I came back to this blog when my husband, who, never having any facility with electronics, suddenly found himself compelled to master the basics of the iPad in order to keep in contact with the sanity and order of our blessed United States, as well as scattered family members, while we live for 18 months in South America.
He was reading my other blog about our current adventures, and clicked the link to my profile, which lists the blogs I have started and abandoned. He started reading this one, and reminded me of it. I have been reading through it today, and although it ought to be a memoir of a difficult time in my life that I've put behind me, it isn't. Because even though we are living in South America, we have not escaped living under the shadow of the personality disordered and the plain mentally ill. I am beginning to think that this is God's curse on my husband and me: to take a stand against those who would suck the life, joy and pleasure out of you, and learn to not only stop it in its tracks, find ways around it, and neutralize it, but to teach others wounded by this type of person how to defend themselves.
We looked forward for years to going on a mission for our church. We serve in a fund which gives loans to students of all ages trying to improve their earning ability. It is gratifying, exhausting, and rewarding work. We studied our Spanish, saved our money, and finally were able to sell the cows, (our nephew having decided to go back to regular employment rather than be partners with us and his grandfather,) filled out our mission papers, and made the long flight to another hemisphere. I must admit that years along the way I really really wished we could have left earlier, in order to get away from the excruciating demands of the narcissists in our lives.
My FIL is nearly 90 years old now, having outlived his wife by over ten years. (She died when she was 78 years old, of pancreatic cancer.) Following his casting us off over the problem with the garden water, he went it alone for a few years, during which time he had his driver's license taken away for erratic driving (he earned it back by taking a driving class,) made spectacularly bad financial decisions such as buying hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of annuities, selling his IRA for the chunk of cash it represented and then having to pay thousands of dollars in taxes, and nearly dying from "grunge," the word the emergency room physicians gave to his super-bacterial infected toe which he broke by tripping on the side of the washing machine then shoving into a manure-soaked sock and boot. He was always one to tough things out. He refused to go to the doctor until one of the brothers-in-law put him in the car and drove him there. It took several days and a super-antibiotic IV drip at the Veteran's Hospital to get past the delirium. He was given a warning from the doctors to bathe more often, not obeyed.
When we finally came to the point where we were within a year of sending in our mission papers, there was still the problem of what to do with FIL. Although Brother and Sister Twin both declare undying love and devotion to their dear old dad (after years of nonstop hollering and cussing,) neither of them can tolerate him in their home for more than a few hours. We told the other sisters to get ready to take care of him until we returned. We looked forward to this.
My husband's divorced sister had been earning her living as a well-loved public elementary school teacher. She endured one terrible year trying to teach in spite of an out-of-control student, compounded by the lack of support and outright hostility shown by the new principal. During the school year she not only lost a great deal of weight, the principal wrote up a negative, accusatory evaluation on her permanent record.
Following this, she spent one rewarding year of teaching , and then returned to the classroom the next fall only to find that she had not only one, but seven out-of-control children. She was emotionally shattered by this, and had to stop teaching. She had saved up a lot of sick days. My husband, who had flown to a dairy meeting in her city, where he usually stays at her house, found her nearly catatonic, and told her he would bring her back to the farm in her silver pickup. He helped her pack and said she was curled up in the fetal position the entire drive.
It took a lot of time for her to recover. She was emotionally, mentally and physically very weak. She slept a lot, listened to music, quilted, read books, took walks in the countryside, and helped me in my garden--better than becoming her father's garden-slave, which she refused to do. She cooked and cleaned for her father and visited her sisters. She returned to the school district more than once, to get a psychological evaluation, and to notify them of her retirement. The principal discovered that he could not keep a substitute teacher in her classroom for longer than two weeks. He was compelled to re-write his evaluation of her. She told her father that she would stay with him for the rest of his life. He said it was an answer to prayer.
If I had someone taking care of me the rest of my life, this sister would be among those at the top of my list. She is loving, wise, musical, well-read, never annoying or overbearing, incredibly helpful and hard-working, and very pleasant company. It only underscores how lucky FIL has always been and continues to be, to have the services of his brilliant wife, his son, and now this daughter to compensate for his every flaw and to carry him on their shoulders his entire, long, long, life.
