By popular request

I have to warn you, if I tried to present my birth mother's life as a telenovela script it would get rejected for being "too out there". 

She was born during WW2.  Her father served and died serving.  But her mother didn't get the pension payments for over a decade (see the other grandmother stories for that one).  She stated she had been abused by her mother (who was later diagnosed schizophrenic and definitely had PTSD from her husband's death).  

My mother was a piano prodigy and at one point owned 3 pianos.  She loved to play but stated her mother had "chained me to the piano and that is why I will never force you to play the piano if you don't like it". She never spoke to me about her childhood but my sister says it was pretty bad.  

It must have been, my mother ran away from home, met her first husband,got pregnant and married at age 12, had my brother age 13. Then she had my sister a year later.  My brother has stated "Mom moved around a lot and would leave me with different people, then come back when she was doing better". Nor surprisingly my brother had big time behavioral issues as a result. My sister has said her paternal grandmother raised them quite a bit. 

Their dad was an alcoholic and it must have been a difficult marriage. My mother started drinking and that amplified her bipolar disorder.  Their Dad was in a car wreck driving drunk, flipped his car, trapped in it as it slowly filled up with water, when my sister was 18 and swore off alcohol after that. 

My brother had a job he couldn't talk about but he is very proud of what he did do. He works in a manufacturing plant in Florida and owns a couple of acres. His daughter lives with him and they look out for each other. 

My sister got involved in a cult in her late teens and has never gotten out (Watchman Nee/Local Church movement).  She married, had 3 kids.  Divorced her husband after finding out he was autistic "I thought I could 'fix' him with therapy" I have my own opinions on that as you can imagine. She lives alone with her cat and visits her grand kids whenever possible. 

My mother went on to marry and divorce 5 other men (I was told some of them were annulments). My aunt says she was beautiful and very intelligent and men flocked to her.  She was a technical writer in addition to the piano. 

One of the men she married was an Italian mobster his family is apparently well known in some circles.  Her mother in law taught her how to cook (she was apparently a very good cook). She was (my mother) bipolar and alcoholic so you can imagine the marriage was pretty rocky.  They were on the verge of divorce when she found out she was pregnant. She attempted suicide by gun and lost the baby but they saved her.  Which is a good thing as I was years away.  

She met my Dad at a party and they had a whirlwind romance.  She would talk about him and ask me questions about his new wife when she saw me (very seldom) and always seemed a little "sweet" on him. 

Dad says the marriage was hell. He has blacked out large portions of those 10 years.  They had a baby who died of meningitis at 2 weeks that was very traumatic for both of them. She wanted another baby so they tried until they had me.  

Unfortunately she was still drinking during the pregnancy so I have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. And after my birth she had what I believe to be severe postpartum issues which led to extreme neglect of me.  Eventually I have been told Child Services got involved, my mother surrendered custody to my Dad and left. 

She married again and I remember visiting them. He was a very nice older man. He died of melanoma a year or two later. When he could he took me fishing. He left her quite a bit of money. 

She spiraled I believe and I never saw her.  I had a few visits in late 85 but that was it.  She was in and out of mental hospitals.  Eventually she was diagnosed with bipolar and "Did really well on the lithium when she took it".  But he wasn't taking it consistently, mixing it with drugs and alcohol. 

She would call me after I was diagnosed with FAS (I was not told of the diagnosis just that I had a neurological disability) sobbing, very drunk, apologizing. I always told her "it was OK" but the calls were exhausting. She wanted, she would tell me,to know she loved me and I told her I loved her too even though I barely knew her. 

I was advised not to look her up after I moved out. I didn't.  I felt God prompting me to pray for her, I did that very inconsistently. I had a lot of anger when I found out she damaged me. 

She died all alone in a motel room, of a heart attack, the same kind of heart attack as him actually.  Like Ron she had a 2 liter bottle of vodka at her side. My sister told me she had never been saved. 

Later on she admitted my mother had, in fact, written her a letter saying she had gotten saved at an altar call but it wasn't the cult church my sister attended so she felt it didn't count.  I was quite angry about that. I thought my mother had been in hell for years. 

She had sent me a will saying my brother and I got a thousand dollars each, and my sister got the rest.  My mother got involved with some sort of commune and signed over all her money some time before she died. But a lawyer found a checking account with $2,500 in it after his fee. My sister lied to him and said there was no will so he would split it three way so she got more money. I guess she thought I was stupid. I let her get away with it but I felt it showed her character. 

After that I wasn't too surprised at Ron's family trying to get a death certificate so they could get their "big" life insurance payout. 

That's it.

One last thing.  When I was at the hospital and I got my diagnosis (the one that requires daily medication) my first thought was "I will NOT become my mother". She had so much chaos and drama.  I don't drink and I take everything consistently.  So her life did serve me in that regard. 

She's pretty much the reason I never had kids.  I would rather not have kids than damage them the way my mother did. And God says I get a family in Heaven.