hAUNTED`

I am long many years a haunted soul...

Why this is I suppose has to do with my beliefs and connections with things paranormal or maybe just allowing freely that such things exist and coexisting with them.

When my Mother died I thought I was free...I was wrong...she did not rest and she did not think I should either.

Every night the battles continue in dreams and she is every bit as rigid and selfish as she ever was.

During her final years in one moment of some emotion that I have yet to define she apologized to me for "making me her whipping post".

I accepted her apology knowing full well it was conceived from some misplaced need to unburden her soul before she died and not for any true remorse on her part.

Whatever demons tortured that soul had warped it into something scarred and twisted, greedy and manipulative.

She had, earlier in her life, been quite frank in how afraid she was of her Mother and you can read earlier in this blog the stories of Grandma Leota and her curses.

My Mother was every bit as skilled in weaving a spell, she was a champion at making people think she was saintly and generous and she punished them when they didn't pay their tributes or walked away-even when those things she felt she was owed were only things that existed in her mind.

What she could conjure, the false debts both real and moral she created were intricately formed from bits and pieces of words and smoke.

She thought if she did things that people didn't want nor need but that she perceived had value that they would be returned to her in kind as some sort of material wealth.

In this process she drove away close friends and people who had actually cared for her but also people who cared too much for her children or who might get in the way of their loyalty.

Over the years so many times I watched the process or was the designated bearer of bad news and suffered the repercussions of her misplaced wrath.

She managed to find a way to manipulate me so that I would be the one who would take direct care of her on a daily basis-I lived next door.

When I suggested that she might be happier close to my sister and the grandchildren her response was "what and be a baby sitter for the rest of my life?".

It wasn't me she wanted it was the fallout from my life-I had more interesting friends, did more of the things she enjoyed and she could guilt or intimidate me into most whatever she wanted-opera tickets, expensive dinners, shopping trips...witty evenings where she was the only woman and the center of attention.

On the other hand by keeping my poor sister at arms length and using the same manipulative spirit on her she had a way to keep the two of us ot odds so she could move like the wind between us-use one against the other and neither would know that the other was in the same level of Mother hell as the other-we couldn't team up on her or against her and in her last years when Donna had her in her charge and I was the visitor Mother was furious and miserable because she knew that we were finally comparing notes and finding some portion of the truth.

I loved my house and gardens in Burbank but I couldn't stay there-too many ghosts walked there.

I thought as so many do that ghosts can't cros water and I put a lot of watery paths between me and Burbank and Mother to no avail.

She was firmly ensconced in my head and so began the endless nights of fighting out old and new issues, over and over;and sad because it could never be resolved.

I literally woke up one night and in my desperation shouted to the dark-"NO...this must stop, it isn't fair, you can't do this to me any more".

To be fair it has gotten a bit less ferocious-the fight goes on, the arguments-she once told me if it weren't for HER I would be living in a box on the streets.

Intellectually I knew this wasn't true-she had no friends except my friends, I was the one paying for the opera tickets and the expensive dinners and all the other nonsense it took to appease Mother all the while not knowing the my SISTER was fulfilling another set of needs on her side.

I found out after Mother's death that Donna was keeping her in groceries once a week but at the same time she was making me take her to the market or wherever she could conjur she needed to go to buy more.

When the shelves of her house were cleaned there was far too much stuff that was far out of date and needed to be tossed---waste borne of waste...

She lived alone in a 1500 square foot house that she kept in disarray so that it was hard for anyone to use her spare bedroom.

I found out that at one point my sister had been almost on the street with her three children-when I had asked my Mother what my sister was doing she told me she was living in a fancy townhouse in Northridge-she never asked my sister if she needed to come and stay in Burbank for awhile...

So here I am in the years where I should have happy memories and be fondly looking back only finding happy things to remember where my Mother wasn't...

Its hard to be angry at someone who is no longer there to be angry at but I can't seem to make the dreams stop...

But I do take some consolation that there are other men like myself that had complicated Mothers and relationships that were too close who suffer through their own kinds of hauntings.

People think their is consolation in knowing one is not alone in their trials-it isn't so much consolation as a fraternity of resignation-we who are so besieged recognize the toll it takes and we can be at least kind to each other and lend an understanding ear where others think we are mad or eccentric or ungrateful...we know better.

This is the path we must walk and we who walk this path walk alone...the scary part is will it ever end and will there ever be peace?

I think...NO