Entries tagged with "mother"
My mom told me that when you go to heaven, God gives you all the balloons you lost when you were alive. The only part that sucks about that, is that I’m afraid of balloons. I know what you’re thinking, something along the lines of, ‘who’s afraid of balloons?’ Yeah, I’ve heard that before. But when you think, and I mean really think, you might be able to understand my logic behind it. Since you don’t actually know how I think yet, I’ll explain it this once. It’s like this: Picture yourself holding this pretty, shiny balloon. You’re holding this balloon when all of a sudden, the balloon hits something that’s barely even sharp or pointy, like the goddamn ceiling or something. The balloon pops, but not in a way that it’s like a bubble popping and it makes no sound. Nope, when this balloon pops it’s like a mini explosion. It’s basically a time bomb, but you don’t know when the boom happens. My beautiful play toy just scared the crap out of me. No, God, you can keep those balloons that I set free. Give them to someone else that loves being scared at random times. Someone that’s truly messed up, but that seems like everyone.
I’m sitting in Ann Arbor eating ice cream across from someone I’ve loved for a long time. He doesn’t even know it. We’ve been friends since my mom passed away after a four year battle against lung cancer. I love him ‘cause he doesn’t give me shit for smoking cigarettes. I know if I wasn’t moving to California we could be together. I think he knows we would help each other, but what he doesn’t know is that he could probably save me. He looks cute with the ice cream on his shirt. I feel funny writing all this with him so close…
Indiscretion is a bitch. I’m just sayin.
I wanted to speak about my father, the greatest man I know. I was blessed to have him as a father for he gave me and my family everything he could muster. Since I was ten my mother contracted a rare hypothyroid illness and became a different person ever since. She never stopped loving us kids though. My father took on all the responsibilities of the house hold due to this. I attempted to help him, however, he denied me the opportunity. I asked him “Why not? I’m only trying to help.” My father responded “Cause you need to focus on your studies. I won’t be able to pay for your college or help you in any other way since I left work to help out here. This is the least I can do for you to have the best life you can have.” I will always remember this for the rest of my life. I wish I could thank him more and more for his efforts, however I feel it lays on deaf ears since from all the stress from years of unrest given by my mother who only complained and caused only grief. He formed two strokes and a pulmonary embolism. To this day my father has never looked, talked, or held me the same… Acting as if he’s in a fog with no recognition of his surroundings and I wish I could see him every weekend if possible in the nursing home he’s currently in. I love him and always will.
In high school, senior year, I would leave school and visit my mother at work just across the street. This went on for month until I showed up and she wasn’t there.
I asked around and I was informed that she was taken to the hospital with a stomach flu.
I rushed over to the hospital, finding her sitting in a wheelchair resting in a corner. When I approached her, she was sweating and holding one of those plastic banana containers issued by the hospital. I figured it was used for any vomit she might need to catch.
There was something I noticed that day that forever sticks in my mind. The top three buttons on her shirt were undone, exposing her bra. When I looked at the front of her bra I saw that there was a safety pin holding it together. It seems the bra once had a fastener but since had broken and she replaced it with a safety pin. It dawned on me that my mother would not even buy herself anything to sacrifice for her children. That was a thrilling point in my life because it told me I had no excuses about being a success. If she was willing to forsake everything for me, then I had to do the same for her.
My name is Patrick. I’m 15 years old and my mom just caught me smoking marijuana. I feel disappointed in myself.
I didn’t know what it was like to have a loving mother until I moved out. Even though I see her every week, I’m scared that I’m being a bad daughter because I decided to grow up and live my own life. I’m even more scared that when she’s gone, I’m going to regret not seeing her more often when I had the chance.
