest of the time, I rested.
One year after our marriage, we planned a vacation trip to northern Alberta to visit my husband's brother and his family who had not been able to attend our wedding because they weren't done seeding. We planned to tent until my husband's mother asked to come with us. We didn't want to subject a 70 year old lady to tenting so we motelled it. I had expected to spend at most 2 days at my brother-in-law's but he assumed my husband was there to help him with farm work and so we spent the next 10 days working on the farm and visiting for a short time after supper each day.
On the way home, my mother-in-law wasn't speaking to either of us but provided no explanation for her ire. About a week after we arrived home, my husband's brother phoned him and berated him for mistreating his mother. Although my husband explained that the accusations his mother had made against him were false, there was no apology from his brother nor did he seem to care about the discrepancy. At Christmas we sent gifts to the children as my husband's older sister had been doing for years and received a letter in return asking us to send no more gifts. That was our last correspondence from my husband's brother until he was on his death bed 37 years later.
The month after our return from Alberta, I was diagnosed with a serious heart problem and booked for heart surgery in November. While I was in the hospital, my husband's mother and sister pressured him into signing half of his house over to his mother's name. He had given her the right to live in his house for the rest of her life, had put the offer into writing as a legal document and had told her he would look after the taxes and the maintenance since she had no income except the old age pension. She rejected the legal document and did not sign it, according to the lawyer, on the advice of her daughter, who said she wouldn't have an inheritance to leave her children unless she got the house into her own name, quite true, of course.
In February, my husband's brother-in-law died and his widow went to live with her mother. In February, my husband told me about the title transfer which could not be completed because I had homestead rights. I asked him if it was his wish to transfer the house title to his mother. His answer was "NO" and so I said, "Then I won't sign." The next month I found out I was pregnant and five months later, our first daughter was born. My husband was over the moon and couldn't wait to tell all his friends. His mother's deflating response was, "I'm glad that's over."
It had been my husband's life-long dream to own his own farm. When our daughter was eight months old, we took out a three year lease on a section of land with a view to eventually purchasing the farm. We had a 10 bushel quota in the next three years so the family allowance and cream cheques paid our groceries in the winter and we lived off the garden in the summer. There wasn't much money around so my parents brought boxes of groceries whenever they came to visit and winter clothes for the children in the fall.
My husband's family brought a court case, accusing my husband of using his mother's money to buy his house. The family had lived on rented farm land and when the father died in the 1940's, after seven years of illness, it took the teen-age boys two years to pay off the hospital bills. In time, they replaced the horses and the horse machinery with a tractor, truck and combine. The mother never worked outside the home and expected her young sons to support her. She had no money to buy more than her own clothes. Her son provided all her living expenses, including the groceries because she had nothing.
We spent some money that should have been spent on groceries on a lawyer, hoping for mediation and some common sense but the family had a one track mind. My husband would be brought to heel or else.
Four years after our marriage, with two young children to look after, I went to work to support the family. We took defensive steps, emptying the bank accout by paying off what we could on our farm loans, transferring the car license to my name and distancing ourselves from the oldest sister, now a widow, who was assisting her mother, brother and other sister in their attack on my husband.
We left the farm and moved to a town where I could find employment and my husband applied to attend Vocational Agriculture at the University. Eventually, the family succeeded in taking my husband to family court where his mother perjured herself and my husband, whose only records were in the house his mother was living in, had no defense. The judge believed the lovely old lady with the saintly face and the Scottish brogue, supported by her family members and ordered me to sign the homestead rights. It was the first time in his life that my husband had stood up for his own rights.
Standing up and losing was the best thing that could have happened because in order to make any improvements and to avoid losing the house, my mother-in-law ended up having to buy my husband out. She also had to pay her own lawyer bills which she had persuaded the judge, my husband should pay. She garnisheed his bank account and got $25. She sent the sheriff after the car, which I needed for my job, but the secretary warned me and I left town for the afternoon. A lawyer in our new town made a settlement for us and we didn't see or hear from my husband's mother for another five years. The family never tried to push my husband around again. They also never forgave me. Since they hadn't impressed me as the kind of people whose friendship I valued, this didn't particularly trouble me.
My husband finished his Diploma course, got a job at the University, we had a son and bought a house and life gradually improved. By eleven years after we were married, he had a good position with the University, we had our family of three children, a church home, and a circle of friends as well as a good relationship with cousins of my husband's with whom he established contact after his immediate family turned on him.
