(Preface: This story was written in the fall of 2005 and dealt with both the death of my first marriage covenant and the death of my mother, originally written in an intertwined rumination of sorts. It was written in a free-association and free-form style, actually in one single evening, from a friend’s beach house where I went alone with a key, to pore through the paperwork involved in filing for divorce through a simple mediated process where we worked out details with one single lawyer in two sittings. I was the one deciding to be the initiating party in the legal action (we were told one of us must initiate), though it was fairly mutual. It was a difficult time, and when I needed to decide whether or not I would keep the married name for my children’s sake, or take back my father’s name of “Slifer” as a divorced woman…I paused…and this basic short story flowed out from me on an old-fashioned notepad with ballpoint pen in about two hours. In high school, while on the newspaper staff, I developed my own kind of “shorthand” to use when notating quickly for articles. When I returned to Newark I typed it out and made a few grammatical edits. Here, for obvious reasons, I have removed the interspersed free-flow of thoughts that night that surrounded the difficult decision I made to file for divorce. I write a lot in recent times about divorce, family issues and various other recovery issues, especially with a focus on women. I do feel ready to share this story, since it involves my most primary relationship with a woman…my mother…Margaret Ruth Linger Slifer…and tells parts of the story of her rapid physical decline and death in 2001 and how I responded to that event and my thoughts about it. Thank you for reading!)
The Mirror
(My Magnum Opus – Edited Version)
Written 10/18/05
It was past eleven o’clock that night, and I was alone in my mother’s house. Somewhere not too far away she was confined to a psychiatric hospital, for the second time in several months. I had become her legal guardian.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
Details of this saga go back as far as I can remember. If I were to tell you the bizarre story from beginning to end, perhaps I would fully convince myself that she was truly crazy…but only if I could convince you first. And repeatedly convince you so I could repeatedly convince myself every time I slip back into self-doubt. Not that I don’t believe at the deepest level that she was truly crazy, but I believe that assuredly stating that someone you were so entangled with was “crazy” is, by nature, an act that makes you doubt your own sanity and perceptions. I don’t know why. It is not logical. Emotional, yes, logical, no. I would guess that being raised by the crazy person (who continually told you they were “not crazy” but that something was wrong with you for not playing into their drama… “contributory negligence” of sorts) plays some small part in it. But maybe the deepest reality is that you did something to make them crazy or failed to make it better. I think that may be it.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
Once my mother told me I was a “terror” and she wished she had never conceived me. This dialogue occurred when I was in college, in the process of having to have her committed once again to a psychiatric hospital. Perhaps she was right. My roommate, her fiance and I spent five hours washing her dirty dishes afterward, we kept finding more piles that had been stashed under beds in brand new dish pans. Indescribable.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
I guess crazy is a strong word. Sometimes I question myself with this term, not that I believe I am truly crazy, but I fear that perhaps I could possibly be or one day become somewhere just below the cut-off point. The fact that I am even writing about all this confirms my fears. Normal people just live, they don’t think or talk about such things. If I weren’t crazy maybe I’d be in bed right now.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
The dictionary defines crazy as “someone deranged and possibly dangerous.” It matters not that I convinced a court that she was a “danger to herself or others” and was appointed guardian of her person and property. The doubts about myself still remain. From my very playpen, I must have been a terror and somehow responsible for her freaking insanity. Of course I know this is absolutely not true. Yet it remains a feeling, irrational though it might be, that stays in my gut. (I was not nice to her growing up and definitely uncooperative in her dramas).