The truly sad thing is that this daughter, who remembers him during her growing up years with fondness, now has a greater understanding of us and her mother and why we acted the way we did and say the things we say. She uses every skill she ever had, working with ignorant small children, in a possibly impossible task of helping him learn how to think clearly, take responsibility, and judge less harshly. Although he seems to improve while living in her house for the six months required for him to be declared her dependent, the rest of the year, living in the farm house, since she gives in to all his demands that she possibly can, he reverts to his usual behavior.
Following our mission call and the exit of our nephew to greener pastures, we were in the process of selling the cows and preparing our home to be rented by someone else. My husband also saw to it that FIL's 50-year-old stacked lumber farmhouse was upgraded so it would be more pleasant for this sister to live in, by installing new toilets, a new bathtub, several heating and cooling units, new windows--that can open--throughout the house, a pellet stove, a new washing room sink, and wonder of wonders, close-able doors in the upstairs bedrooms. This sister says when she closes the new door to her father's bedroom, which has very large windows facing the morning sun that traps heat like an oven, it lowers the temperature of the rest of the upstairs by several degrees. My husband also had the hired men disconnect the plumbing that allowed the barn to share the same water well as the house. He filled in the large ugly pit that FIL used to store old pallets he scrounged in town, which he used for firewood for the house's smoky, homemade wood stove. The pit was covered over with gravel, making a parking spot for her silver pickup. She of course was ever so grateful, even while FIL grumbled and griped and complained about all these changes.
During the few months before we left, FIL became more and more indignant that we were being allowed to actually go on a mission. This was odd since when we had first announced our intentions to be missionaries shortly after MIL passed away, FIL actually offered to pay for most of it. The bishop told us later that FIL looked forward to us being gone so he would be in charge of the farm again, but by this time his attitude had reversed itself. He went three separate times to talk to each of the three men of the presidency of our combined congregations, telling them how my husband had betrayed his family, ought to have his church privileges taken away, and should not be allowed to be a missionary. The last was following a meeting presided over by the president, after which FIL marched into his office without an appointment and demanded that we have our privileges revoked. Fortunately my husband's sister was caring for him by then, and accompanied him. She called the president later and apologized for her father's behavior, telling him that nothing her father said was true. FIL was certain that he was believed, and that we would be denied this opportunity, but we continued to prepare. He was visibly disappointed when he asked us if the president had said anything to us about his warnings about our lack of worthiness, but we told him he hadn't. Because he hadn't.
We have thought more than once that when it really comes down to it, it frightens him that we would abandon him.
He was reading my other blog about our current adventures, and clicked the link to my profile, which lists the blogs I have started and abandoned. He started reading this one, and reminded me of it. I have been reading through it today, and although it ought to be a memoir of a difficult time in my life that I've put behind me, it isn't. Because even though we are living in South America, we have not escaped living under the shadow of the personality disordered and the plain mentally ill. I am beginning to think that this is God's curse on my husband and me: to take a stand against those who would suck the life, joy and pleasure out of you, and learn to not only stop it in its tracks, find ways around it, and neutralize it, but to teach others wounded by this type of person how to defend themselves.
We looked forward for years to going on a mission for our church. We serve in a fund which gives loans to students of all ages trying to improve their earning ability. It is gratifying, exhausting, and rewarding work. We studied our Spanish, saved our money, and finally were able to sell the cows, (our nephew having decided to go back to regular employment rather than be partners with us and his grandfather,) filled out our mission papers, and made the long flight to another hemisphere. I must admit that years along the way I really really wished we could have left earlier, in order to get away from the excruciating demands of the narcissists in our lives.
My FIL is nearly 90 years old now, having outlived his wife by over ten years. (She died when she was 78 years old, of pancreatic cancer.) Following his casting us off over the problem with the garden water, he went it alone for a few years, during which time he had his driver's license taken away for erratic driving (he earned it back by taking a driving class,) made spectacularly bad financial decisions such as buying hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of annuities, selling his IRA for the chunk of cash it represented and then having to pay thousands of dollars in taxes, and nearly dying from "grunge," the word the emergency room physicians gave to his super-bacterial infected toe which he broke by tripping on the side of the washing machine then shoving into a manure-soaked sock and boot. He was always one to tough things out. He refused to go to the doctor until one of the brothers-in-law put him in the car and drove him there. It took several days and a super-antibiotic IV drip at the Veteran's Hospital to get past the delirium. He was given a warning from the doctors to bathe more often, not obeyed.