We were married on a Monday, on Tuesday we had our wedding pictures taken and left for a three day honeymoon to Waskesui Park north of Prince Albert. It was cold and we had practically the whole park to ourselves. It was lovely. Friday we returned to attend my 10 year high school reunion and that evening we got back to our married home to find the whole house in a mess and not a clean sheet in the whole place to sleep on. I opened some wedding presents to find clean sheets for the night and we spent the next two weeks cleaning, painting and repairing to make the place fit to bring a child into.
His mother came back on my brother's birthday which we had gone to my parents' home to celebrate. It was the last time I saw him alive. She was furious that we hadn't been there to take her the two blocks from the bus depot to her home, she was furious that we had cleaned and painted and got replacement furniture while she was away, and she was furious that my three year old daughter had been sleeping in her bed while she was away because there was no other place for her to sleep. She refused to speak to me and didn't speak to me for the rest of her life, another 24 years. After 10 days, we moved to a house we had purchased in the neighbouring town and began a happier stage in our life.
Unfortunately, the cleaning and stress had brought on another attack of rheumatic fever and I was unable to do much work in our new home. I kept my child fed and made supper every day and the rest of the time, I rested.
One year after our marriage, we planned a vacation trip to northern Alberta to visit my husband's brother and his family who had not been able to attend our wedding because they weren't done seeding. We planned to tent until my husband's mother asked to come with us. We didn't want to subject a 70 year old lady to tenting so we motelled it. I had expected to spend at most 2 days at my brother-in-law's but he assumed my husband was there to help him with farm work and so we spent the next 10 days working on the farm and visiting for a short time after supper each day.
On the way home, my mother-in-law wasn't speaking to either of us but provided no explanation for her ire. About a week after we arrived home, my husband's brother phoned him and berated him for mistreating his mother. Although my husband explained that the accusations his mother had made against him were false, there was no apology from his brother nor did he seem to care about the discrepancy. At Christmas we sent gifts to the children as my husband's older sister had been doing for years and received a letter in return asking us to send no more gifts. That was our last correspondence from my husband's brother until he was on his death bed 37 years later.
The month after our return from Alberta, I was diagnosed with a serious heart problem and booked for heart surgery in November. While I was in the hospital, my husband's mother and sister pressured him into signing half of his house over to his mother's name. He had given her the right to live in his house for the rest of her life, had put the offer into writing as a legal document and had told her he would look after the taxes and the maintenance since she had no income except the old age pension. She rejected the legal document and did not sign it, according to the lawyer, on the advice of her daughter, who said she wouldn't have an inheritance to leave her children unless she got the house into her own name, quite true, of course.
In February, my husband's brother-in-law died and his widow went to live with her mother. In February, my husband told me about the title transfer which could not be completed because I had homestead rights. I asked him if it was his wish to transfer the house title to his mother. His answer was "NO" and so I said, "Then I won't sign." The next month I found out I was pregnant and five months later, our first daughter was born. My husband was over the moon and couldn't wait to tell all his friends. His mother's deflating response was, "I'm glad that's over."
It had been my husband's life-long dream to own his own farm. When our daughter was eight months old, we took out a three year lease on a section of land with a view to eventually purchasing the farm. We had a 10 bushel quota in the next three years so the family allowance and cream cheques paid our groceries in the winter and we lived off the garden in the summer. There wasn't much money around so my parents brought boxes of groceries whenever they came to visit and winter clothes for the children in the fall.
My husband's family brought a court case, accusing my husband of using his mother's money to buy his house. The family had lived on rented farm land and when the father died in the 1940's, after seven years of illness, it took the teen-age boys two years to pay off the hospital bills. In time, they replaced the horses and the horse machinery with a tractor, truck and combine. The mother never worked outside the home and expected her young sons to support her. She had no money to buy more than her own clothes. Her son provided all her living expenses, including the groceries because she had nothing.
We spent some money that should have been spent on groceries on a lawyer, hoping for mediation and some common sense but the family had a one track mind. My husband would be brought to heel or else.
Four years after our marriage, with two young children to look after, I went to work to support the family. We took defensive steps, emptying the bank accout by paying off what we could on our farm loans, transferring the car license to my name and distancing ourselves from the oldest sister, now a widow, who was assisting her mother, brother and other sister in their attack on my husband.
We left the farm and moved to a town where I could find employment and my husband applied to attend Vocational Agriculture at the University. Eventually, the family succeeded in taking my husband to family court where his mother perjured herself and my husband, whose only records were in the house his mother was living in, had no defense. The judge believed the lovely old lady with the saintly face and the Scottish brogue, supported by her family members and ordered me to sign the homestead rights. It was the first time in his life that my husband had stood up for his own rights.
