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Re: Lost my mom..
Damn. What a blow.
I don't know how I'll handle my mom's eventual death.
The old timers know about this....my dad died unexpectedly when I was 19. One day after spring break freshman year of college. Neither one of us ever fully recovered from it. His funeral was like an episode of the Twilight Zone.
I got back into drugs...she dove into a whiskey bottle.
It sounds like she was at peace but it still has to be devastating. For better or worse(usually worse), life is never the same after the loss of a parent.
- IRISH OS1R1S
- Rep: 59
Re: Lost my mom..
Again you are all very kind. It means a lot.
Damn. What a blow.
I don't know how I'll handle my mom's eventual death.
The old timers know about this....my dad died unexpectedly when I was 19. One day after spring break freshman year of college. Neither one of us ever fully recovered from it. His funeral was like an episode of the Twilight Zone.
I got back into drugs...she dove into a whiskey bottle.
It sounds like she was at peace but it still has to be devastating. For better or worse(usually worse), life is never the same after the loss of a parent.
My dad died when I was 16 and it was one of the hardest times in my life, like you I had a spell on drugs. My mom was an Angel. We were very poor and she had a tough life with my dad being abusive physically in the early years, but luckily he must have had a chat with himself and eventually became the dad/husband we deserved. I have great memories of her kindness. Often going without to feed others including strangers. She even took in a family she didn't know because they lost their home. They have since got back on their feet and they are forever grateful to her.
She now gets to finally rest and I'm happy for her.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Lost my mom..
Again you are all very kind. It means a lot.
James wrote:Damn. What a blow.
I don't know how I'll handle my mom's eventual death.
The old timers know about this....my dad died unexpectedly when I was 19. One day after spring break freshman year of college. Neither one of us ever fully recovered from it. His funeral was like an episode of the Twilight Zone.
I got back into drugs...she dove into a whiskey bottle.
It sounds like she was at peace but it still has to be devastating. For better or worse(usually worse), life is never the same after the loss of a parent.
My dad died when I was 16 and it was one of the hardest times in my life, like you I had a spell on drugs. My mom was an Angel. We were very poor and she had a tough life with my dad being abusive physically in the early years, but luckily he must have had a chat with himself and eventually became the dad/husband we deserved. I have great memories of her kindness. Often going without to feed others including strangers. She even took in a family she didn't know because they lost their home. They have since got back on their feet and they are forever grateful to her.
She now gets to finally rest and I'm happy for her.
While I did get my ass whipped an average of 2-3 times a year until 7th grade...most of them deserved...he wasn't physically abusive.
He never hit my mom. I'll never forget a fight they had when I was three years old. He came home late and sat down and started eating. I don't know the whole meal but he was eating an avocado. While standing there yelling at him, she grabbed the avocado and threw it at him. When he got up, she started slapping him across the face. He just held her arms. My grandma and grandpa (my mom's parents) came over and picked us up.
Other than that and a couple other incidents, she was shy and very passive as well. She reminded me of Shelley Duvall in The Shining. The last few years she stopped being his doormat but by then, the clock was running out...
Fucked how it all turned out. They were both poor teens in the same town going to high school together. Some of their siblings were friends with each other. Dropped out of high school and almost two years later, had me.
We were poor. On welfare off and on in the late 70s/early 80s. My dad was a recreational drug user at this point. Not really a big deal.
Something happened. They both got their shit together. They went to college and I became one of the early "latch key kids". He wound up being a printer and she worked at the Stanislaus County courthouse. She had also been a secretary at the National Guard before that.
We were entering the lower middle class. Life was great. My mom wanted to move now that we had more money. Instead of buying a house, we rented a luxury apartment in Modesto. A few months after this critical move, with my dad's drug addiction(meth and heroin 80s, pills in the 90s) getting out of control, he quits his job and starts selling drugs. Smart move, huh? 
Like a movie, it's a runaway train heading for a crash. He starts using more than he's selling. Eventually he stops selling...and can't go back to work.
Now my mom is carrying the load. She does everything in her power to keep us afloat while he's an anchor trying to sink us. Actually he doesn't try....he succeeds.
His response/reaction to his spiraling addiction getting out of hand is unforgivable. Does he leave and allow us the chance to keep our normal lives? No....he gets my mom into heroin. Now she's crashing and my life is changing overnight. At 14 years old, I'm not dealing very well with the chaos. I start smoking cigarettes and weed, and drinking. He fully embraces this and starts giving me drugs and alcohol. A year later, I'm taking meth and he sometimes gives me that too.
As I get older, it will never cease to amaze me how to continue his addictions with no resistance, he intentionally dragged me and her into hell with him.
The Soundgarden lyrics from Mailman always hit me on a gut level because it's describing him....
I know I'm headed for the bottom
But I'm riding you all the way
We get evicted from those apartments and enter three years of hell.
Fast forward to late 1994....
A miracle is happening. We're getting our shit together. They're both working again and I just got my GED and then passed the ACT to get into college. Unfortunately he's a pill junkie now. He got hooked on them after an injury a few years earlier. It's nothing like the previous nightmare...or so we think anyways.
Just as we're settling back into a life resembling normalcy and I'm getting the hang of college.....boom...tragedy hits. He dies in his sleep.
Those first few weeks after his death are almost beyond words. Just unbelievable.
We get a bunch of life insurance money. She dives into a bottle and I went back to California for a year to waste my portion on women and drugs.
I was anti-pill for years. Wouldn't even take an aspirin. In my mid 20s I started taking vicodin, Oxy, and xanax. When my addiction went into overdrive in my 30s, other than being single and not having children, I had a moment of clarity.....
I had turned into my dad.
It was a scary realization. While I do take the blame for my mistakes, I realized how much damage he had truly done. Hindsight has tainted a lot of my memories of him. He was a good dad when I was a kid. It was my teen years when things got out of control but I see things from those good years in a different light and I'm able to see the train crash approaching when it felt like a lightning bolt from beyond back then.
- IRISH OS1R1S
- Rep: 59
- jimmythegent
- Rep: 30
- FlashFlood
- Rep: 55
Re: Lost my mom..
Terribly sorry, Irish. I came on here after the loss of my brother in 2015 and was overwhelmed with the response. Lots of good people here and I’m very thankful for it.
