I watched the door close behind the kids as they left. I found out later that they had been recording me to use it against me. He had told them to do that.
I can never trust a visit with my kids, I told myself. Just like their father, they know how to push my buttons and get me to go off. Just like their father and their grandmother. Staging events like that is illegal in Canada.
Anyway, the first night was sobs. The second night got easier. I was no longer being woken up multiple times a night by either their noise or one, or both, of them throwing my door open after three quick knocks and being lectured at/yelled at/told off. This was something my mother would do – 1-4 am, she’d throw open my door, throw things at me, and scream at me. Every time my kids did that, it was re-traumatizing to me.
Shortly afterwards, I ended up with a cpap and had to work on adjusting to it. I still am.
I also got to work with packing up the kids’ and exes things. I had a few reasons for this:
1: Where was my stuff?
2: Make it easier for them to move.
3: How much of my property was missing?
4: Why the hell did we still have so much of our ex roommate’s crap?
My one kid, I counted the amount of sketchbooks they had. Close to 30 and all of them I bought for them. The other… one of my other neighbors is sure I had spent more than $500 in plants for that kid. Those plants now all have happy homes with the neighbor.
I also found out that the kids had walked off with MY Nintendo Switch.
My ex had taught the kids to throw away mom’s stuff when mom wasn’t looking. So why the hell did we have so much of our ex roommate’s stuff? Where did all my stuffed animals go? Clothing? Art supplies? I know he threw out a huge load of magazines and more… How long had he been doing this? Our entire relationship? There was times I was being driven crazy because stuff I had just bought I literally turned my back on and it was gone! One of my purses went missing and it had my id, car keys and more and I never saw it again after he moved a shelving unit.
Finding boxes and boxes of the ex roommate’s crap and yet boxes and boxes of my stuff missing? That made me angry.
I found broken and empty Copic markers. Ruined watercolours – the expensive ones from Japan I was given as a gift for my birthday by Spitfire. Just… the amount of debris in that kid’s room was unreal.
The other kid… barely had anything in comparison.
October 3rd was supposed to be when my ex came for their stuff. That didn’t happen. You’ll see why in a bit.
Arguments back and forth. Black Ort supporting me the entire time. September was a horrid month. The day their father was supposed to come and get their stuff came and went. So I kept adding stuff to the piles. I managed to find a home for the first two guinea pigs and did a tik tok about it. I know they are loved in their new home.
At some point, I put a beg in to my mother to help me out, because I was watching my finances change hard. I had gotten an eviction notice and my income was going to drop to the ground.
Then, October 2nd came. My one neighbor had told me she was going to make sure I had a dinner for Thanksgiving and I was about to go out shopping for some food when the RCMP showed up and knocked on my other neighbor’s door.
He was looking for me.
“Are you…?” he asked.
I backed away.
“Do you know…?”
I backed further away, expecting yet another complaint from her about being harassed or threatened by me or something – she’s done it twice so far. “Yes, she’s my mother.” I then clued in. “Is she dead?”
“I regret to inform you that your mother was found, after several days, in her home,” the gen d’armes spoke to me. Most of the rest of this was a blur with me singing “Ding Dong the Bitch is Dead!”
I wasn’t even given a day to let it sink in when I was badgered first by one brother (although he was kind about it), then the other (not so kind), about releasing her body.
I had hoped to donate it to medical science. Or cremate it, but my mother was a baha’i and they don’t do that.
That was the first 24 hrs. Black Ort sent me the first bouquet of flowers. “It’s mandatory.”
My ex was his wonderful self and sent me a loaded text with some very inflammatory words and would not give me 2 weeks to mourn my mother. He said he would get their property once I’ve abandoned the unit and worse things in his email.
Ya know what, bucko… I helped you get through both of your parent’s deaths. Maybe not as lovingly as I should have, but I was there and helped you. Hell, I drove you home when your buddy decided to pour you drink after drink after drink so you and he could commiserate together, and you terrified me during the trip home from that, scaring me half to death you were going to hit me instead of the inside of the car, and you couldn’t give me two weeks? Screw You!
I was not allowed to say my piece at her funeral. I am still very cross about that. So few showed up that the staff at the funeral home had to pal bear with me and my two uncles. Her sister, my aunt, didn’t bother to show. I did say a bit though. But boy, mention the word “cremation” and sending some of her ashes to Haifa to a baha’i and watch the horror explode over their faces.
I sank into a pit of despair and grief. The guilt of knowing that my mother was not only dead, but had died at home, alone, and wasn’t found for days. The horrible guilt of listening to Black Ort and not texting her back for all the last few months. We could have reconciled.
I didn’t think I would mourn her. How deep it went shocked me. How emotional I still am is far more shocking.
It’s both a relief she won’t ever hurt me again, but we will never ever be able to have that mother/daughter relationship we could have had. She wouldn’t admit to what she did, and demanded I beg her forgiveness for something she had set up to get me thrown in jail.
And I looked at my own four kids – yes, I have a fourth – and how I’ve ruined those relationships, even if I was protecting them.
Then… the baha’is where she and I both served when I was a teenager (and longer for her) wanted to send a bouquet. I had begged Black Ort to not let it be the only bouquet because I couldn’t stand seeing only those flowers, so for 10 days – the longest I’ve ever been able to keep a bouquet alive (two!), I had a bouquet of white roses and lilies from the bahai’s, and Black’s red and pink roses. I accepted the baha’i bouquet not because I wanted it, but because they were wanting to honour my mother. It was for them, not me, and seeing it every day was another knife to my heart. I should have thrown it out when I got it.
Everyone who spoke to me about my mother said the same thing – she loved me. One even said that she told them I was perfect. She never told me that and every single one of her friends saying that to me was a fresh knife straight to my heart. During one day in court, she called my eldest her “beloved” grand(child) 17 times before I stopped counting, but not once, not once, did she say the same thing about me. There’s a brown envelope for me somewhere in her stuff or at a friend’s place. I don’t really want to know what’s in it. I want what is rightfully, legally mine. The money her meager estate might have could be just enough to get me somewhere safe.
I was just coming out of that depression when I ended up saying the “wrong thing” in Whip chat when I was half awake. That became a snarlfest and a tantrum and I exploded. By the time Spitfire waded into it, I was already walking away from the Whip. Running, actually. I had had enough. With everything going on….
My heart attacks… the kids being bullying and abusive… the ex playing his manipulation games… Covid… friends dying… learning how to use a cpap and not succeeding, new meds that my body wasn’t adjusting well to, my mother dying… being harassed by the kids about their property… finding out that my Nintendo Switch now belongs to my ex and that I should not brick it… dangerous abscess and antibiotics…
Realizing I’m going to be homeless…
Bye Whip. I should have left well over a year ago. I’ve read blog posts on my site that state that very fact. Hell, I should have left the Whip discord a month ago when I found out my mother was dead in order to deal with all the emotions.
Black Ort is there, like a hand on my shoulder, trying to keep me from sheer hopelessness. There’s no housing where I live for someone like me. I’m not a recovering drug addict. I’m not on the streets. Literally, even though I’m on a waiting list for housing, it could be months, or years, before another subsidized unit is available. People would have to die before I find housing, unless I want to risk living with a roommate.
As for my mother’s estate – I haven’t heard word. Yes, I have a lawyer. I won’t let any verbal bequeaths go out. Verbal is not worth the paper its written on. I have to go back to cleaning out my home, donating most things for karma.
I’ve been asked to make a leap of faith.
I’m not sure I can survive long enough to make it.
My life is a work of He.art 