Standing up and losing was the best thing that could have happened because in order to make any improvements and to avoid losing the house, my mother-in-law ended up having to buy my husband out. She also had to pay her own lawyer bills which she had persuaded the judge, my husband should pay. She garnisheed his bank account and got $25. She sent the sheriff after the car, which I needed for my job, but the secretary warned me and I left town for the afternoon. A lawyer in our new town made a settlement for us and we didn't see or hear from my husband's mother for another five years. The family never tried to push my husband around again. They also never forgave me. Since they hadn't impressed me as the kind of people whose friendship I valued, this didn't particularly trouble me.
My husband finished his Diploma course, got a job at the University, we had a son and bought a house and life gradually improved. By eleven years after we were married, he had a good position with the University, we had our family of three children, a church home, and a circle of friends as well as a good relationship with cousins of my husband's with whom he established contact after his immediate family turned on him.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Lame Ducks and Bullies
I always had a weakness for lame ducks, whether the animal kind or the human kind. Over the years, I have made many wonderful friends who were "different", who have enriched my life in many different ways. The lonely looking girl standing uncertainly by herself reminded me of times when I walked into a room of strangers and was welcomed and how good it made me feel so I tried to pass it on. The wounded chick had my sympathy when the other chicks tried to peck it to death and I fenced it off to protect it until it was healed.
Bullies have a weakness for lame ducks as well but not in a good way. On the defensive and afraid of being ostracized by their peers, they're the first to jump on the one who seems different and defenseless. And the bullied one in turn, passes it on and joins the bullies when the opportunity arises.
The damage done by bullies is never forgotten. The bully may forget but the bullied doesn't. The ability to trust others is lost for a lifetime when the bullies are members of one's own family during childhood years, a mother, a brother, a sister. Desperately wanting to belong, one day he hears "We love you" and the next day it's "Do as I say, or else" and "or else" has no limits of decency or common sense. Power and control are everything for the bully and he or she is forever fearful that what is being done to others will in turn come around to him or her.
Bullies only attack those who care, those who long for acceptance. Those who live by a different rule, who don't respect the bully's values or attitudes don't become victims of the bully but the bullied don't know that. And where should they find the courage to believe that if they lack the support of family, community and friends? The cycle perpetuates itself, generation after generation, and spreads its disease into the community when it is not recognized and stopped.
Bullying doesn't only hurt the bullied; it hurts all of us and creates an environment that is dangerous for everyone. The person who has been hurt, hurts himself or others, or both. We dream of a better world where trust, love and kindness are the rule and not the exception. Jesus said, "The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few." He also said, "The way is easy that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many." The easy way, the bully's way, and the complicity of the bystander, is often the hard way in the end.
And the end comes for all of us.
Bullies have a weakness for lame ducks as well but not in a good way. On the defensive and afraid of being ostracized by their peers, they're the first to jump on the one who seems different and defenseless. And the bullied one in turn, passes it on and joins the bullies when the opportunity arises.
The damage done by bullies is never forgotten. The bully may forget but the bullied doesn't. The ability to trust others is lost for a lifetime when the bullies are members of one's own family during childhood years, a mother, a brother, a sister. Desperately wanting to belong, one day he hears "We love you" and the next day it's "Do as I say, or else" and "or else" has no limits of decency or common sense. Power and control are everything for the bully and he or she is forever fearful that what is being done to others will in turn come around to him or her.
Bullies only attack those who care, those who long for acceptance. Those who live by a different rule, who don't respect the bully's values or attitudes don't become victims of the bully but the bullied don't know that. And where should they find the courage to believe that if they lack the support of family, community and friends? The cycle perpetuates itself, generation after generation, and spreads its disease into the community when it is not recognized and stopped.
Bullying doesn't only hurt the bullied; it hurts all of us and creates an environment that is dangerous for everyone. The person who has been hurt, hurts himself or others, or both. We dream of a better world where trust, love and kindness are the rule and not the exception. Jesus said, "The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few." He also said, "The way is easy that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many." The easy way, the bully's way, and the complicity of the bystander, is often the hard way in the end.
