The dad of 2 friends died last week.
We, me and my roommate Pascal, went to the funeral last night.
He supposedly died of a birth defect.
What the hell?!
He was 57 for crying out loud!?
They said they would know more after the autopsy report.
They were very close to their father.
They would see him every week.
Always doing something with him.
It was my first social gathering since my panic attacks.
Aside from crying, I was fine.
No symptoms. Nothing.
On the way back I started thinking about my mom.
Maybe now is a good time to tell you about her.
My mom was young, hip, she would have fitted very well as a stand in for one of Austin Powers' party scenes. I have a picture of her in a short yellow dress with silver thigh high shiny boots. She was hot for the times.
Very good in school.
She worked in a bank until my birth.
She met a guy, got married in 1966 and tried to have a baby.
This child, a boy, was stillborn.
11 months later I was born.
My mom suffered a hemorrhage when she had me.
The one after me had no heart beat after the first 3 months.
The last, a little girl, my mom lost her in the toilet.
I saw the fetus in the bowl. We named her Angel.
I was about 7 years old.
So I was to be the only child they would ever have.
My mom, which I didn't know at the time, was an alcoholic. She used to send me to the grocery store to buy her small bottles of cider. I remember I was about 5 or 6.
I guess she used to drink, but maybe not that much.
I remember good times. Great times.
We always had something to do.
Then when I was about 9, it either got worst or I started noticing. I don't know.
I remember finding glasses full of wine in the cookie cupboard and emptying them in the sink. I remember finding bottles here and there. Even in my room.
At one point she started selling my books to have money for booze. She even did her sister's laundry for extra cash.
A few things happened when I was 14.
-I came back from school on special permission from the principal because I was sure I had left the stove on. It wasn't. But I did find something else. My mom was there with a bleeding nose. She was drunk and had fallen somewhere. To this day I still don't know where.
-It was the first and only time that I laid a hand on her. I wanted to go ice skating and she was holding on to my arms saying that I was not going. With the outside of my fists, I hit her upper arms until she let go of me. I ran out of the house, fell down in the snow and cried.
-Once, I came home and she was writhing on the floor with her hands held up. A neighbor's kid came and told my dad that she had fallen down and was crying. She was to heavy for him to lift. They got her home by pushing her on a sled. She was drunk, she fell and could not get back up on her own. Her hands were frozen. She must have been very humiliated afterwords because I have a vivid image of her with her hands up, in bandages, being fed by my father at his moms New Year's Eve dinner.
-Later in the spring I came home after school, hit my nose on a locked front door. See my mom was always home. So unless there was something special, I didn't have a key. I knocked on the door, the windows. Went around back, the door was also locked. I looked through the living room window, from there I could see in my parents room. I saw her feet and part of her legs. She was lying on the floor next to the bed.
I opened a metal grid from one of the garage windows to get in. This was the high window in the garage door. I had to go in feet first in a 10 by 14 inch hole. She was in pain, her nose was broken again.
-In a moment of clear, non drunken conscience, she told me she was waiting for me to turn 18 to divorce my dad. She also told me that she never loved him. On her wedding day she told her mom, and her mom told her, "you will not disgrace the family".
By the time I turned 15, everything changed. She stopped drinking, lost weight, she was at 300lbs by then. She went down to 150lbs. She went back to school and got herself a job in a hospital for kids. She would go to AA meetings.
My dad couldn't stand it. She was now getting to be independent. She was making her own money, new friends that he didn't know. He got very jealous.
I was happy.
She was back. We were closer then ever. Being that the times were so great, I didn't want to tell her about my secret. I didn't want her to fall again.
A week before my 18th birthday, she got my dad served with divorce papers. A week later he was out of the house.
We were like roommates. We'd hang together, chat, go to movies. My mom was cool. She loved Sci-Fi movies. My friends loved her. She was part of the gang.
Maybe that's how she was because she was never really a good mother. So she decided to be one of my best friends.
About a year after that, she came home from a vacation and started drinking again. One Sunday morning I was woken up by the door bell. A medic asked me if I knew that woman. It was my mom. She had taken all her pills and drank something. She had fallen on the side walk and broken her nose again.
It was her second attempt. She told me later that she once did the same thing, but just woke up the next day.
I was giving her money every month to help out, but I noticed the bills were coming in red. She was drinking the money I was giving her. So I told her that from then on I would pay bills instead. She kept drinking.
One afternoon, I called the local clinic crying that I couldn't take it anymore. They told me to come in right away. I saw a social worker, and with her started realizing that I had to get out of there.
In November of that year, my mom grabbed my arm one night while I was on my way to an exam, and she told me, "I know what you're hiding under your bed". Magazines of naked guys. I told her now was not the time. She was drunk and I had an exam.
We never discussed it after.
The following summer I moved out.
Once she called me over cause she felt sick. I noticed all her pill bottles were empty. She was on her third attempt. Either my being there stopped her or she couldn't go through with it, I don't know.
Then in July of that year, her fourth and last attempt worked. She had taken all her pills and drank I don't know how much, but she was gone. She was 44. I was 21.
I went back to the social worker the next week, and told her I wasn't crying that much. That's when she told me one of the first thing I told her in our first meeting, "to me my mom is dead. She just visits me from time to time". I had been mourning for a long time already.
Am I mad that she left me?
Yes
Do I understand her actions?
It was, to her, the only way out.
Do I find her a good mother?
Yes and no.
She did her best.
But no parent should raise a kid when they're an alcoholic.
No parent should tell they're kid they will divorce their father in 4 years nor that they don't love him, never have.
No kid should live through 4 suicide attempts.
Do I love her?
I do!
She's my mom!
And I'm still proud of her!?
Love,
J
Sleep well mom!?
According to a local publication called Le Métro, athletes prefer the Outgames to the Chicago Gay Games.
The warm welcome from organizers, the city and the people.
The ambiance is just amazing, some say.
The quality of the establishments is equaled by none.
In Chicago, 70% of the 11,000 participants were Americans.
Apparently they called it the American Gay Games.
They say it feels more like real Olympics,
a melting pot because more countries are represented.
Only 3000 athletes are Canadians out of the 12,000 participants.
J
Proud Canadian!?
This just in!?
More than 100 countries are represented in the Outgames
– a first for a LGBT sporting event.
The Outgames will also be the first
LGBT event to which participants from
Southern Hemisphere countries will be
coming in significant numbers.
taken from website : Night Tours
