Now back to the present and a move to a different state I have tasked myself to finally go through all the papers and things from both parents to "organize" and get rid of needless papers piling up in file cabinets. Last week when I started the first thing I found was my mom's wallet. Tears from nowhere spilled out and I had a hard time breathing (Her wallet is still untouched). But I pushed on with the paperwork. Finding divorce decrees from both of my parents various marriages birth certificates, to old letters it is a combination of who they were. What they both chose to keep as precious memories and keepsakes are so widely different.
For my dad he was all about business. His papers are of his business accomplishments. His awards, first companies started, business models, thoughts and ideas. It was so him. My dad ran his own company and for my whole life he worked 7 days a week going into the office on weekends and holidays. He made a business that would profit and flounder depending on the housing market but he never gave up. When he retired I was afraid of what he might get up to. Being used to working so much to having no work can be a shocking change. He decided to learn how to use the computer and browse the internet and to this day the stories of what antics he got up to will have to be another blog.
My mother on the other hand is a different picture. What can I say about her life looking at the things she kept. She had a hard life, coming from poverty and ending impoverished. She had an illness that would affect her livelihood, her job, her family, her relationship to me her only daughter. My mom was mentally ill. I don't know when her illness took over so much at times that her "normal" life was made a disaster. For me as a child what others viewed as crazy I saw as my life. I had no idea until that one day coming home from school and my family was there telling me she was in the mental institution and I was going to foster care until my dad could get me. A shock and then a realization that the quirks and the abuses she imposed on my life were in someway related to this bipolar illness. After that years were spent with her able to lead a normal life to moments of manic psychosis, delusions, sleepless nights, erratic rants, excessive spending, a complete glimpse of chthonic hell. When she died she was left with nothing but bills, family and one lone friend. There was only one or two friends in her life that were always there for her through the crazy and sane. The rest gone with the wind at the hint of that powerful illness.
As you can see going through what she deemed as precious keepsakes leaves me emotional because what I have found is a medley of mysteries that made my mother who she was. She was fiercely opposed to the idea she was mentally ill. She never accepted it and thus taking her medicine which would of helped reduce the antics was reduced to being court ordered.
Besides the normal high school diplomas, divorce decrees, awards and certificates below is a list of the bizarre things she kept as keepsakes:
- One Valentine's card from the love her her life, Dan. Dan broke her heart many times the last getting married to another woman while still dating my mom. When that happened she had a what I remember as her first "nervous" breakdown as she called it.
- 1978: A Christmas card from a lady who writes in ALL CAPS "I still don't see what you are going to do with this table" and then a $125.00 receipt for a table?? Why would someone be pissed she bought a table?
- All of her copies of every time she was involuntary committed to a mental institution. These are painful to read as they bring up all the memories of things she did. My cousin told me that she asked my mom about these times. And she replied that in her head the delusions she had she really believed happened. Picture the movie It's a Beautiful Life how he believed it was real. So did she.
- 1983(I lived with my dad permanently by this time): Copies of letters from my dad, his lawyer, trust paperwork talking about how the money was to be for my college and she could not touch it. My mom always believed that my dad's money was hers. They divorced when I was four years old and he didn't come into any money from work until I was in my teens but my mother was always harassing him and me for money. There is a letter from my dad to her stating that since I had been living with him for over two years now he was going to not send child support anymore but a small sum to essentially keep her happy. She got that small sum from him up until I was in my mid twenties, married with children.
- 1989: A few really nasty letters from this angry gay man who left his lover because of things my mom said and did. This was during one of her manic days, I think this delusion was that my dad was the head of the FBI and was spying on her. She was caught breaking into people's apartments thinking that is where my dad was staying to spy on her. He didn't even live in the state but 1300 miles away!
- 1991: A thank you letter from a child thanking her for sitting with her in the lunchroom. I found this touching and sweet.
- 1993: Bizzare letter from an homeless lady that my mom let crash at her place while she was in a manic stage. The letter reads like something out of a conspiracy theory. The lady is telling my mom that she believes all of the things my mother said. The government is out to get us. I am not sure where my mom found this lady.
I think I want to see what memories I have kept along my life, what do they say about me?
~Peace out!