And the end comes for all of us.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
50 Years Ago
Date Rape! I said it! Today! Out loud! To someone else! For the first time! October, 1960. My first date with a classmate from my French class in my first fall at the University of Saskatchewan. We went to a movie but it was sold out so we went for coffee and then walked back over the bridge. He said he wanted to show me pictures of his family that he had been telling me about. I was very naive and too trusting. We went to his basement apartment and sat on the side of the bed to look at pictures. Then he pushed me down, got on top of me, pulled down my slacks, pulled down his pants while I kept saying, "No, No, Don't, Don't! Afterwards, he hugged me and said he loved me so much he couldn't help himself. I was scared, totally confused, upset and didn't know what to do. Afterwards, he walked me home assuring me how much he loved me and couldn't live without me.
He never took me on another date but raped me probably another five times, the last time without using a condom. I tried to break up with him every time he left town but he said he would kill himself if I left him. I had been told at Bible School that all parts of the Bible were to be adhered to and in Leviticus it was written that if a woman is raped, she and the man must marry or both will be stoned so I thought I had to marry him.
He made no secret of the fact that he was seeing other women. In September, 1961, after I had sent him a letter trying to break up with him again, he came over to my apartment after the University Freshman Dance, which he had attended with the girlfriend he was dating before I met him, and again forced himself on me, this time without a condom. He said if I got pregnant, we would get married. By this time, I felt quite hopeless about getting out of the situation in which I found myself.
The next month, I found I was pregnant. When I told him the results of the pregnancy test, he began to cry and said he couldn't marry me because he had a responsibility to look after his other two girlfriends who were new in town and needed his company. He later denied saying that because I thought it was hilariously funny. After that, he only came to see me after dark. He was by then going to Teachers' College and dating a girl he had met that summer whom he later married. The other girl was the girl he had been going steady with before he met me.
Periodically, throughout my pregnancy, he would say perhaps we should get married. I really didn't want to marry him but thought I had no choice so never pushed it. He drove me to the hospital when I went into labour but waited until dark and didn't get out of the car to open the hospital door for me in case someone might see him.
Word got round about my sudden loss of weight and two weeks after my daughter was born, two ministers from the Mennonite Brethren church in Dalmeny came to see me. They were mainly interested in having me make a confession to the church that I had had a child. They then went to see my parents who had remained unaware of my pregnancy in spite of my being at home every weekend, including theweekend three days after my daughter was born.
There was a court hearing because a social welfare worker came in the morning after my child was born to ask how I would look after her and made me sign a paper giving the welfare department authority to look after her. I was not allowed to see my child in the hospital, to hold her or have any contact with her after the moment when she was born. At the court hearing, I said I was not willing to give away my child. Another court hearing date was set for a month later.
On the morning of the next court hearing, my mother came in and said my parents would look after the child and they had bought a crib for her. One condition was that I would have nothing more to do with the father of the child. I wrote him a farewell note and told him to go to hell, then took the scribbler in which I had been writing over to his apartment where I left it.
On the last day of summer school, he came over to my boarding place to say good-bye. As he whispered through the screen door when he was leaving, "Good-bye, my love, good-bye" I thought to myself, "You can't even be original". He was repeating the words I had written in another part of the scribbler.
I never heard from him again. I wrote to him once a year later and sent a picture of our daughter. I still felt that I owed him something but after there was no response I felt free to continue with life.
The life I had had was destroyed and it was a new life I had to find. I met a man, who, unknowing to me, had been bullied by his family for many years. My first reaction on meeting him was that there was something wrong with him but I didn't know what. It took a lifetime of living and experiencing to come to the root of his low self esteem and sometimes unpleasant behaviour towards me and my first daughter. Now I've been alone for two years and am rebuilding my sense of self and trying to make sense of the past.
I have read many words of wisdom over the past and one of them says, "What doesn't kill you, strengthens you." It came so close to killing me - November, 1966 I had life-saving heart surgery for the problem brought on by my experience. The cardiologist who put the wheels in motion for that life-saving surgery just died last week. I owe my life to him and to the many others who provided support and true love thoughout the years since that time. So much to try and understand and so few years left to enjoy in peace and contentment.
He never took me on another date but raped me probably another five times, the last time without using a condom. I tried to break up with him every time he left town but he said he would kill himself if I left him. I had been told at Bible School that all parts of the Bible were to be adhered to and in Leviticus it was written that if a woman is raped, she and the man must marry or both will be stoned so I thought I had to marry him.
He made no secret of the fact that he was seeing other women. In September, 1961, after I had sent him a letter trying to break up with him again, he came over to my apartment after the University Freshman Dance, which he had attended with the girlfriend he was dating before I met him, and again forced himself on me, this time without a condom. He said if I got pregnant, we would get married. By this time, I felt quite hopeless about getting out of the situation in which I found myself.
