As I watched Mother suffer multiple hospitalizations due to congestive heart failure, pulmonary fibrosis and stenosis, resulting in stroke-like brain injuries, she shared details of her life which I had never known before.

Growing up during the depression, Mother’s childhood was one of depravity in multiple ways. Her family was very poor, her father being a rural pastor of multiple small churches. They often sat down for meals with no food, praying that food would be provided, and it was.

Some stories were very difficult for me to listen to and process. At the hand of her father, she suffered abuse, beyond boundaries that any child should ever endure. Her mother was somewhat of a trickster, deriving sly pleasures for instigated intrigues.

At that time, family issues remained safely hidden away from the public, especially when the patriarch was a minister. It would be an anathema to get counseling or therapy. Psychological insights were considered to be of the devil. Mother actively discouraged my desire to be in the mental health field, and never accepted my education and career.

There were some things I never understood, such as the hatred for her sisters which continued into Mother’s ninetieth year of life. She related incidents that happened during her child with visceral venom. This from a champion scripture quoting church attender.

One day, defenses down, she let it slip out that her mother and sisters read her school work to her so she could pass her classes. From my background, I knew Mother manifested multiple educational difficulties, including dyslexia, language disabilities and attentional issues.

Her father, deciding she should become a nurse, enrolled Mother, and then dropped her off in New York City to become an RN. Having grown up in a rural area, she was terrified. This was during WWII. She was in Time’s Square during the epic picture of the war ending. As she put it, “The nursing students linked arms to get me through and save me.”

At this time, people in the local church took names and corresponded with those serving overseas. Mother chose my father, being twelve years older, she thought she was safe from a romantic entanglement. However, the letter writing morphed into more than a casual friendship and they married.

Father using the GI bill, earned college degrees. However, the married housing was in old, barren army barracks. Missing her beloved nature, life living on a river, exploring with her dog, Pal, I don’t think mother ever recovered. Father was an academic, research chemist. Mother was opposite, creative, right brained, romantic.  Never have I seen two diametrically opposite personalities.

Putting multiple stories together, I realized Mother’s parenting skills were learned through her father, a strict disciplinarian. As Mother put it, “When father said jump, we jumped, we didn’t even ask how high.”  Thinking I would respond the same way, when this did not occur, I received much abuse.

Finding out more about Mother’s background helped revive my empathy when it waned. True to form however, her inconsistencies did not disappoint. Just when I was about to let down my boundaries and lapse into excessive compassion, her manipulative, controlling behavior prevented me from slipping into co-dependency.