When we finally came to the point where we were within a year of sending in our mission papers, there was still the problem of what to do with FIL. Although Brother and Sister Twin both declare undying love and devotion to their dear old dad (after years of nonstop hollering and cussing,) neither of them can tolerate him in their home for more than a few hours. We told the other sisters to get ready to take care of him until we returned. We looked forward to this.
My husband's divorced sister had been earning her living as a well-loved public elementary school teacher. She endured one terrible year trying to teach in spite of an out-of-control student, compounded by the lack of support and outright hostility shown by the new principal. During the school year she not only lost a great deal of weight, the principal wrote up a negative, accusatory evaluation on her permanent record.
Following this, she spent one rewarding year of teaching , and then returned to the classroom the next fall only to find that she had not only one, but seven out-of-control children. She was emotionally shattered by this, and had to stop teaching. She had saved up a lot of sick days. My husband, who had flown to a dairy meeting in her city, where he usually stays at her house, found her nearly catatonic, and told her he would bring her back to the farm in her silver pickup. He helped her pack and said she was curled up in the fetal position the entire drive.
It took a lot of time for her to recover. She was emotionally, mentally and physically very weak. She slept a lot, listened to music, quilted, read books, took walks in the countryside, and helped me in my garden--better than becoming her father's garden-slave, which she refused to do. She cooked and cleaned for her father and visited her sisters. She returned to the school district more than once, to get a psychological evaluation, and to notify them of her retirement. The principal discovered that he could not keep a substitute teacher in her classroom for longer than two weeks. He was compelled to re-write his evaluation of her. She told her father that she would stay with him for the rest of his life. He said it was an answer to prayer.
If I had someone taking care of me the rest of my life, this sister would be among those at the top of my list. She is loving, wise, musical, well-read, never annoying or overbearing, incredibly helpful and hard-working, and very pleasant company. It only underscores how lucky FIL has always been and continues to be, to have the services of his brilliant wife, his son, and now this daughter to compensate for his every flaw and to carry him on their shoulders his entire, long, long, life.
The truly sad thing is that this daughter, who remembers him during her growing up years with fondness, now has a greater understanding of us and her mother and why we acted the way we did and say the things we say. She uses every skill she ever had, working with ignorant small children, in a possibly impossible task of helping him learn how to think clearly, take responsibility, and judge less harshly. Although he seems to improve while living in her house for the six months required for him to be declared her dependent, the rest of the year, living in the farm house, since she gives in to all his demands that she possibly can, he reverts to his usual behavior.
Following our mission call and the exit of our nephew to greener pastures, we were in the process of selling the cows and preparing our home to be rented by someone else. My husband also saw to it that FIL's 50-year-old stacked lumber farmhouse was upgraded so it would be more pleasant for this sister to live in, by installing new toilets, a new bathtub, several heating and cooling units, new windows--that can open--throughout the house, a pellet stove, a new washing room sink, and wonder of wonders, close-able doors in the upstairs bedrooms. This sister says when she closes the new door to her father's bedroom, which has very large windows facing the morning sun that traps heat like an oven, it lowers the temperature of the rest of the upstairs by several degrees. My husband also had the hired men disconnect the plumbing that allowed the barn to share the same water well as the house. He filled in the large ugly pit that FIL used to store old pallets he scrounged in town, which he used for firewood for the house's smoky, homemade wood stove. The pit was covered over with gravel, making a parking spot for her silver pickup. She of course was ever so grateful, even while FIL grumbled and griped and complained about all these changes.
During the few months before we left, FIL became more and more indignant that we were being allowed to actually go on a mission. This was odd since when we had first announced our intentions to be missionaries shortly after MIL passed away, FIL actually offered to pay for most of it. The bishop told us later that FIL looked forward to us being gone so he would be in charge of the farm again, but by this time his attitude had reversed itself. He went three separate times to talk to each of the three men of the presidency of our combined congregations, telling them how my husband had betrayed his family, ought to have his church privileges taken away, and should not be allowed to be a missionary. The last was following a meeting presided over by the president, after which FIL marched into his office without an appointment and demanded that we have our privileges revoked. Fortunately my husband's sister was caring for him by then, and accompanied him. She called the president later and apologized for her father's behavior, telling him that nothing her father said was true. FIL was certain that he was believed, and that we would be denied this opportunity, but we continued to prepare. He was visibly disappointed when he asked us if the president had said anything to us about his warnings about our lack of worthiness, but we told him he hadn't. Because he hadn't.
We have thought more than once that when it really comes down to it, it frightens him that we would abandon him.
