Pulling The Trigger On Memories

[Fljotsdale]

Originally posted by Sazerac: Apologies to any I may offend by this post, as I know we have people here with different beliefs. My mother's vision, though, offered comfort to us as we struggled to cope with our loss. To this day, it still brings a sense of awe to me. I think my mother was very fortunate to witness what she did. Thanks,

I can't imagine anyone being offended by that, Sazerac, whatever their beliefs. It is a very moving memory, and I am glad you shared it.
I had an odd experience myself after my mother died - not right away, but first a few days after, then again, several times, a week or two afterwards. My family think I am crazy - I think I am crazy! And Moni will not understand how come I don't believe in an afterlife!
Here 'tis:
I was in bed in mom's house, (I stayed there till the funeral) and I heard a mosquito buzzing round my head. Not wanting to get bitten, I put on the light, so I could see to kill it (I DO kill mosquitoes!) and get back to sleep. No sign of it, though, so I put out the light and went back to sleep. No more buzzing. I thought nothing of it, then, though I did have a thought 'that's mom', which I dismissed.
Back home a couple of weeks later I woke up with my mom's voice screaming my name. At the time I thought she sounded terrified, as though she had woken in the dark (she was afraid of the dark). But later, thinking about it, I thought she might just have been frustrated trying to make me hear her.
Then the mosquito came back. We don't normally get mosquitoes round here, and anyway the bedroom window had been shut for several days 'cos it was cold. Tried to find it again, though, with no luck. Same thing happened several nights, and I kept on getting the idea that it was mom trying to talk to me. Finally I decided to try to talk back. I thought that if it was mom, and she sounded like a mosquito, she must be living much faster than me. So, speaking as rapidly, and at as high a pitch as I could manage, I said 'mom, you are too fast, I can't understand'. The mosquito shut up and I have not heard it since.
It embarrasses me to relate this story. I don't believe people are alive after they are dead, and there are obviously simpler explanations which I would prefer to believe. But the feeling that it was mom was very strong. However, when someone close to you dies, you ARE in a very vulnerable state of mind...

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Originally posted by Bahamut: well caleb... sometimes the best thing that you can remember for the rest of you life can turn out to be one of the worst...

This is so true. Much like your grandmother, my own grandmother whittled away to nothing and died in a hospital bed, having diabetes all her life and suffering from a series of strokes and heart attacks.
I prefer to remember her as the jolly plump lady she was when I was young, her eyes smiling and she, always in the kitchen baking cookies or some other kind of goodies for us or people in need. She was a wonderful grandma and I was so stricken to see her dying that I did not go to the hospital to see her after the first time on her last trip there. I did not attend her funeral and I would not even have seen her headstone had my mother not shangheid me there when I told her one day I had never seen it.
Some memories are best to just let be. I am glad I did not attend my father's funeral, I would have died inside to have had to see his lifeless body.

It is a good thing that you have wonderful memories of your grandmother to hold on to. Don't ever let them go! (HUGS!)

Your memories did trigger another one for me that is precious though and I would like to share it.

My mother always hated looking at me because I look just like my dad. None of my brothers and sisters do, just me. From the time I was very young right up until one of the last times I ever spoke with her, my mother used to give me the the most hateful look and tell me "You're just like those people!" (my dad and his mother, what she believed to be the only sources of misery in her life).

This comment only stems from her hatred of my genetics LOL and she couldn't handle having to raise me when every time she looked at me, she saw the man she claimed to be so in love with but fought with every time he came home (which was only once a week) so I learned early on not to let it get under my skin even though I really had to be afraid of her beating me for no reason and punishing me or putting me down constantly. My older brother and older sister took advantage of this and made my childhood a living hell.