I hadn’t seen or spoken to my mother for more than six months when she died. I hadn’t lived with her for more than three years. I was 18, three days into a vacation in the same state that she lived in, just three hours away from her, when I got the call. My friend and I were stuck in the middle of the road going to an apartment — her car shut off and we were waiting for help. I threw up. I spent the next two weeks and all of my vacation money driving all over Florida, signing consent forms and talking to coroners and cops. She died of a drug overdose, made possible by a dirty doctor who was “treating” her for a painful disease she didn’t have. She paid him in cash for every prescription he wrote. Only one family member came down to be there. She was cremated. We had a small memorial service, during which my great aunt allowed 12 of my mother’s closest drug dealers to come into her house, get drunk, steal her prescriptions and my cigarettes, and eat all her food.
Afterward, my family member went back to Illinois, and I left my great aunt’s house and flew back to NYC. I left her remains with my oldest friend, in the back of her closet. It took almost another six months before I bothered to send them to my family members in Illinois. When we got them, we dumped them into an unnamed river. I cried.
I’m 20 now. I can’t stop thinking about that time. She had been on drugs since I was 10 years old. I have called 911 more than thirteen times to have her stomach pumped. I had been in five major car accidents, including smashing into the side of a semi at 40 mph and rolling a car twice end over end and three times side over side down an embankment and hitting a tree due to her drug-impaired state. I had been waiting for her to die for almost ten years. She ruined my vacation.
My mother is allowing cancer to kill her with out a fight.
She thinks the Dr.’s gave her cancer.
She thinks everyone is out to get her.
I am so scared that I am going to end up like her. I hope I can’t catch her crazy.
Every day, I live in your house, and I follow your rules, and I cook your food, and I grow up slowly. You ask me for thanks. Thanks for what? Thanks for not having a job, thanks for the second hand smoke, or thanks for the smoking during your pregnancy with me that has messed up my lungs, thanks for sleeping all day and thanks for never being proud of me for one thing, ever? Oh, yeah, thanks for yelling at me whenever you’re not high, and thanks for reminding me how different I am, and how you have no idea where I could have ever gotten it from.
Yeah, I’m sure different. I play five instruments, and I’m fourteen. I’m an artist. I love to cook. I’m in advanced classes, two years ahead in math and one year ahead in science. I’ve pushed myself my whole life to make you proud of me.
Yeah, you never beat me.
But you sure let my sister beat me.
And I remember the day where you yelled at me so loudly that you spit on me. I just stood my ground. What were you talking about? Oh, yeah, how you’re the parent and I’m not. Is that why I take care of myself? I cook my own food, dress myself, do my homework without help because you’re not smart enough to help me (If you went to college you could) and pack my own lunches, clean up dishes, and still fit in time for my own pleasure?
I heard a fact that twelve newborns are given to the wrong parents each day, how sad is that? And yet, I wonder if I was the one in twelve on my birthday that was?
But it can’t be true. I have your eyes, I have your face, I have your voice, and sometimes I have your anger.
But I swear I will never act like you, never be anything like you. I wish I had been one of those twelve and was sent away to a happy, peaceful life where I could have never known you. Where you could have never known me. But I know that then, another child would have taken my place.
And I would not wish that on anybody, mother.
Yeah, this scar on my wrist? It was never a cat scratch. Just be glad you haven’t seen the ones on my ankle. I know you wouldn’t be happy about them. But then again, when are you ever happy about anything I do?
About once a week I go and visit a man in his early fifties. He is, I think, the saddest man in the world. After years of drugs and alcohol in the 70s, he had a very sour relationship with his mother. He left for the army without mentioning a word to her. The army helped to clean him up, but sadly very few of his issues started before the army. Hepatitis from a tattoo in Korea, a cheating wife, a liver transplant, and two of this three wonderful boys dying in an instant has driven him into a state of constant sorrow.
Going to see him is rarely fun or uplifting, I usually leave with a lump wedged in my throat and a pitiful twenty he forces me to take for moving firewood. It is usually a chore to go visit, something I only do for his sanity. With a second failing liver and a very bitter sweet dream home, every visit is more sad than the last; it seems that every day his stomach is bulging more and his face is more tired. There is nothing I can ever do to cheer him up, let alone keep a smile for more than a few minutes. There isn’t much I can do for the saddest man in the world, beside sit and give him someone to talk to.
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