I am sharing this as part of my therapists advice to open up to my history with the aim of takining its power away
______________________________________________
June 2013
Naples, Florida
“It is none of your f*cking business”
It had been exactly 8 months since my father died in my arms in the very location I now stood. My mother is not in town. She’s in Virginia for the summer. I had flown to Florida a few months earlier to meet with her and establish my Florida residency. It had been 27 years since she and I had lived in the same state, and with my father gone, I wanted to be nearby. I was here to house hunt, and my fiancee had joined me.
As my ex-wife would later testify, I always put my mother on a pedestal. In her exact words, I thought she hung the moon. That statement was true, at least for 41 years six months and nine days, but that was all about to change with seven words.
My fiancee and I had arrived the night before. We rose early and spent the entire day fishing. I had texted with my mother throughout the day; it was pleasant and jovial - I had even sent her video of our little puppy swimming in the ocean. As my mother would later testify, it seemed like everything was perfect, there was no problem between us at all.
At this point in my life, I had been in therapy for the better part of a decade, dealing with a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder based on multiple traumatic childhood events. That diagnosis has since been upgraded to C-TR-PTSD, which means I have chronic/complex treatment resistant PTSD.
I was triggered on the boat by my mother’s response to the fact that we had brought our 4 pound Yorkie-Poo with us. Setting aside the fact that the dog is a licensed emotional support animal and thus cannot be denied admission anywhere, we were on my mother’s boat, which is named Josephine after our family Labrador. My sister, who lived about an hour away from my mother in Virginia but spent the majority of her time at my mom’s house, always brought her Great Dane and two cats to my mother’s house. Moreover, she often left them their under the care of my mother, along with her three infant adopted children, so that she could have some private time with her husband. I just could not believe my mother could have a problem with a cute little hypoallergenic 4 pound puppy swimming in the ocean off of the boat she named after our beloved dog.
I let it go at the time, but in hindsight, that was probably the first warning sign that an entire family that had just lost its patriarch was teetering on the brink.
We returned to my mother’s condo that evening and I took a shower. As I walked past the dining room, I caught a glimpse of my father’s old office behind it, and I remember being struck by how it looked like it was never his office. It is true that my mother and sister did what people do when one dies - they went through his belongings, carefully choosing what to keep for sentimental value, what to donate, what to get rid of. This is normal and healthy. In the interest of full disclosure, I was invited to participate. Even though I lived 2,500 miles away and was the only one of the three of us with a job, I could have arranged it. I didn’t. He died in my arms. My first experience with death. For reasons I will explain later, I believe he chose to die with me. I dreamed about him every night for over a year. I wasn’t ready to face the task of going through his things and deciding what to save and what not to save. I was consumed with questions of whether I did enough for him in his final minutes, and, again for reasons I will explain later, if It was my fault, accidentally, that he was dead.
As I reached the family room, exactly where his hospital bed was setup, exactly where he died in my arms eight months earlier, I had a flashback. For those of you that don't know about PTSD flashbacks, it was a series of still photos as if playing in my mind, akin to looking through a viewfinder with darkness all around but a singular focus on the images playing out before you. I suppose I knew in some sense where I was, but I would not have noticed if I was set on fire at the time.
The images were all too familiar at first.
There is one of my mother, my sister and I huddled in my sister’s upstairs bedroom roughly 25 years earlier.
My father’s men’s dress shoes echoing against the wooden floor downstairs as he paced and shouted. He warned that the entire house was “booby-trapped” and that if any of us set foot downstairs it would blow up.
Then there is the one of his footsteps coming up the stairs - we saw the end of his rifle enter the room before he did. He told us he would kill us. He shouted some more.
My mother, believe it or not, would later testify that my father "only" pulled his gun on us one time (as though if that were true, it would somehow be excusable). Then she followed, testifying that she cured the problem by allowing me to sleep on the floor of her room (next to the man that had pulled a gun on me and threatened my life) if I ever got scared.
"In the sea of hypocrisy, the shore is just another wave."
-Bob Weir
There is the image from a few years before that, when at 8 years old, I had to literally take a noose off of my sister’s neck as she tried to hang herself in the garage.
My father was driving away and rolled down his window and laughed at her, but this time, I saw my mother in the car next to him.
Then I remembered the cheap hotels we had fled to on prior occasions. I knew my mother promised to never bring us back to the torment, but somehow that hotel phone would always ring and he would always be on the other line. We would return home before we even unpacked. It hit me, she had told him exactly where we were. Every time.¹
Suddenly my mind is racing and I cannot make sense of it all. This is the woman that I referred to regularly as my savior and my saint, a woman I loved more than myself, a woman I thought of as strong and brave and protecting. A woman I trusted.