(My father was totally unaware of the way she treated me and beat me until I was seven years old and got fed up as well as scared for my life and told on her. He in turn beat her with the same metal flyswatter handle she had beat me with and threatened her life is she ever touched me again. I never got beat after that but was kept "grounded for life" until I ran away in my teens)

Anyway, one year around Christmas time, ( I was 4 or 5 years old at the time) my brother and sister were in our bedroom making Christmas decorations out of construction paper and taping them to the closet door. When I entered the room, I asked if I could join them and they whispered to each other and then turned to me and snickering, said "Sure!"

While I was cutting out and gluing together a red paper candle with an orange paper flame on a yellow paper (gold) base, they were taping the rest of their decoration to the door. When I was finished I asked for the tape to add mine and they said "Oh! We're all out of tape! You'll have to use glue!"

So, I glued my decoration to the door!

Once they checked that the glue was dry, they all of a sudden laughed, pointed at me and yelled "We're telling!" and ran out of the room calling mom to come see that I had GLUED a decoration to the door instead of using tape! (They used to love to do crap like this in order to see me get beaten).

My mom came in and her face turned into that evil "I'm going to beat the crap out of you face" and as she started toward me, we all heard the front door open.

Dad was home!

The other kids left me there in the bedroom alone with my mother as they ran to the door yelling at dad to come and watch me get a spanking for gluing a Christmas decoration to the closet door!

He entered the room and asked what was going on. My mother pointed at the candle and screamed at how stupid I was and how I needed to be punished for GLUING that THING to the closet door!

My dad approached me and kneeled on the floor in front of me and asked me why I would glue it instead of taping it up there like the others had. I told him why and that I just wanted to have a decoration I had made there too.

He turned to my mother and told her to leave me alone and to leave the candle where it was, it would wash off after Christmas. Then he gave my brother and sister a disappointed look and went out of the room. They followed, leaving me still standing there with my mother. She came up to me and bent down so that her face was right in mine and said to me through gritted teeth "You're SO lucky your dad just walked through that door right now! I should beat your ass ANYWAY!" and then she left, leaving me there just looking at the candle decoration I had made and wondering what made gluing it up there so bad!

Well, she got all pissed off all over again after Christams was over and the candle part of the decoration would not come off of the door. My dad thought it was funny that she would get all bent out of shape over it and told her to get over it and to leave me alone about it PERIOD.

Years later our house caught on fire and the bedroom AND the closet door survived with nothing but smoke damage...the now blackened red stem of the candle still stuck to the door.

It was still there twenty years later when my dad sold the house and moved to FL.

He still thought it was cute.


Moni

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[This message has been edited by Moni (edited 06-08-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Moni (edited 06-08-2001).]

Originally posted by Fljotsdale: Lovely idea, Moni! The above sentence reminds me of my dad showing me the moon through his home-made telescope when I was little, and naming the stars and constellations for me. It was during WW2, and everywhere was 'blacked out' so the sky was not light-polluted as it is now, and was velvety black with brilliant stars... He'd kneel behind me, with his arms round me, so that he could hold the telescope in the best position for me. It was warm, and safe, and fascinating.

That is really very precious! Thank you very much for sharing it!


Moni

Originally posted by Fljotsdale: And Moni will not understand how come I don't believe in an afterlife!

Tsk Tsk! It is not my place to understand you. It is yours.

Interesting story though!

It reminded me of a time when years after my grandmother's death, I was traveling across country on a bus and I heard someone calling my name.
Without speaking out loud, I inquired with thought as to who it was and what they wanted.
She told me who she was and proceeded to tell me of impending danger at the next stop in the form of a gang of young men that I needed to keep my distance from if I wanted to remain safe. She described each one, their heights, their hair,even their clothing!
Needless to say, I was quite suprised to see a gang of young men at the next stop, each one exactly as she had described.
I kept my distance as a precaution (thinking I could possibly be insane for hearing her) and made it onto the next bus safely.


Moni


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[Fljotsdale]

Yeah, Moni, it can be amazing sometimes how things happen. Have you ever found yourself in a location you have never been before, but that you are familiar with from dreams? It has happened to me on a couple of occasions.

