Thursday, September 30, 2010

Response

I had tons of emails and response on my entry since WOW printed it.
I am in shock.
I "think" I can write ...to some extend.
Never learned the English language from a person, I taught myself.
Just writing the word "taught" makes me giggle, for years I wrote "thought" then one day
saw it used correctly.
I think if you speak and write Dutch and French then English comes easy.
Have you  ever had battles with the French verbs????????
Anyway since childhood I have been writing.
Only child, lonely child, often verbally and physical abuse IF I did not do something "perfect"
mother wanted perfection from me.
Gosh i t is hard to write this. She was a good mother but had her own demons and 2 wars in her life to deal with. I just wish she would have learned to encourage me rather than to belittle me.
 am starting to ramble.
I would write notes t myself on the butcher's paper where once was a porc chop.
Paper was a luxury especially during the war.
We had erzats paper with pieces of wood still in like splinters in a white sheet reminding us
that all is not well with the world.
I wrote about everything that had happened to me that day and try and hide it.
When you have 4 rooms in a house and only a hand full of drawers where do you hide things?
I did not have a room of my own.
I hid things in the bushes outside or in the rabbit shed. It was dark in there and rats would come to get the babies so Mom was afraid to go in there (I was too) but I had my places under the rabbit shit trays.
If I was found out then I got in trouble.
Writing to one friend when I came to the USA was a constant, she had kept my letters for decades and when my daughter did question my first marriage my friend showed her the letters.
She told her : read for yourself what your mother had to deal with.
In the last 3 years I had an email friend who listened to me every day and every morning there would be a letter to booster me up. She kept me going. Writing kept me going.
That is not to say that it was all peaches and cream.
There was a day that she wrote something like : put a pillow over his head....
Not that I had not thought about it myself more than once.
Most of all I had several ideas in my head about killing both of us, and what stopped me was
very silly, husband's studio was and still is a mess. I did not want to leave that for the kids.
Then one day I thought of burning the house down with us in it but did not have a great plan.
The dog was in the way, could not kill him.
Strange thoughts, you say, for a loving wife.
Judge not until you have walked in my flip flops.
There are days with total exhaustion, total loss of a "normal" mind.
You search for the extremes just to get relief.

Yesterday I was able to write to 2 people in the middle of their caregiving years. I was able to tell them honestly what hell they can expect and what good days will do to them.
I am an open book.
The pages may be dirty from spilled guts but life as a caregiver to a dementia patient is anything but pretty.

A friend of mine said that his mother was so funny and how he loved "visiting" her at his sisters house, it was a hoot he told me. I wanted to strangle him.
You go for a few hours and giggle with Mom and think this is just great?
Did you change her diaper by chance? Did you feed her? Did you watch her all the time to see if
she would harm herself by turning on a stove?
I don't think so.

Enough ramble for today.
I am going to have a great day, I am going to walk the dogs until their little legs fall off.
Oh well, Bijou likes to walk in my arms.

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