A woman that knew first hand exactly how violent and dangerous my father was, but never had any intention of protecting me. She left him the number of our hotel. She never unpacked the car. She had a plan, and my safety was not part of it. And out of his entire life, I was the only one willing to speak at his memorial service. That speaks volumes.
Now I wanted answers. I was in a rage. I had grown numb to the feelings toward my father’s abuse because at least he was upfront about it, but my mother was a Shakespearean coward:
“Oh what (wo)man may within (her) hide though angel on the outward side.”
And so I called my mother, to rip off her halo and expose for who she has always been, a selfish woman that forsake not only her sisters and her own father, which I will explain in a later post, but her own children's’ safety at the behest of her meal ticket.
Me: Mom, I want to know why you brought us back into that house with him. You would never have brought your grandchildren back into that house. Why wasn’t I worth protecting?
Mom: I am so sorry honey. I did the best I could. My mother had just passed and I was not thinking clearly.
Me: Mom that is complete bullshit, your mother died seven years earlier. I demand to know why you chose not to protect me. Would you have protected your grandchildren?
Mom: Yes, of course.
Me: Then why wouldn’t you protect me what is so wrong with me?
Mom: It was the 1970’s in Georgia and there was no alimony then and I could not have supported you.
Me: Mom I am a f*cking lawyer and I know that is not true and even if it were you would rather have me abused on end than be safe. I want you to tell me the truth, why wouldn’t you protect me?
Mom: It is none of your f*cking business.
Call ended.
I knew the truth before I made the call, I just had to hear it from her. I was now in a full blown episode. I tore through her house and I smashed the three things in there I had purchased her over the years - two watercolors of elephants and a Martin guitar. I smashed them to pieces, photographed them and left.
But this is the end of the story, or very near to it. To truly understand this moment we have to go all the way back to 1975.
_______________________________________________
¹Side Note: We would always meet my father the day he called at the River House Restaurant near Huntcliff, GA. My father said he was sorry, that work was stressful and how about we buy our first VCR? That's just the first example of an electronic that my safety was bartered for. Guess what we did. My safety for a VCR. More on that later.
______________________________________________
June 2013
Naples, Florida
“It is none of your f*cking business”
It had been exactly 8 months since my father died in my arms in the very location I now stood. My mother is not in town. She’s in Virginia for the summer. I had flown to Florida a few months earlier to meet with her and establish my Florida residency. It had been 27 years since she and I had lived in the same state, and with my father gone, I wanted to be nearby. I was here to house hunt, and my fiancee had joined me.
As my ex-wife would later testify, I always put my mother on a pedestal. In her exact words, I thought she hung the moon. That statement was true, at least for 41 years six months and nine days, but that was all about to change with seven words.
My fiancee and I had arrived the night before. We rose early and spent the entire day fishing. I had texted with my mother throughout the day; it was pleasant and jovial - I had even sent her video of our little puppy swimming in the ocean. As my mother would later testify, it seemed like everything was perfect, there was no problem between us at all.
At this point in my life, I had been in therapy for the better part of a decade, dealing with a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder based on multiple traumatic childhood events. That diagnosis has since been upgraded to C-TR-PTSD, which means I have chronic/complex treatment resistant PTSD.
I was triggered on the boat by my mother’s response to the fact that we had brought our 4 pound Yorkie-Poo with us. Setting aside the fact that the dog is a licensed emotional support animal and thus cannot be denied admission anywhere, we were on my mother’s boat, which is named Josephine after our family Labrador. My sister, who lived about an hour away from my mother in Virginia but spent the majority of her time at my mom’s house, always brought her Great Dane and two cats to my mother’s house. Moreover, she often left them their under the care of my mother, along with her three infant adopted children, so that she could have some private time with her husband. I just could not believe my mother could have a problem with a cute little hypoallergenic 4 pound puppy swimming in the ocean off of the boat she named after our beloved dog.
I let it go at the time, but in hindsight, that was probably the first warning sign that an entire family that had just lost its patriarch was teetering on the brink.