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
Deranged and possibly dangerous? She was never holding a gun to herself or anyone, so maybe she wasn’t really that bad. Quite the contrary, she wanted to be left alone. Alone so she could continue to do her really crazy things and act out her crazy dramas. To try to describe these things would be quite tiresome, and really not the point of my moment alone in my mother’s house.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
So I was standing there alone in her living room late that night. I was cleaning up her indescribable mess. Not too far away the person I married and my young children were at my own house, but I was there at her house late that night. Papers, papers, papers and crap, crap, crap. Indescribable. Ridiculous. Tiring. The house was so quiet.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
My mother enjoyed mirrors, in fact she had quite a few around the house. And lights, tons of lights bought at yard sales. I guess it offset the darkness created by her constantly drawn drapes in the secret hell hole in which she lived.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
So I am sorting through the crap on a large table in her living room. There is surplus furniture everywhere one might turn but no place to even sit down. Little pathways through the firetrap of papers. Danger to herself? I don’t know. Danger to others? I don’t know. But I guess if a match got lit and the place caught on fire, an aging woman such as her might not easily find her way out of such a burning hell hole.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
Is it the odds of this happening that drove me to have her committed for the umpteenth time, or the fact that she kept calling me and rambling on about all her crazy activities? I couldn’t stop her and it drove me crazy to listen to it all. Insanity that I couldn’t stop or control. But it was, as she asserted, her life. It is a free country, everyone has the right to be crazy don’t they? And to risk all their money on crazy sweepstakes and the schemes of others who prey on the elderly. And, and…I don’t know. Maybe it was none of my damned business. She herself had said many times that her life was her “bailiwick” and my life was my “bailiwick.” Maybe she was right. Maybe she was right about everything, always, everything.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
In case you need to know the definition of “bailiwick,” it is a term meaning the area over which a bailiff has jurisdiction. A “bailiff” is an officer of the court who is employed to execute writs and processes and make arrests.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
I might truly be a terror. By showing tangible evidence of her continuing insanity, I convinced professionals to confine her to a mental hospital. And for the ninth time now. Terrible. But wait, the first time was in 1946, and I was born in 1963. And the second time was in 1976, I was only twelve. I don’t think I was involved in that, I mean I know I wasn’t, but maybe I was involved on some level. I don’t know. And the fourth time, well that was in 1989 shortly after my first son was born. I had nothing to do with what transpired that sent her to the state hospital again. I only heard about it. And then I decided to go visit her with my newborn son. I have photos. I had for the first time in my life completely broken contact with her during my entire pregnancy. Another saga. I just couldn’t take it, I wanted her out of my life. Forever. Completely. I sent her this horrible letter, and we moved shortly thereafter. I got an unlisted phone number. I was free of her. She did not have any way to contact me. And I spiraled downward within myself, I still wonder why. I should have been so happy with a child on the way. Why did I decide to visit her after the birth? Why did I take my son? That was crazy. They should have kept me and let her go. But maybe not. She was my mother. I had a child and I wanted to show him to her.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
I guess it got me back with her so that I could have more moments. Moments like in her living room that night. I will call it a mirror moment.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
I was standing there, as I said awhile back, sorting through her crap. I must have been tired, I probably went home that night and worked a couple more hours in my own house. But there I was, and there was the moment when I looked up and caught my reflection in the mirror. I don’t know why, but I just stared long and hard. It was a picture in time. I was a child, perhaps, but I was an adult, maybe I was an adult child, and I was surrounded by her crap. It was in my very hands. I was sorting through all kinds of paper crap. Crap most people throw away without a second thought, but crap that was mixed with certain un-crap. There was no way out but to put your hands in it and sort and Gosh forbid, read it all.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
This picture was maddening. Maybe it was a gestalt moment. Here I was alone again, sorting through her crap, trying to clean it all up and not go over the edge myself somehow. Suddenly I had a raging urge to break the large mirror, a mirror I had known and seen since I was a child. Hanging there, day after day, in her house, my house, her house, I don’t know.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
Being the self-controlled person I was at that moment I reasoned to myself that I might delay the gratification I might feel in breaking such a huge glass object. I delayed it by purposing to break it one day in the future. Yes, one day this saga with her will end. One day she will grow old and die, and most likely I will be there to clean out her house one last time. And the mirror will be the last thing out. And it will go out in lots of pieces, and I will never be the same. I don’t want to see myself in this mirror ever again.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
