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Misperception

 

      Frank says I must write this next. His memories of this part were less clear. Somehow these events burned into my mind. This became a huge stumbling block on my healing journey.

 

 

      I don’t remember her name, except that it was beautiful. Her sister was a friend of a friend, whom, I suppose, suggested our home as a place to visit on her weekend furlough from a mental hospital. I suppose they have these weekends away to see how someone will do if released entirely. I don’t know if I knew before she visited us that she had been in the hospital. I think her sister brought her and stayed with us too but those details aren’t clear.

 

 

      I do remember that she spent most of her visit with Frank and me. She was ethereal, wonderful in my child point-of-view. She took a long walk with us along the creek that ran beside our town. I remember her telling us, as we stood beside the dam watching the falling water pool in a bubbly froth over the rocks at the bottom, that she thought waterfalls were the most beautiful things in the world. She told me, that she would name a little girl Cascade if she had one or, (and again my memory is fuzzy) that she had a daughter named Cascade. It was the only time I saw her sad that weekend, briefly talking about this real or imaginary girl. She threw off the sorrow, spread her arms wide and shouted “Cascade” a few times while twirling. At about 10-years-old I was just amazed by her.

 

 

      The weekend ended. I don’t know if it was that day or the next or even a few days later but it was that week when the call came. After returning to the hospital, she killed herself.

 

 

      Mom took us to the memorial service. On the way she talked to us about what had happened. She told us that the woman had killed herself because she had enjoyed visiting us and she knew she could never have a life a wonderful as ours. Before we reached the place where the service was being held, she drove us past the hospital and showed us the window she thought the woman had jumped from.

 

 

      I don’t know if there was a note, or if all this was just conjecture in my mother’s mind. It made an impression on me. I lived in such a strange form of hell as a child but was assured in this drastic way, that my life was wonderful, enviable enough that someone would die for lack of having what I had. I was devastated then, that I had somehow pushed this woman to her death. For years I couldn’t make sense of the bad parts of my childhood against this powerful picture. Somehow if I saw the bad, if I started to put the pieces together, I made her death worse, even, than it was. When I could no longer ignore the bad parts. When I matured enough to understand the abuse I had suffered I mourned her loss over again. The guilt I felt grappled for supremacy over the anger I felt toward my mother.

 

 

      For whatever reason the mind works the way it does, whether it makes sense or not, this was the hardest thing in my childhood for me to recover from. Though I’ve processed it over and over, trying to make sense of it, even now, the idea that someone died, because they envied my childhood life, makes me want to crawl in bed, pull the covers over my head, and pretend it was a good childhood. To somehow make her sacrifice worthy. Try as I may, I couldn’t possibly work that kind of magic. I hope, at least, that remembering this beautiful delicate soul, putting this in writing at last, will insure that wherever she is, she found the peace she sought.

This entry was posted on 15. March 2009 at 17:49 and is filed under Memories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Misperception”

  1. JoshuaC says:
    16. March 2009 at 21:40

    I have experienced similar contrast between being outside at my farm, the Poconos, or at Camp when compared to going to school or being inside a meeting house. Certainly, being compelled to live part of my life away from nature can feel sad or depressing.

    I have also experienced the sense of feeling responsible for the sudden death of someone I love even when it does not seem logical. The most difficult experience for me to process was not a human but when I was responsible for the death of some small animals I loved because I had not given them back to nature and they dehydrated while I was away. To this day that experience still is part of my attitude of a sense of sanctity of life and the question of my responsibility towards life. It is interesting to note that I still have not quite processed that experience. Hmm. What would that mean anyway? To accept it maybe. To see it as it is or was maybe. To see that I don’t know some things. For instance, death. Still a big question mark in the place of death.

    As I look in myself now and try to see my experience for what it was or is, I see that part of my suffering appears to stem from the feeling that no one else could feel what I was feeling. So, imagine a child who has a strong feeling of sorrow or even of joy but no one can share this feeling. Who else could feel the sorrow and responsibility that was my own? Who else could empathize? I look at my childhood self, my childhood experience and I see that I felt alone and sad and mad and guilty and so on. But mostly alone with these experiences. I look at this child and try to imagine what he would have wished for so that if I ever encounter such a child or person, I might see better what is needed. I look for myself but I will not share what I see here. To do so would deny you the possibility of looking for yourself. Plus, this medium is clumsy for subtle exchange.

    I also remember that I discovered a part of myself in that time of grieving and I saw that I could turn off my emotions which I did and as far as I recall, I never cried from that day forward about anything. I remained cut off from my emotions in a way. The next time I cried was at age 16 when my high school girlfriend broke up with me for the first time. Since then I have spent years searching for a stronger connection with my emotions and my search has proven to me that something is possible.

    As a final note, I would say that I do not blame my parents for any suffering of my childhood, although, I hope always to raise my children even better than they raised me. I even remember as a child yearning for a “better” life. So, this describes my condition.

    Please know that I do not mean to equate my childhood to yours but perhaps you will at least find what I have written to be of interest.

  2. Kathy says:
    25. March 2009 at 18:38

    Did you ever think maybe this was your moms interpetation of why this woman killed herself? Maybe the part about this woman being envious was another one of your moms delusions. Your mom may have wanted to think she was doing such a wonderful job somehow it would drive this woman to suicide. Maybe this woman saw how much you were suffering and couldn’t deal with it, we will never know but remember what your mom told you guys very likely may not be true at all but just a way to make herself look better in a VERY warped sort of fashion. To a crazy mom believing she had the power to have someone envy her parenting skills soo much that they would kill themselves may have been the WARPED ego inflation she was looking for. Just a thought

  3. gennyfer says:
    25. March 2009 at 19:56

    I don’t know whether what she said was true. Since so many things weren’t true I would guess this was probably not either. She was very ego driven and desperately wanted to be seen as wise and spiritually advanced. She thrived on compliments and people looking up to her.

    I write the memories I have sometimes as if what she said was true because that was how I interpreted them when I was a child. I have a clear memory of this women telling Frank and I how lucky we were before she left. So I wonder, even if she didn’t leave a note or say something before she died, if there wasn’t some grain of truth to my mothers explanation.

    The hardest part of this whole Crazymom.com process, for me, is never knowing the exact truth of any of it. Many people talk about “their truth” or “their personal truth” and I think I get what they mean, why it needs to be described that way but it often seems to be a way to refuse to look for more pieces of a puzzle. The best part of this experience for me, so far, is seeing how different Mary, Frank, and I remember things. Some events loomed so large for me and they barely remember them, the same is true for them. Some details, dates, locations, are recalled differently. Stepping aside from my role in it and the frightening subject matter, it is a fascinating look at a family history seen from all the children.

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