The next month, I found I was pregnant. When I told him the results of the pregnancy test, he began to cry and said he couldn't marry me because he had a responsibility to look after his other two girlfriends who were new in town and needed his company. He later denied saying that because I thought it was hilariously funny. After that, he only came to see me after dark. He was by then going to Teachers' College and dating a girl he had met that summer whom he later married. The other girl was the girl he had been going steady with before he met me.
Periodically, throughout my pregnancy, he would say perhaps we should get married. I really didn't want to marry him but thought I had no choice so never pushed it. He drove me to the hospital when I went into labour but waited until dark and didn't get out of the car to open the hospital door for me in case someone might see him.
Word got round about my sudden loss of weight and two weeks after my daughter was born, two ministers from the Mennonite Brethren church in Dalmeny came to see me. They were mainly interested in having me make a confession to the church that I had had a child. They then went to see my parents who had remained unaware of my pregnancy in spite of my being at home every weekend, including theweekend three days after my daughter was born.
There was a court hearing because a social welfare worker came in the morning after my child was born to ask how I would look after her and made me sign a paper giving the welfare department authority to look after her. I was not allowed to see my child in the hospital, to hold her or have any contact with her after the moment when she was born. At the court hearing, I said I was not willing to give away my child. Another court hearing date was set for a month later.
On the morning of the next court hearing, my mother came in and said my parents would look after the child and they had bought a crib for her. One condition was that I would have nothing more to do with the father of the child. I wrote him a farewell note and told him to go to hell, then took the scribbler in which I had been writing over to his apartment where I left it.
On the last day of summer school, he came over to my boarding place to say good-bye. As he whispered through the screen door when he was leaving, "Good-bye, my love, good-bye" I thought to myself, "You can't even be original". He was repeating the words I had written in another part of the scribbler.
I never heard from him again. I wrote to him once a year later and sent a picture of our daughter. I still felt that I owed him something but after there was no response I felt free to continue with life.
The life I had had was destroyed and it was a new life I had to find. I met a man, who, unknowing to me, had been bullied by his family for many years. My first reaction on meeting him was that there was something wrong with him but I didn't know what. It took a lifetime of living and experiencing to come to the root of his low self esteem and sometimes unpleasant behaviour towards me and my first daughter. Now I've been alone for two years and am rebuilding my sense of self and trying to make sense of the past.
I have read many words of wisdom over the past and one of them says, "What doesn't kill you, strengthens you." It came so close to killing me - November, 1966 I had life-saving heart surgery for the problem brought on by my experience. The cardiologist who put the wheels in motion for that life-saving surgery just died last week. I owe my life to him and to the many others who provided support and true love thoughout the years since that time. So much to try and understand and so few years left to enjoy in peace and contentment.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
A New Year - 2011
A new year has begun. The family home where we lived for 27 years was sold almost a year ago and I have been living in a senior's apartment block for over nine months. It's a good place to be for now and my husband can come for weekly visits. He is failing more and more and can no longer feed himself, stand up by himself, or dress himself and has difficulty with speech. Our married life is shrivelling to an end as my husband's abilities fade and his hold on life becomes ever more tenuous.
We celebrated 45 years of married life last May. The first five days were good - and then we came home to a house that was a disaster; it was late at night after a long drive, but before we could go to bed, we had to dig out clean sheets from our wedding gifts and change the bedding on my husband's bed.
The next day, the job of cleaning the house began. Every wall had to be scrubbed, piles of bedding to be washed that were piled up in the living room, and when that was done, a new floor had to be laid in the living room to cover up the open trapdoor leading to nothing in the basement below. As well, the bathroom and the living room were painted. We purchased a second hand chesterfield to replace the one with the springs poking through and by June 10th., 17 days after our wedding and 12 days after returning from our honeymoon, the house was livable.
That Sunday we drove to Osler to celebrate my youngest brother's 23rd. birthday, little knowing it would be the last time we would see him alive. When we returned home, my mother-in-law had arrived home on the bus from Grande Prairie and was furious that we hadn't been at the bus to drive her the two blocks home. Someone else apparently did drive her and then she was even more annoyed to find out we had cleaned, painted and fixed up the house while she was away. The implication was that she had left the house in a mess.
Since she then refused to speak to me, after a week we went out to look for another place to live and found a house in the neighbouring town of Nokomis. By the end of the month after we were married, we had moved to Nokomis. My mother-in-law's thanks for cleaning up the house were to announce to her son as we left that he had broken her heart. (She did mention that the house was much cleaner than she had left it but complained to her friends that I was obviously critical of her housekeeping.)