Well I was right. She grew old, and not only that, she grew crazier. Even as I write I feel guilty to say that, it sounds so callous. She must have been so alone. I rejected her terribly. But I also tried to relate with her. The moments overlapped so I don’t know for sure what I did. I always had her over on holidays, difficult as it was. She could be fully relied upon to be inappropriate and upsetting to be around. And I tried to help her in many ways. She was unresponsive. Downright nasty at times.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
She would call me and start talking about stuff, indescribable stuff. I would say hello and she would just start rambling, I would listen usually about three to five minutes before my blood would boil and I would suddenly say “That’s nice, goodbye” and hang up. Or if I happened to find the monologue particularly bizarre or amusing, I might listen longer just for entertainment. Or if she brought up things from the past that pushed my buttons, I might fly off the handle with mean and cruel statements. If I had somehow loved her or accepted her, or, I don’t know…maybe her life wouldn’t have been so lonely and pathetic. Maybe I wouldn’t have found out for the ninth time that she was hospitalized. Not my doing, the police had called me during the middle of the night and asked if I was her daughter. My heart did a drop, this must be it I thought. What I imagined might happen has happened. She has died alone in the hell hole and has been that way for days, and now she has been discovered. They asked next, “When is the last time you spoke with her?” Well, this IS it, I thought. And I wasn’t even sure how long it had been since I talked with her. I felt guilty. They went on with questions, when suddenly something wasn’t making sense to me. Why all these questions, why don’t they just come out and tell me that they have discovered her dead. I asked the dreaded question, “Is she alive?”
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
Suddenly I was brought back to reality when the officer apologized and said, “Oh, she is very much alive, we’ve been here a couple of hours now talking with her and we just don’t know what to do.” Only two hours with her and they were at a loss as to how to help? Apparently she had called them out for some reason. Something about helicopters in the backyard and people trying to make a movie about her. He said it was obvious she needed help, they were concerned and wanted to know if I could do something about her situation the next day. Well, hesitantly I did. I had told myself never again, she could die in her bailiwick for all I cared. But, well, this may finally be it. Duty calls.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
Well she went downhill quickly. I had called her social worker, and they got her into the hospital again. I went to see her and she wanted to hug me. The first words out of her mouth were “My, you are getting so big and fat.” The second words were probably “I love you” but I don’t remember. People who speak the truth, even once, might not be crazy. But there she was and there I was. All of me.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
Later I spoke with a friend. I basically told her that I did not love my mother. My mother was beyond redemption. But she indicated somehow that maybe I did love her, and no one was ever beyond redemption. I got off the phone with her and onto the phone with another person versed in issues of redemption, whom I told “I am trying to decide if I love or hate her.”
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
Now this became the question of questions, as she continued to decline and I had to clear out the house for the last time. Did I love her? Did I hate her? How would it all end and what would be my response? If I do love her but don’t tell her that somehow, I might regret it forever. It might destroy my very soul. And if I hate her, that too might destroy my very soul.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
The realtor asked about the mirror and a few last things that were left, I told her I would take care of those things. And I did, after I went one night to visit her in the state hospital. Among her mounds of gaudy costume jewelry (purchased to further guarantee her “guaranteed” sweepstakes winnings) I had found two rings which I believed might be her wedding rings, but I was not positive. She was so out of touch, slouched in a wheelchair, not able to feed herself. She used to be such a powerful woman but now she was reduced to this. She was talking about people from long ago interspersed with possible recent events. One couldn’t make sense of it. But I showed her the rings and asked if they were her wedding rings. She said they were. I said, “Are you sure?” She said that “Yes, I would know them a mile away.” She wanted to keep them, but I said it wasn’t a good idea to have them in that place. She had them in her hand and she took my hand and tried to put them on my finger, telling me to put them on and keep them. Looking back on this moment, I remember thinking that it was as close to a normal mother-daughter interaction as I had ever experienced with her. I told her that she needed Jesus in her heart to be saved and asked if she wanted Him in her heart. Simple, something she might comprehend. She said, “Yes, and you too.” Somehow I felt she had accepted, because she listened to the word Jesus without mocking me.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
I went on over to the house afterward and I took my time through each room. Each room had a front of memories, and I walked through them with the imperative of the moment. How else could I walk out of that house one last time? I walked through the rooms and allowed myself to remember and to respond, and then I prayed blessings on those who would come to occupy this house which I had known my entire lifetime. No more hell hole. And I took the rock I had brought along and broke the mirror. And I cleaned it all up. And I locked up the house and left.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
It was the day after Thanksgiving. I had successfully arranged for my mother to be in a regular nursing home. Somehow I felt I needed to do all I could to provide for her to die with some sense of dignity, not in the state hospital. Was this for me or for her?
