A town in Norway:
I was looking at my mother, still beautiful, because she had always
been a beautiful woman, but now she was gone.
I cried.
She had suffered from cancer for at least 10 years, but probably for
longer, because it had taken a long time before she was diagnosed.
She never expressed herself in a personal way to me.
There was always the duties, she was dutiful.
But why was she so cold?
I think she was holding on to bitterness, always blaming my father.
As a young woman, she had come from the country to the city to
work, and there she met my father.
He had «made» her pregnant shortly after they met.
He was not «good enough» for my mother's family, and even though
she married him, she made him the scapegoat for everything that
did not go well afterwards.
Regarding this unplanned pregnancy, which resulted in the marriage,
as an adult I heard her say that:
«I made my bed and I lay in it».
She did not set out to hurt us, it was not intentional on her part.
But the result is the same, it is cause and effect.
If there is no input of love and safety into a child,
the child cannot live and grow, it can only find ways to survive.
«Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love»
(1 John 4:8)(ESV)
2005: A town in Ireland
With the drink, my husband was often aggressive and frightening,
and that provided the link to my childhood, to my mother.
I had succeeded in finding someone with whom I could
«tick the box» of living in fear, to satisfy the unconscious drive to
re-create the fundamental, original experience of what is «normal».
I was thus able to maintain the same
interior state of tension, of watching myself, in regard to him,
that I had lived in relation to my mother.
Despite of this, there was good times too, because he had many
good qualities, he was outgoing, he could be very generous, kind
and funny.
We wanted to have children, but after a year and a half and I was
still not pregnant, my ex husband, who was still a practising and
believing Catholic at the time, told me that we were going to pray
the Rosary.
I was a new Catholic, a beginner, and I was at the time not aware of
the immense power of the Holy Rosary.
But every night, we kneeled down and prayed the Rosary together.
I soon became pregnant, and we had a beautiful boy.
Two years after, I had an agonizing ectopic pregnancy and
after that it became difficult to conceive again, but then I remembered
how we had prayed the Rosary together a few years before.
My ex husband did not pray any more, although he still went to Mass,
but he was becoming less and less interested in the Church.
So I prayed the Rosary on my own, as I really wanted to have a little brother
for our son.
I became pregnant, and our second beautiful son was born.
When he was 2 years and 3 months, I noticed a hard lump on his left arm.
My husband told me not to worry, but I was indeed very worried and took him to
the doctor, who immediately signed him in to the hospital.
Our beautiful little boy was diagnosed with bone cancer.
The surgeon Mr. Brian Hurson told me that it was a possibility that he would
have no choice but to amputate the arm at the elbow, where the tumor was
located.
When he saw my reaction of horror, he explained that there would be no point in
saving the arm, and losing the child, explaining that if he would not be able to
remove all the cancerous cells, that would be the scenario.
But first of all, he had to have chemotherapy, in order to reduce the tumor before
the surgery to remove it.
My husband was never able to implicate himself in all that happened.
He never stayed with us in hospital.
On the first surgery to remove the tumor, when I did not know if the arm would
be amputated or not, he told me he could not be with us, because he had to work.
He worked black for a painting contractor at the time, and there was nothing that
prevented him from being with us.
He even went as far as telling me I could not contact him on his mobile phone.
After the operation, which lasted many hours, I had to phone his boss to tell him
that his son still had his arm.
The surgeon's nurse told me that the surgeon would always go to the Oratory
in the hospital and pray, before he would perform any operation, as he was a
devout Catholic.
Between all the different hospitals where our son had chemotherapy,
surgery and blood transfusions I spent years in hospital with him.
He was an incredible easy going patient, I know it is hard to believe;
but he never complained once.
He started school with a big heavy steel frame screwed onto his arm in
an attempt of reconstruction, and in spite of constant infections in it,
he smiled always.
And when he got older he used to come with me on hill walking trips.
My husband's heavy drinking never ceased. I asked him many times, up through
the years, to do something with it, because it was clear that it was becoming a
problem in our marriage,it was a block to a real authentic union that a marriage is
supposed to be.
There was less and less time together, in the end there was nothing.
He was not there for me, nor for his children. I was relying on good neighbours
to bring our sons to GAA training or other activities, as I had no car.
He was too busy «having a few drinks» in some pub or other.
But on this, he was clear and unambigious:
« I will never give up drinking for your sake,» he said.
I knew I still loved him, but I also knew that not even I could sustain that flame,
for much longer, on my own.
I wanted to try to save both the love and the marriage, but for that to happen,
we would both have to change things.
Proper communication between us would have had to be established.
This would have necessitated a lot of effort from both of us, and in addition,
from him: sobriety.
It did not happen.
Bit by bit, the flame died, and only the abuse remained.
«Listen, just do what you want to do, but don't bring it home,»
he said one night.
For him it seemed like a solution, since the possibility of giving up
the drink and taking stock of his life and our marriage, was not an option.
It proved to me that he did not love me, or cherish me in any way.
It also in some way echoed my mother's words to me when I was little,
when she wanted me out of the way: «Go out and play». (leave me alone)
«But we stay together,» he said.
Two years later, there was no relationship left, we lived different lives.
I spoke to him one day about the mediation services that I had been in contact
with.
His reaction was violent.
He stood in front of me in the living room and quite calmly and cooly he said:
«I will get you killed. It won't be me that will do it, but you will be dead»,
then he left the room.
I just stood there, frozen, for quite some time, it felt like I was unable to move.
After a while I went upstairs to my bed room, I layed down on the bed,
looked at the ceiling, asked myself what I should do.
I was terrified, I knew he meant it,
and that he was capable of it.
He had strong connections with the Provisional IRA, he had good friends
there that used to come to our house to visit.
I knew he hid guns for them. He told me a few times that
the Gardai (the Police) might come to our house asking me questions, when
he himself would not be at home, which was the most likely scenario anyway,
since he was not at home much.
He told me that the method of the police would be to threaten me with taking the
kids away from me, but that I was, under no circumstance, to tell them anything.
Knowing all this about my husband, I had no reason not to believe him when he
told me he would have me killed.
I managed to get up and walk out the door. I walked into the village, where I went
into the Garda Station and reported him.
Thank God.
During the court appearance that followed, the Garda (police man) that had taken
my report, came and testified for me, and I won a Safety Order against my husband.
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