At the time, I was unaware that I had a damaged heart valve, a result of the stress of pregnancy three years previously. It took me some time to recover from all the cleaning and scrubbing of the house at Lanigan and left me without the energy to start all over again on the house at Nokomis. I continued to struggle with being bedridden whenever I exerted myself physically and spent much of each day in bed, conserving my energy to make supper for my husband and to look after my three year old daughter. It was not a propitious beginning for a marriage.
Three months after our marriage, my youngest brother was killed in a car accident. I had always been close to my brothers and hadn't known my husband long enough to feel really close to him so was left mourning on my own in a strange town. My husband's sister and her husband, who lived on the farm near Nokomis, were good to us and helped us through those first years of our marriage. When her husband died two years after our marriage, she had her own grief to deal with and turned to her mother for comfort so we lost an ally.
The summer after our marriage, we decided to take a trip to visit my husband's brother, who had not attended our wedding because he wasn't finished seeding. We had planned to spend two days at my husband's brother's farm and then go on to visit a friend of mine at Spirit River. However, my mother-in-law decided she wanted to come with us and we ended up spending ten days at the farm at Sexsmith where my husband helped his brother with farm work and we helped in the house and garden. My mother-in-law used the occasion to complain about us and ended up not speaking to us on the way home. My brother-in-law phoned after we got home and accused my husband, falsely, of disposing of his mother's furniture and didn't apologize after he was informed that this was not true. Our attempt at peacemaking by sending Christmas gifts for the children was requited with a letter telling us not to send gifts in future.
Prior to going to Sexsmith, I had gone to the doctor to enquire about free penicillin for my frequent sore throats due to rheumatic fever. When we returned from Alberta, the doctor sent me to Saskatoon to a heart specialist. I thought I was going for a penicillin prescription but instead, the doctor prescribed heart surgery. Although I had always said I would sooner die than have surgery, I had a child to look after so on November 1, 1966, just over a year after our marriage, I had heart surgery, which was very successful but took a long time to recover from.
While I was in hospital, unbeknownst to me, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law put the pressure on my husband to sign over half of his house in Lanigan to his mother. The following February, my husband told me that in order for the transfer to take effect, I would have to sign off my homestead rights since I had lived in the house for a time after our marriage. When I asked him if he had signed over his house of his own free will and if he wanted me to sign the homestead rights, his reply was "No" and so I didn't sign the homestead rights.
Later that month, my brother-in-law died and his wife went to live with her mother in Lanigan. In August of 1967, our daughter was born. Eight months later, we moved to a rented farm 10 miles north of the town of Nokomis. My husband sold his feed mobile, purchased farm equipment and a milk cow and was excited to be realizing his dream of going back to the farm.
We had a three year lease but quotas were low and we could only sell 10 bushels per acre during the three year period. Had my mother-in-law not decided to take us to court to force my husband to turn over half of his house, we would probably have stayed on the farm, but that was the final blow that forced us to leave. In 1969, when our second daughter was not quite two, I got a job substitute teaching in Nokomis and that saw us through until the next fall, when I got a librarian position in Davidson.
In June of 1970, my mother-in-law took us to court in Saskatoon. We found out later that it was not a regular court and the lawyer whom we had consulted did not provide us with good advice. The long and the short of it was that my mother-in-law, supported by her son from Sexsmith, her daughter from Regina and her daughter from Alsask, perjured herself to claim that her son had used her money to buy the house and she was entitled to half of the house. My husband claimed this was untrue but the judge believed her and instructed me to sign the homestead rights giving half of the house to my husband's mother. My husband had already prepared a legal document for her, giving her the right to remain in his house for the rest of her life and he would look after the taxes and repairs. She had refused to sign this because apparently her Regina daughter wanted an inheritance when her mother died and this would not supply her with an inheritance.
In 1969, my husband had emptied his bank account to pay off machinery bills to the Credit Union and my parents gave me $1000 to tide us over until I would get my first pay cheque in September. We transferred the house in Nokomis and the car into my name and for the next three years, my husband had no assets in his name. My mother-in-law had asked for my husband to pay her court costs and lawyer bills and since Judge Tucker believed she was telling the truth and my husband wasn't, he awarded her the court costs. She subsequently had my husband's bank account garnisheed and got $25. She then sent the sheriff out to take our car but the unit secretary warned me and I left to pay a school visit to Hawarden, one of the schools I was responsible for.