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[jabidas]

I feel so very odd reading your posts, I dont have very many happy memories certainly much less so about my family. These are just emotions I know other people feel I dont, I feel privileged though to read these things they make this more human and I feel like I can reach out to you through these small words of mine.

I wont pull punchs my Grandmother was a religous fanatic she made mt grandads life hell, he was a this old fat guy who used to sit in his chair and smoke and eat all day sometimes he showed me how to use things in the garden but Im just told this I dont remember it. All I can remeber strongly about him are his hands with their veins raised out yellow marks from cigarettes kind of weatherbeaten as well he was a benevolent kind of guy very intelligant but he never got far, family members all say he should hae I dont know maybe its the comforting bullshit they spray about people when their dead and they dont get to treat them like crap anymore.
As I was saying my gran was a religous nut and she used to go on and on always trying to Indoctrinate me, it made me sick. She was so militaristic about it and it really killed me, I guess she was sincere but it was very old testemant all oh the evil of the world, despite she could be vindictivly manipulative to her children always causing arguments saying things to hurt them and it would all be done so piously, I can get disgusted just thinking of it they all wanted to be less dominated and controlled by her, my aunt even had selfesteem books I dont know why they all stayed around her though. When she was dying it was real slow after 3 strokes unable to use half her body stuck in bed praying to god for death, screaming it I remember images of it being forced to sit there hold her hand keep her company as she was so unaware. She was a very frail woman, another image comes to mind now my mother screaming that I didnt care at half six in the morning on the way to school not even my fault we were late, completly frantic and angry in general. She apoligised that evening, I dont want to think about this anymore.

I dont remember my other grandparents they died before I was born I didnt cliam to have happy memories and I dont revisit them often

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[Fljotsdale]

Jabidas, you have shown how terrible manipulative people can be. And it doesn't matter if they are religious or not - it just seems worse when they pretend piety, though, doesn't it? My mom was the most manipulative person I ever knew. She wasn't a bad woman either. Very kind, very helpful; many, many people really loved her. But she used 'em all, used her family, too, to ensure everything always went the way she wanted it. A real Matriarch. I loved her, I was afraid of her, I wept when she died... but I was so, SO relieved when she died! 'Cos I was able to be the person I was without upsetting her. NO-ONE dared upset mom. If you did, she was so hurt and remote it was unbearable. Yet they never seem to realise, never understand what they are doing. Because they are so sure they are right. I always try to remember that she felt she was doing right, and had our best interests at heart. Maybe your grandmother felt the same way - that it was all for your benefit in the end.

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[This message has been edited by Fljotsdale (edited 06-08-2001).]

[jabidas]

Ah yes I thought I was doing the right thing the eternal excuse of the thoughtlessly cruel, how it never ends. Im just glad im not getting some complete twit LoLing at me like a deranged chimp

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[This message has been edited by jabidas (edited 06-08-2001).]

Originally posted by Fljotsdale: Yeah, Moni, it can be amazing sometimes how things happen. Have you ever found yourself in a location you have never been before, but that you are familiar with from dreams? It has happened to me on a couple of occasions.

Kind of...I had dreams of being in places in France during WWII that I thought were weird and then years later, watching film footage of WWII recognized the areas of France that they were showing from the dream...everything was exactly the same.


Moni



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[Fljotsdale]

Jabidas, I don't think people like that are even aware of what they are doing. They are generally very insecure people, and they manipulate others so that they can have a sense of being able to control SOMETHING. At least, I believe that is how it starts out. Then they find they enjoy the sense of power it gives them. But I also think they genuinely feel they are right. Realising/believing that is sometimes the only way we can forgive them. And we need to forgive them, for our own sakes, not theirs ('cos they don't know they need to be forgiven!), otherwise we just embitter our own lives and make the lives of people around us just as miserable as THEY made ours.
I hope your life has not been too damaged by your experiences with your grandmother.

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