Part 13

The Fall of the next year, 2000, I had my first child.

I ended up with a womb infection and mastitis.

Two weeks after that I had to get my gull bladder removed.

My Mother made the statement to me that “God was smoting me for all my sins”.

This is an erroneous statement as God does not smote us for our sins.

In fact the opposite is true.

God sent His Son (Jesus Christ) to take all our sins.

Not one or that days sins but every sin that we have ever committed

from the day that we were born to the day we lay dying on our death bed.

The idea that we have to keep asking forgiveness for our sins

or think that God punishes us for our sins is, in fact, a lie from Satan

to keep us in bondage.

At this point I was trying to maintain some level of a relationship

but I was just getting no where.

She disagreed with everything I said and told me everything I said was wrong.

She always was provoking me to anger,

always was jabbing till she would get a rise out of me and than….

I was the one that was wrong.

“I attacked her”, there was no winning.

I wasn't getting this crazy cycle…….yet.

I was still trying to figure out why we just could not get along.

My Dad had made the statement once that “if” we were

“Christians” why didn't we have any love for one another.

The question pulled at my brain and my heart as well.

Why??

No matter how hard I tried to get along with her,

I never measured up.

It was in this year that I also found out that my Grandma,

my Dad's mom in Salem, the one I had been living with the year before, had dementia.

My Grandmother was young, maybe 64.

When I researched dementia I found that there was a young dementia

and an old persons dementia.

My grandmother would qualify for the young dementia

which typical occurs when one has had too many blows to the head.

She had suffered three comas in her life time.

One from a car accident and the other two from her husband.

I know one was caused from being hit in the head with a chair.

The blows on the head leave bruising which eventually

restricts blood flow to the brain.

Again this was something my Mother would not accept.

Instead, informing me that my grandmother was just a drunk and a lair.

My grandmother did drink and one would think that she was lying about things

but I found that a lot of times she just didn't tell the “whole story”.

In other words she created a protective world from her abuse that she could function in.

It wasn't always reality but it was her safe place.

I had confronted my Grandmother about some of what she said one day concerning my dad.

She was going on about what a great guy he was.

I said “Grandma, what about beating his wife and all the other stuff.”

Her statement was “Don't think for a minute that I am happy with

what he has done.”

I could see that it did pain her and she did see what was going on.
It was probably the only time in her life that she admitted

her anguish over the situation.

I realized that she had created this imaginary world that she had made her safe place.

Where people didn't hurt her and there was no pain.

She was admitted to a home about a year later as my grandpa could not

control or care for her.

I only saw her one more time before she was admitted to the care home.

Our son was just a few months old.

When he woke up during the night she started yelling

“Don't let that mean man hit my baby. Don't let him hit my baby.”

I came to think that maybe she did not so much as have Alzheimers
but she just mentally lost it.

She could no longer hold it together anymore.

She died shortly after she turned 70.

My mom told my dad that she went to hell.