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
She had been in the nursing home for about three weeks. I went to visit. She looked very not well. They could hardly wake her up, I knew something was not right. She felt very warm to me, but they said she didn’t have a fever. Should I have taken her temperature myself? When she was awake I pushed her wheelchair into another room and sat with her. She kept wanting water, and I would hold the cup and straw for her to drink. She expressed gratitude and said no one would hold the water for her to drink long enough. She was not exactly lucid, but she did say this and I believed her. I left with a strong sense that she was getting close to the edge. Already she had been transported twice over the past month to the hospital for high fever and unknown source of infection. Her organs were being affected. Already a doctor had told me I would have to consider what they should do should certain things happen. You know, things like her heart or breathing stopping.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
I went home that night, and in my mind the previous words of someone were lingering, that I should try to think about the good times. I had told them there were no good times I could remember. But that night I lay in bed with a powerful image I can never forget. I don’t even understand it, but it came to me and I just kept re-living it over and over in my mind that night. Somehow it felt good yet sad, I don’t know. I just couldn’t get it out of my head. I could practically experience it with all my senses. It was a hot summer night. Maybe July or August. It was around dusk or twilight. The air was thick and humid. Maybe I heard cicadas or saw fireflies. I don’t know. But I was walking up the sidewalk with my mother. We were returning from a neighbor’s sitting porch. My mother used to go down and talk with this neighbor, and I would play with some friends until it was about dark. And we were walking up the sidewalk together, and it was so summer I could smell it. I don’t know why this image was so in my head. It was like there might have been a split second moment of complete normalcy within that walk that night. Some feeling that all was right with my world. Maybe even some feeling of attachment to my mother. I know that was it. She was mine and I was hers. It was so familiar. That feeling, that moment. I just played it over and over in my head as though I were soaking it into my soul somehow. I was with my mother. My mother who now was dying. We were walking up the sidewalk and all was well. I trusted her for some brief moment in that walk. Maybe I had even held her hand and skipped, who knows.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
I fell asleep eventually that night, it was November outside but a hot, heavy August night in my mind. It was so real it was surreal. I had a very unusual dream that night, and of course I knew it was a dream. I’m not crazy. I don’t confuse dreams with reality. In the dream I was walking up my parent’s driveway at night, it was the same kind of night, summer, hot and heavy as I looked back on the dream. There was a light on over the porch, and on the porch were exactly three bags of bread arranged on the steps. I looked at the bags of bread and walked around to the back door. There was a man about to enter the house, he had on a white trench coat and was a frightening person. Later I wondered if he represented the angel of death. He looked me right in the eye for a long moment and then went in. When I entered the house it was empty and there was a trail of blood through the living room. I went on and discovered my parents, together, laying in a double bed in the room that had been my room. They had both been stabbed and were crying out to me as they were dying. I ran to a phone and tried to call for help but the line was dead. Of course I woke up at this point. I was helpless and it was scary.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
The next morning I got a call from the hospital saying that my mother had been brought in during the night. They said she was very ill and probably wouldn’t make it through the day. I went, and I had to make decisions on her behalf. I had the assessment of the doctor and I considered it, but I alone had to decide. I did what many people do, requesting no heroic measures be taken and for them to make her comfortable. There was no real hope of recovery and no real quality of life. They were to treat her infection, despite the fact that the doctor knew her body was in the process of shutting down. The doctor reassured me that I made a good and understandable decision, given the reality of her condition.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
I stayed by her beside for many hours over the next three days, I talked to her, held her hand, sang old hymns to her, forgave her, and said many things I cannot fully recall. The nurse had encouraged me to speak to her. She said the hearing was the last thing to go. She believed it was because “God calls us home.” So I talked a lot, even cried, she was unresponsive. I watched her labor for each breath, more and more. But eventually I had to go home. But then I was called back. But the moment came five minutes before my return. That was destined to be, for some reason. Somehow I believed I should be right there when her end came, but I wasn’t. Only God knows what it might have done to me. In a brief moment of chivalry, the person I married went in ahead of me as I spoke with the nurse. He later said he had wanted to know first what I was going in to.
