Chapter 38
Norma’s Hope
My mother favored my daughter over my son. She would send a box a presents to the house. Nine gifts for my daughter and one for my son. Looking back she never really liked or trusted the men in her life. I think it started with my great grandfather who took advantage of her as a young child.
I really don’t think she trusted anyone with a penis. My father, my son and me, all felt the distance in her fake smile. So my sister and daughter were of course blessed. There are many families were one gender is more favored then the other.
The last time I saw my mother alive, she stormed out of my house and never said good bye to me or my children.
She had invited herself up to visit my daughter Kelly for her “Grand Parents Day” at her school. It happened to be a circuit assembly weekend. Our house only had one bathroom at the time. She as usual my mother played martyr and let everyone use the bathroom ahead of her. Needless to say she didn’t have enough time to get ready. She set in our car on our ride to the assembly hall totally pissed off. Her hair looked like the bride of Frankenstein. Once there she ended up setting with other people and not with us. That night after the meeting we all went out for pizza with some of her and my friends. She set at the far end of the table telling my friends what a disappoint I was. We drove back to the house. She went in got her bags, turned around and left.
“Bye mom.” There was no reply.
Three months later we got the phone call. She was dead.
She died at her fortieth high school class reunion in Kansas. There was only nine people in her graduating class. One guy who lived across the street didn’t even go to it. Even though she hadn’t lived in Kansas in forty years she told everyone she wanted to be buried there. She got her wish.
You could say she killed herself. She had a heart valve replaced. After the operation she was required to take Coumadin as blood thinner. She stop taking the medication. She said it made her arthritis flare up. She said herbs would work just as good as any blood thinner. This time when she was wrong it killed her. She got a blood clot to the brain and died. You couldn’t tell my mother anything. My father used to tell us when German babies are borne they would open up their head and take the brain out and pour in concrete.
Meryl Freeman gave her funeral talk. Like all Jehovah’s Witness funeral talks they spend about five minutes talking about the person that died and thirty minutes talking about “Norma’s hope.” Yes five whole minutes to describe a person’s whole life. The society never misses an opportunity to plug it’s believes to a captive audience. The speaker even gets to “counts his time” giving this talk as if he was going door to door. No wonder so many non-witnesses walk away from theirs funerals shaking their heads.
She was buried in a small pioneer cemetery in the middle of nowhere. There was only one house visible from the grave site. There were cows inside and walking around the old lime stone farm house, with its roof caved in. They told me my mother had been born in that house fifty seven years earlier. It has been said, that life is a circle. This circle started and ended just a few hundred yard from each other.
I didn’t cry at her funeral not because I didn’t love her. She was devoid of empathy. I know it’s tough to have empathy if you weren’t raised with any. On the other hand we can all choose the path of love and forgiveness.
She died a very unhappy person. Her unhappiness is what made the Jehovah’s Witnesses promises so appealing. Pie in the sky when you die.
She had a hard life. Sexually abused as a child. She always had poor physical heath. Married to a man she really didn’t love or respected. A hard life with plenty of guilt.
Like thousands of others she was looked forward to just one thing.
She was waiting every day for Armageddon to show up.
The day god would be killing billions of people so the Jehovah’s Witnesses could finally be happy in their paradise.
That was nineteen eighty three.