I was less than 5 years old when I saw my father beat my mother with closed fists. This happened in my biological family, before the CAS took us away.
"Why did you hit Mommy?" I asked my father. "I didn't." he said.
I think that memory stayed with me my entire life, because there was a disconnect between what I saw and the answer I received. When the mind can't reconcile events like this, it can become a memory that haunts.
My mother suffered from mental illness and for those first 5 years of my life she was in and out of mental hospitals. She took the physical and emotional abuse my father heaped on her. Maybe she didn't think she deserved any better.
When my father started abusing his children though, she gathered all the strength she could and left him, taking us with her. Unfortunately, without the social safety net we have today, she was unable to support 4 children and she sank deeper and deeper into psychosis, until one day the police showed up with a CAS worker. She spent the next 7 years in a psychiatric hospital; we spent the rest of our childhood in foster homes.
I have a new appreciation for how she tried to protect us. When I was younger, I perceived her loss of us as a "weakness". When I became a mother myself, I felt that she should have been able to hold it together for the sake of her children. Now I feel a sadness, that all these years after she's gone, I finally understand and appreciate her.
My father remarried, to a woman who had 5 children - 3 girls, 2 boys. I don't know if he abused his wife, but I do know he abused her children. She knew about the abuse and yet she stayed. When I talked to her about it, she felt she had no options, no way to leave him. When he went to jail for sexually assaulting her daughters and a grand daughter though, she covered for him. And waited for him to return. At his funeral a couple of years ago, she tried to give me a hug, and I couldn't.
"Why not?" she asked. "I never did anything to you."
"Because you stayed." I told her.
My mind can't reconcile this and it's become a haunting memory. Why does a woman stay with a pedophile? Why does she cover for him and protect him? Why does she let him hurt her children? Is it weakness? Is it insecurity or lack of intelligence? I can't understand it.
She wasn't an evil person herself - she was a bit gruff (east coasters tend to be like that), but I don't think she was a "bad" person. I am reminded of the following quote though "All it takes for evil to survive is for good men to do nothing." She did nothing, and evil survived.
She passed away 2 days ago at the age of 85. I didn't go to see her in the hospital. To be honest, because of my condemnation of her, my presence would only have upset her. I'll go to her funeral though, out of respect for my step brother and his family. She was his mother after all.
A chapter in my life is now over. I thank her, for helping me to respect and appreciate how hard my mother tried, with everything stacked against her to protect her children. That's what mothers are supposed to do. I finally forgive my mother for not being stronger - she obviously was an amazing person.
This work by Suzette Leeming is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License.
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