I came in and looked upon her. There was such a sense of peace in the room in some profound way. It had been so different just hours before as she labored for each breath and I had sat there. Her body was still warm and I found myself fascinated with the elasticity of her hand and arm as I touched her and picked her flopping hand up. How could I be so detached? Was I in a morbid science lab? I don’t know. I didn’t cry, I was simply fascinated for lack of a better word. I guess I was stunned also. It had happened. It really had. Really. I mean, I don’t think she was making this one up. She was good, but not that good. I happened to have a disposable Kodak FunSaver camera in my purse, and I took it out and photographed her. Not to be weird, but I truly wanted to remember the moment with a photograph. I didn’t understand it, but I felt closer to her in her death experience than I had ever felt to her in my life. I must have, because over the preceding three days I had told her repeatedly that I loved her. And I think I did. It was some powerfully confusing deep attachment and inescapable reality.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
I gave her a wonderful funeral. I selected red roses and cried on the phone with some stranger when I ordered them, somehow I was overcome by the drama of the moment. It felt so surreal to be ordering flowers for my mother’s funeral. I also picked a special spray from the grandchildren. I found beautiful pictures of her when she was younger and displayed them in the casket. I buried her in the dress she wore to my father’s funeral in 1979. It was a small funeral in attendance. My pastor drove almost 3 hours to do the funeral, though he didn’t really know her. He did it because he knew me. My pastor knew how to walk me through this drama. At the beginning, he came up to the front row to greet me and spoke directly, quietly, sincerely and only to me, saying, “You have been a faithful daughter to the end.” I probably just nodded, I don’t recall.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
I wore her rings for almost four years. I felt I wanted to, because it reminded me that my dad had fulfilled his vows to her despite it all, and I so loved my dad. And it reminded me that I had made peace with her on some level the night she told me to put the rings on my finger and wear them. Many women wear their mother’s rings. Maybe I too had a mother. No one would have to know, they would just think it nice when they knew that those were my mother’s rings. They might think I must have been close with my mother. Maybe that would be a good thing for me.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
But somehow the saga didn’t end with her death. Rocks may break mirrors, but reality continues.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
Once someone said, along the lines of, “I read with mounting sorrow your recent emails…There is a great deal in the two messages. They are filled with the story of your continued efforts to love and support… They also tell the story of your helplessness in a situation that seems to have no end and no hope….if there were something that I knew to suggest that would help you to … I would quickly tell you that. But, I do not know what can help…I find you and your family very dear people. You are obviously sensitive, sincere, and deeply faithful. I believe that you are a woman of deep and strong faith, and that your faith has been a guiding force and a powerful strength for you over many years. I can testify to your faithfulness both to God and your husband…Please know of my continued prayers for you and my readiness to be of any assistance that I can be. I do not want to lose contact with you or your family.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
One day I took her rings off, as well as my own. I sat with my therapist and said, “My dad was my mom and my mom was my dad and I am my dad and (redacted).” And I wonder if I am crazy. Or wrong. But only I fully know this saga.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
I filled out a divorce packet, and I decided to write down this story. Hours later I wondered why I did it, that is, write down this story. People as tired as I am are crazy to write about the past. Aren’t they? And people as Christian as I am shouldn’t get divorced. Should they?
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
(redacted…) … Will it ever end? I’m cleaning up the crap. Saying “I do” was far easier than saying “I don’t.”
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow. Look away, walk away. End of story. Hope for tomorrow.
And “I do” want to believe. And I do want to say “I don’t” not believe.
amicrazyamiguiltyamibaddoilovedoihatewillthisend?
Throw it hard, but you will not break the past. Throw it now, and you will break today and change tomorrow.
I’m looking away, I’m walking away…is there hope for tomorrow?
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