My Parents' Parents (Part Two)

by Anna

My mother acted this out with me. She did not say that she disowned me, but the whole time that I was growing up, she treated me as if I was disowned. She would talk to the other children, fuss over my brothers, but treat me with total disdain. She acted as if she hated me. She would often stand at my door and criticize me for hours. I remember the sensation of disappearing as my mother vented her rage at my door. My feet would be the first to disappear, and then gradually my legs, then my stomach, my chest and my head, until all of me was gone. I was a no-body, slowly melding into the wall or some other lonely corner of the room.

My mother treated me the exact same way that she claimed her mother had treated her as she was growing up. At the time I didn't understand this. I used to feel that I was a horrible, terrible child, though I could not figure out what I was doing wrong. I started to be ultra quiet, sweet, taking care to never do anything wrong. No matter how I acted though, my mother would not stop hating me. There was no way that I could be or act that was OK with her.

My mother's parents divorced when I was a small child. My mother said that her parents fought so much while she was growing up that she and her sisters used to be afraid that their parents would end up killing each other. My grandfather moved to another part of Colorado and lived in a house that he built with his own hands. He also built a pier at the end of his backyard that reached out across the water.

He planted a garden with carrots, potatoes and peas. In the middle of this garden he erected a cross. On the cross was written, "Here lies Thomas, crucified by his wife Agnes." I remember wondering how my grandfather could put a grave in a garden and be buried in it while he was still alive.

My mother brought us children to my grandfather's house on weekends in the summer so that we could spend time with him. Every time we went to see him, he would sit us all around him and tell us how our grandmother had crucified him in court and how much she wronged him. He would talk to us about this for hours. My siblings and I would squirm in our chairs and try to come up with excuses to leave such as going to the bathroom, having to go to sleep, or becoming violently ill.

There were other times that my grandfather would be good to us, but it seemed to be always overshadowed by the constant crucifixion that hung about him like a vengeful shadow. The shadow engulfed him and spread from him to us as if it were an old dark blanket that covered us but never seemed to keep us warm. We all smothered in that blanket and to this day I can still feel some of the threads from it clinging to me, heavy and unrelenting.

My father's mother was an alcoholic. We were all afraid of her. Now when I remember her, I know that she must have been mentally ill. She told us once that when my father was a baby he cried all of the time. Because of his constant crying, she gave him a whole bottle of cough medicine to make him sleep. He slept for three days and when he woke up, he was so hungry. In those days, cough medicine had a huge amount of alcohol in it. It's amazing that my father even lived.

When my father was a child, his father went off to fight in the war. While his father was gone, my grandmother stayed constantly drunk. She never cooked or went out shopping for food. My father used to go out and beg for food from neighbors, steal food from window sills, and forage through garbage cans in order to feed himself, his little sister and his mother. There were times that they went for days without eating.

Eventually my father's father came back from the war and then things got better. Though my grandfather was traumatized by the war and was a very tormented and sad man, he got food for his children and cooked their meals. He worked as a house builder and did well financially.

My father's mother was mentally, emotionally, and physically abusive to my father and his sister. I remember my father talking about her when I was little. He hated his mother.

When my father's sister Marie grew up, she and her husband and three children lived right next door to her mother and father. My father used to bring us kids over there to play with our cousins. The one I remember the most was Mark. I became the closest to him because he was more my age than the other two. I haven't seen Mark for years. He doesn't have much to do with the family. He ended up moving to California and has worked for years as a special effects man in the movies. I often see him in the credits of some of the large movies that come out. This is why I always stay for the credits at the end of the movies. It's the only way I can feel connected to my cousin. My mother said that he became a millionaire and owns a lot of property. I wonder how he is now? I wonder if he has gotten through anything about his past? His mother tried to kill herself often during her life and I'm sure that that must have affected him.

My father's mother had one brother. His name was Phil. Phil also ended up marrying my mother's sister Teresa. This caused my father's uncle to also be my uncle. You would understand this if you knew my family. My grandmother and her brother Phil had an alcoholic mother when they were children. One day when they came home from school they found their mother laying dead on the living room sofa. Their mother had gotten drunk, lay down to sleep and suffocated on her own vomit. My grandmother and Phil thought that she had just passed out again and for three days they lived in the house with their mother dead on the couch before they realized that she was no longer alive. After their mother's death, they were passed around to various relatives like a couple of hot potatoes. No one really seemed to want them. When I was a child I remember one time that I heard my Uncle Phil praying to satan to torture his mother in hell.

Anyway, my cousin Mark and his two sisters spent quite a bit of time with my Uncle Phil and I sometimes wonder if they were traumatized by him. I pray for them often. That is the most that I can remember right now. I know that there is a stage in recovery when it's best to just feel your feelings without trying to intellectualize too much, and then there is a stage when trying to add some understanding to the insanity helps. In the end I figure that it all integrates together and eventually turns into some kind of wisdom.

I'm not sure how much of my parent's hell I am still burning in. I know that they are still in avoidance of the pain that has materialized in all kinds of medical problems that they struggle with now. They just say that these things are inherited medical traits and there's nothing that can be done about it. My mother is now 80 and my father is 79. They don't think that they have much longer to live.

Sometimes when I see my parents now, I feel a mixture of compassion and unresolved pain. I will not tell them how much their abuse destroyed my youth, and how much I sometimes still suffer. I end my conversations with them always with "I love you", and their strained "I love you" back, softly touches my heart. They never told me that they loved me when I was a child. Their parents never told them that they loved them. Their parents' parents never told their children that they loved them.

Generations and Generations of parents and children are a part of the old blanket my grandfather unknowingly cloaked us with. Some of the threads were faintly loving in a way that proved that the generations tried to care, even though that love was thin and easily broken. Other threads of the blanket were already too dark to reflect the light.

Through recovery, I try to gather up the threads and mend the empty places and gaping holes until I can feel the warmth that has always been my birthright and the birthright of every member of my family. Some day I will grow to love the blanket and see it as a truth that I have overcome and the knowing and wisdom that will be forever a part of who I am. For now though, I still struggle with some of the leftover darkness and strain to see the light that I know is there for me.

I'm getting better though, and I know that writing these stories is a huge part of my recovery. I feel so humbly grateful for the chance to add my stories to this site. Each time I write a story and go through my feelings about it, I feel myself getting freer and freer.

Response from Dr. DeFoore

Thanks for this amazing contribution, Anna. Your writing makes it clear how past generations can affect us. Hopefully others will follow your lead and look at the foundation of some of their emotional patterns and benefit with healing.