Have You Seen My Mother
Dec 18 '00
The last time I saw my mother, I was looking out the back window of a car hysterically crying, watching my mother, screaming my name as my father sped away from the convenience store. I was two. At least that's the way I envision it. I was of course too young to remember, but that was the circumstances. My father told her, his stomach was hurting, and asked her to get medicine for him in the convenience store while he wait in the car with me. I spent the next thirty-one years wondering who my mother was. After my father left her that day in the store, he moved from state to state, always keeping me hidden from her. The first state was Kentucky. There he filed for divorce. She had no idea where we were, and I doubt my father made sure that she received a copy of the order. It was probably the usual notice in the local news paper. As soon as the six month waiting period expired, my father married a woman with two children of her own, both girls. My step-mother was quite an ordeal for me growing up. When I was twenty-eight, she apologized for the way she treated me as a child. She resented me, is what she told me, that when my father married her- the same one who fought so hard to keep me- he, as my step-mother put it, "threw you onto my lap, and said, here you take care of him". No doubt it's quite true. My father never seemed to be worried about the relationship he and I could have had. We never did things together, never had the father-son chats. To this day, I still am not close to him.
In my early teens- those difficult years- my father told me a few choice things about my mother to make sure I knew how good I had it in his home. "I've seen your mother say, I wish I'd never had this kid, and then throw you ten feet across the room onto the bed". Now, what is an early teen supposed to do after hearing this, other than get more confused? Then, to top off the whole pubescent, young life crisis event. My father tells me that my mother goes horse back riding with "some guy"- as he put it- and gets bucked off. Now this "guy", while she lay there unconscious, rapes her. A son finding out his mother was raped is hard enough, but then my father begins to tell me how she "bragged" to him that she was conscious, and let him rape her. Now, I can assure you the son is pretty well confused for a few years. Again reassuring me that I am better off with he and my, resenting step-mother. I had learned also that my mother had written my father via my grandfather for several years, but the letters were thrown away, and you won't believe why. Because my mother, as my father put it, "liked to party." Plus, she was disfellowshipped from the religion that my father belonged to; the Jehovah's Witnesses. It's like excommunication in Catholicism. Anyway, because of these two factors, he thought my mother might be demonized. Yes, even as a young boy, I was taught that my mother was possessed by the Devil's own demonic angels. And at times we wonder why the children of our society have become the way they are? Needless to say I grew up as a very confused child.
When I was eighteen and about to be married- yes I know, much too young- I decided to look for my mother, hoping she could attend the wedding. My father made a few phone calls, and at the end of about, one hour, told me he heard that she'd overdosed on drugs, ended up in an insane-asylum and died. It was from that point on, I realized I may never see my mother.
Never giving up hope, I continued the search. I knew that her last known residence was Southern California, so I wrote the state in search of a death record. Fortunately, they had none for her. I would at times simply call information at her last known area of residence, asking for numbers of people whose last name was the same. That at most was a fruitless effort. The internet kept me in front of my computer late at night. That didn't work all that well either, many of the search engines were unable to locate my own address, and I knew I was alive. At around thirty years of age a woman told me she had once enlisted the services of the Salvation Army. Through them, she was successful at finding her father. So, I gave it a shot. They took my case, but after a year or so, were unable to help me at all.
One day a friend came to me and said he had met someone he thought could locate my mother. Well believe me, I was thrilled. My father, after learning that I may soon find her, began to get nervous. In fact, some of his stories- which I've heard for twenty years now- began to take new form. Especially the one about my mother being raped. Now he tells me this whole incident took place with two of his cousins, he told me their names, and even their mother's name. Changed in the story also was the fact of her bragging to him about letting the guy do this thing to her. Now he tells me, she was raped by his two cousins, or she had sex with them, he says he's really not sure. I want you at this point, to put yourself in my father's shoes. If your mate bragged to you about something as heinous as he said my mother did, would you forget it or confuse it with another story? I think not. Now then, put yourself in my place. The story I first heard when I was fourteen, has drastically changed, leaving me wondering, what exactly is the truth, and of course leaving me confused once again, at the age of thirty-three.
Just to shed a little light on this seemingly dark story, I will tell you, I did find my mother. This was unbelievable, and very difficult to actually grasp. A lifelong search was about to come to an end. The emotions running through me were indescribable. For one thing, I found that she lived only ninety miles from my fathers relatives, with whom I had spent many summers. Why didn't she try and contact me once I became an adult, through them? Maybe she was happy with her life, and didn't want to see me. I really had no clue, but I knew I had found my mother, and by God, I was going to contact her. She had no phone, so I wrote.
In just a few days I received a phone call from my mothers husband, my step farther. He told me that my mother, in 1973, depressed because of being unable to find me, and other family problems, tried to kill herself. She was not successful, but did succeed in destroying part of her brain. The mother whom I had longed for, searched for and cried for, was not much more than a large child. This man had selflessly cared for her for twenty-four years, teaching her how to eat, speak and walk once again. He not only cares for her, but also watches over his mother, who just turned eighty. He also left me with an extra bit of information. My mother told him, before she hurt herself, that my father hired two men to rape her. He did this, she said, so she would be disfellowshipped, and he could get a scriptural divorce in his church, and also get custody of me in the courts. Now once again , try and put yourself in my place. Unfortunately, we will never know the truth. As in a court of law, we have heard the witnesses, but there is no hard evidence. Did my father hire two men to rape my mother, or was she getting back at him by sleeping with his cousins? The biggest problem here, in my eyes, is that one person can no longer tell her side of the story.
Something very precious was taken from both of us over thirty years ago, and no matter what she did, she, nor I deserved what was handed us.
For myself, I have found my mother, and enjoy the relationship we have though I will never really know her. As for my father, he hasn't spoken to me for years. Because I desire a relationship with my mother he feels I am choosing sides. He doesn't think she deserves me. I don't think he ever thought whether or not I deserved her.
I guess, that what I am trying to express by telling you my story, is that it doesn't matter who is right or wrong- if anyone is right or wrong-no child should have to grow up not knowing both his or her parents. And if you are one of those parents who must poison the child with all the faults of the other parent in order to make you look better, it will come back to haunt you. Sometimes, the past is just that, the past. You have to let it go and move forward. Letting the child make his or her own judgments as he or she gets older, and I know from experience, the child deserves it, and desires it.
Bryan Lee McGlothin
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Member: Bryan Lee McGlothin
Location: Austin
Reviews written: 1
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