We returned to my mother’s condo that evening and I took a shower. As I walked past the dining room, I caught a glimpse of my father’s old office behind it, and I remember being struck by how it looked like it was never his office. It is true that my mother and sister did what people do when one dies - they went through his belongings, carefully choosing what to keep for sentimental value, what to donate, what to get rid of. This is normal and healthy. In the interest of full disclosure, I was invited to participate. Even though I lived 2,500 miles away and was the only one of the three of us with a job, I could have arranged it. I didn’t. He died in my arms. My first experience with death. For reasons I will explain later, I believe he chose to die with me. I dreamed about him every night for over a year. I wasn’t ready to face the task of going through his things and deciding what to save and what not to save. I was consumed with questions of whether I did enough for him in his final minutes, and, again for reasons I will explain later, if It was my fault, accidentally, that he was dead.
As I reached the family room, exactly where his hospital bed was setup, exactly where he died in my arms eight months earlier, I had a flashback. For those of you that don't know about PTSD flashbacks, it was a series of still photos as if playing in my mind, akin to looking through a viewfinder with darkness all around but a singular focus on the images playing out before you. I suppose I knew in some sense where I was, but I would not have noticed if I was set on fire at the time.
The images were all too familiar at first.
There is one of my mother, my sister and I huddled in my sister’s upstairs bedroom roughly 25 years earlier.
My father’s men’s dress shoes echoing against the wooden floor downstairs as he paced and shouted. He warned that the entire house was “booby-trapped” and that if any of us set foot downstairs it would blow up.
Then there is the one of his footsteps coming up the stairs - we saw the end of his rifle enter the room before he did. He told us he would kill us. He shouted some more.
My mother, believe it or not, would later testify that my father "only" pulled his gun on us one time (as though if that were true, it would somehow be excusable). Then she followed, testifying that she cured the problem by allowing me to sleep on the floor of her room (next to the man that had pulled a gun on me and threatened my life) if I ever got scared.
"In the sea of hypocrisy, the shore is just another wave."
-Bob Weir
There is the image from a few years before that, when at 8 years old, I had to literally take a noose off of my sister’s neck as she tried to hang herself in the garage.
My father was driving away and rolled down his window and laughed at her, but this time, I saw my mother in the car next to him.
Then I remembered the cheap hotels we had fled to on prior occasions. I knew my mother promised to never bring us back to the torment, but somehow that hotel phone would always ring and he would always be on the other line. We would return home before we even unpacked. It hit me, she had told him exactly where we were. Every time.¹
Suddenly my mind is racing and I cannot make sense of it all. This is the woman that I referred to regularly as my savior and my saint, a woman I loved more than myself, a woman I thought of as strong and brave and protecting. A woman I trusted.
A woman that knew first hand exactly how violent and dangerous my father was, but never had any intention of protecting me. She left him the number of our hotel. She never unpacked the car. She had a plan, and my safety was not part of it. And out of his entire life, I was the only one willing to speak at his memorial service. That speaks volumes.
Now I wanted answers. I was in a rage. I had grown numb to the feelings toward my father’s abuse because at least he was upfront about it, but my mother was a Shakespearean coward:
“Oh what (wo)man may within (her) hide though angel on the outward side.”
And so I called my mother, to rip off her halo and expose for who she has always been, a selfish woman that forsake not only her sisters and her own father, which I will explain in a later post, but her own children's’ safety at the behest of her meal ticket.
Me: Mom, I want to know why you brought us back into that house with him. You would never have brought your grandchildren back into that house. Why wasn’t I worth protecting?
Mom: I am so sorry honey. I did the best I could. My mother had just passed and I was not thinking clearly.
Me: Mom that is complete bullshit, your mother died seven years earlier. I demand to know why you chose not to protect me. Would you have protected your grandchildren?
Mom: Yes, of course.
Me: Then why wouldn’t you protect me what is so wrong with me?
Mom: It was the 1970’s in Georgia and there was no alimony then and I could not have supported you.
Me: Mom I am a f*cking lawyer and I know that is not true and even if it were you would rather have me abused on end than be safe. I want you to tell me the truth, why wouldn’t you protect me?
Mom: It is none of your f*cking business.
Call ended.
I knew the truth before I made the call, I just had to hear it from her. I was now in a full blown episode. I tore through her house and I smashed the three things in there I had purchased her over the years - two watercolors of elephants and a Martin guitar. I smashed them to pieces, photographed them and left.
But this is the end of the story, or very near to it. To truly understand this moment we have to go all the way back to 1975.
_______________________________________________
¹Side Note: We would always meet my father the day he called at the River House Restaurant near Huntcliff, GA. My father said he was sorry, that work was stressful and how about we buy our first VCR? That's just the first example of an electronic that my safety was bartered for. Guess what we did. My safety for a VCR. More on that later.
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