My mother-in-law than tried to get my husband to pay for putting a new furnace into her house. Finally, Gilbert Johnson, a Davidson lawyer, negotiated the sale of the remainder of the house to her and she ended up paying her own lawyer bills and paying my husband $1200 for a house that she had claimed was worth $10,000. In 1990, a year after she died, the house was sold for $2000, $2,800 less than my husband had paid for it in 1961, but there was a surplus of housing in Lanigan at the time and it was an old house that had had nothing done to it for many years. After legal bills, each child, including my husband, received $250 from the sale of the house. From a financial point of view, my husband ended up the winner, but from his mother's point of view, the whole thing made absolutely no sense, financially or otherwise.
After four or five years, about 1975, when David was two or three, friends invited us to attend the fowl supper at Lanigan. My mother-in-law was there and as we walked by her chair, she turned and invited us to come to her house for tea. The court case was never mentioned, no apologies were ever offered, but she never spoke to me either for the rest of our married life. The children and Clarence were fussed over and I was tolerated (but barely). The sister and brother-in-law who had instigated the court case never spoke to either of us again.
Now they're all gone, except my husband and the sister who started it all. My husband is in a nursing home, confined to a wheelchair, has difficulty speaking and needs help with eating as well as everything else. His sister has just moved into an assisted living facility after receiving a sizable inheritance from her older sister, who died four days before my husband had the stroke that put him into a nursing home just over two years ago. My sister-in-law has achieved her heart's desire, my husband and I are no longer together and she has received a good inheritance of money. I recently read that winning the sweepstakes only makes you happy for a very short time. She's won her sweepstakes; I wonder if she's happy?
We celebrated 45 years of married life last May. The first five days were good - and then we came home to a house that was a disaster; it was late at night after a long drive, but before we could go to bed, we had to dig out clean sheets from our wedding gifts and change the bedding on my husband's bed.
The next day, the job of cleaning the house began. Every wall had to be scrubbed, piles of bedding to be washed that were piled up in the living room, and when that was done, a new floor had to be laid in the living room to cover up the open trapdoor leading to nothing in the basement below. As well, the bathroom and the living room were painted. We purchased a second hand chesterfield to replace the one with the springs poking through and by June 10th., 17 days after our wedding and 12 days after returning from our honeymoon, the house was livable.
That Sunday we drove to Osler to celebrate my youngest brother's 23rd. birthday, little knowing it would be the last time we would see him alive. When we returned home, my mother-in-law had arrived home on the bus from Grande Prairie and was furious that we hadn't been at the bus to drive her the two blocks home. Someone else apparently did drive her and then she was even more annoyed to find out we had cleaned, painted and fixed up the house while she was away. The implication was that she had left the house in a mess.
Since she then refused to speak to me, after a week we went out to look for another place to live and found a house in the neighbouring town of Nokomis. By the end of the month after we were married, we had moved to Nokomis. My mother-in-law's thanks for cleaning up the house were to announce to her son as we left that he had broken her heart. (She did mention that the house was much cleaner than she had left it but complained to her friends that I was obviously critical of her housekeeping.)
At the time, I was unaware that I had a damaged heart valve, a result of the stress of pregnancy three years previously. It took me some time to recover from all the cleaning and scrubbing of the house at Lanigan and left me without the energy to start all over again on the house at Nokomis. I continued to struggle with being bedridden whenever I exerted myself physically and spent much of each day in bed, conserving my energy to make supper for my husband and to look after my three year old daughter. It was not a propitious beginning for a marriage.
Three months after our marriage, my youngest brother was killed in a car accident. I had always been close to my brothers and hadn't known my husband long enough to feel really close to him so was left mourning on my own in a strange town. My husband's sister and her husband, who lived on the farm near Nokomis, were good to us and helped us through those first years of our marriage. When her husband died two years after our marriage, she had her own grief to deal with and turned to her mother for comfort so we lost an ally.
The summer after our marriage, we decided to take a trip to visit my husband's brother, who had not attended our wedding because he wasn't finished seeding. We had planned to spend two days at my husband's brother's farm and then go on to visit a friend of mine at Spirit River. However, my mother-in-law decided she wanted to come with us and we ended up spending ten days at the farm at Sexsmith where my husband helped his brother with farm work and we helped in the house and garden. My mother-in-law used the occasion to complain about us and ended up not speaking to us on the way home. My brother-in-law phoned after we got home and accused my husband, falsely, of disposing of his mother's furniture and didn't apologize after he was informed that this was not true. Our attempt at peacemaking by sending Christmas gifts for the children was requited with a letter telling us not to send gifts in future.
Prior to going to Sexsmith, I had gone to the doctor to enquire about free penicillin for my frequent sore throats due to rheumatic fever. When we returned from Alberta, the doctor sent me to Saskatoon to a heart specialist. I thought I was going for a penicillin prescription but instead, the doctor prescribed heart surgery. Although I had always said I would sooner die than have surgery, I had a child to look after so on November 1, 1966, just over a year after our marriage, I had heart surgery, which was very successful but took a long time to recover from.
While I was in hospital, unbeknownst to me, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law put the pressure on my husband to sign over half of his house in Lanigan to his mother. The following February, my husband told me that in order for the transfer to take effect, I would have to sign off my homestead rights since I had lived in the house for a time after our marriage. When I asked him if he had signed over his house of his own free will and if he wanted me to sign the homestead rights, his reply was "No" and so I didn't sign the homestead rights.
Later that month, my brother-in-law died and his wife went to live with her mother in Lanigan. In August of 1967, our daughter was born. Eight months later, we moved to a rented farm 10 miles north of the town of Nokomis. My husband sold his feed mobile, purchased farm equipment and a milk cow and was excited to be realizing his dream of going back to the farm.
We had a three year lease but quotas were low and we could only sell 10 bushels per acre during the three year period. Had my mother-in-law not decided to take us to court to force my husband to turn over half of his house, we would probably have stayed on the farm, but that was the final blow that forced us to leave. In 1969, when our second daughter was not quite two, I got a job substitute teaching in Nokomis and that saw us through until the next fall, when I got a librarian position in Davidson.
In June of 1970, my mother-in-law took us to court in Saskatoon. We found out later that it was not a regular court and the lawyer whom we had consulted did not provide us with good advice. The long and the short of it was that my mother-in-law, supported by her son from Sexsmith, her daughter from Regina and her daughter from Alsask, perjured herself to claim that her son had used her money to buy the house and she was entitled to half of the house. My husband claimed this was untrue but the judge believed her and instructed me to sign the homestead rights giving half of the house to my husband's mother. My husband had already prepared a legal document for her, giving her the right to remain in his house for the rest of her life and he would look after the taxes and repairs. She had refused to sign this because apparently her Regina daughter wanted an inheritance when her mother died and this would not supply her with an inheritance.
In 1969, my husband had emptied his bank account to pay off machinery bills to the Credit Union and my parents gave me $1000 to tide us over until I would get my first pay cheque in September. We transferred the house in Nokomis and the car into my name and for the next three years, my husband had no assets in his name. My mother-in-law had asked for my husband to pay her court costs and lawyer bills and since Judge Tucker believed she was telling the truth and my husband wasn't, he awarded her the court costs. She subsequently had my husband's bank account garnisheed and got $25. She then sent the sheriff out to take our car but the unit secretary warned me and I left to pay a school visit to Hawarden, one of the schools I was responsible for.
My mother-in-law than tried to get my husband to pay for putting a new furnace into her house. Finally, Gilbert Johnson, a Davidson lawyer, negotiated the sale of the remainder of the house to her and she ended up paying her own lawyer bills and paying my husband $1200 for a house that she had claimed was worth $10,000. In 1990, a year after she died, the house was sold for $2000, $2,800 less than my husband had paid for it in 1961, but there was a surplus of housing in Lanigan at the time and it was an old house that had had nothing done to it for many years. After legal bills, each child, including my husband, received $250 from the sale of the house. From a financial point of view, my husband ended up the winner, but from his mother's point of view, the whole thing made absolutely no sense, financially or otherwise.
After four or five years, about 1975, when David was two or three, friends invited us to attend the fowl supper at Lanigan. My mother-in-law was there and as we walked by her chair, she turned and invited us to come to her house for tea. The court case was never mentioned, no apologies were ever offered, but she never spoke to me either for the rest of our married life. The children and Clarence were fussed over and I was tolerated (but barely). The sister and brother-in-law who had instigated the court case never spoke to either of us again.
Now they're all gone, except my husband and the sister who started it all. My husband is in a nursing home, confined to a wheelchair, has difficulty speaking and needs help with eating as well as everything else. His sister has just moved into an assisted living facility after receiving a sizable inheritance from her older sister, who died four days before my husband had the stroke that put him into a nursing home just over two years ago. My sister-in-law has achieved her heart's desire, my husband and I are no longer together and she has received a good inheritance of money. I recently read that winning the sweepstakes only makes you happy for a very short time. She's won her sweepstakes; I wonder if she's happy?
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