A THANKSGIVING BABY LOOKING FOR LOVE

A THANKSGIVING BABY LOOKING FOR LOVE

I was born ten days ago at my grandmother's home.  It was Thanksgiving Day, 1939, a cold rainy day in Oklahoma.  My name is Linda Gayle.  My grandmother took the little baby that I was from Dr. Hollman's hands and gently washed me with warm water in her kitchen dishpan.  All the time she was cleaning my tiny body, she spoke soft, soothing words of love and even said a prayer thanking God for putting me in her arms.  I felt safe and loved.

My mother stayed in bed at Granny's house for four days along with me and my brother, age two and my sister, age one.  She let Mike and Amy sit on her bed and even sleep beside her.  I could tell that she loved them very much.

My mother was quite a small nineteen year old young woman and, for some reason, her milk wasn't right so she never held me close to feed me.  Instead, Granny held me securely in her arms while she sat in her rocking chair and fed me with a bottle of milk that came from hers and Grampa's herd of cows.  I started gaining weight right away.

Grampa worked hard on his farm but when he came in for supper, he would carry me around the kitchen while talking to Granny while she cooked the meal.  I liked the way he talked and whistled to me.  His face was a bit scratchy against my cheek but I didn't mind that.

Most of the time we stayed there, I was asleep in the bassinette that Grampa made for me.  At times, Granny asked my mother if she wanted to hold me but she always said that she was tired or her stomach was hurting.  When she did let Granny put me in her arms, she held me with stiff arms and seemed uncomfortable having me so close to her.  I don't know why she wasn't relaxed with me and cheerful with me like she was with my brother and sister.  Even when they were noise or crying, she was lovingly kind and soft spoken to me.  Makes me wonder if there was something wrong with me.  But, there couldn't be, or Granny and Grampa wouldn't have been so sweet and gentle with me.

I haven't seen my father yet; he's gone to Kansas to find a job.  I hope he likes to hold me like Grampa does.  He is almost 21 years old and can't seem to find a good job in this area so he likes to go to Kansas or Texas or California to find work.  Mike and Amy talk to Mommy about him.

When my mother decided to leave their house and go home, she took Mike and Amy but said she wasn't feeling very good so she left me with Granny and Grampa.  I love to be with them, but I think I should go home with Mommy so she can get to know me and get used to holding me and talking softly to me. 

There's another reason I like being with Granny and Grampa.  It's because my two young aunts live there too.  June is nine years old and Marcheta is twelve.  When they are not in school, both of them like to hold me in Granny's rocking chair.  Both of them sing to me.

Grampa drove his old truck to get Mommy, Mike and Amy and bring them here.  I like the way Mike and Amy talk to me and hold my tiny fingers in theirs.  After Mommy was here a while, Granny handed her a bottle of warm milk to feed me.  I was so glad when she picked me up and held me while she sat one the sofa and fed me.  Amy sat by her the whole time and tickled my toes.  As soon as my bottle was empty, Mommy held me on her shoulder for a few minutes and patted my back until I burped three times.  Then she laid me on the sofa while she talked to Granny and June.  After a while, she got up and went to another room and Granny picked me up and put me in my bassinette.


Before sunset on this my tenth day, Grampa drove Mommy, Mike, Amy and me to our house.  It is a small house under two large pecan trees not a big house like Granny's is.  As soon as we got home, Mommy fixed me a bottle of milk and propped it on the pillow next to me in my crib so I could suck the warm milk from it.  Amy watched me drink my milk and soon, Mommy picked me up and put me on her shoulder again.  She walked around the small living room and kitchen while she did that.  I burped four times and she laid me down in my crib.

After a while, Mommy brought a clean, dry diaper and put it on me.  She didn't seem to like the smell of my diaper so she hurried and pinned it on me and left the room just as I burped milk that ran down my cheek and onto my dry blanket.  My tummy started to ache so I cried until Mommy picked me up and carried me around the room for a few minutes.  Then she put me down and sat on the floor to play toys with Mike while Amy stood by my crib and watched me squirm because my tummy still ached.  She held my fingers and I could tell that her hands were quite small also.

When Mommy saw that I had burped up the milk, she grabbed me and took me to the small sofa and changed my gown.  She did it quickly as if she didn't really want to be bothered.  I cried some more because my tummy ached and she carried me to the kitchen where she was cooking supper for her and Mike and Amy.  She seems to have too much to do around the house and with Mike and Amy; so, she doesn't want to hold me very long.  I finally went to sleep.

I've been home for a week and don't feel good.  I keep burping up my milk and my tummy aches so I cry too much, I think.  Mommy doesn't have much time to hold me so I lie alone a lot while Amy watches me. 

Granny and Grampa came to our house this morning and both of them have held me while they talked to Mommy.  Granny suggested that since I never got sick or had a tummy ache at her house that maybe I should go there for a few days.  Grampa said that maybe the problem is with Mommy's cow's milk.  She milks Prissy every evening while Mike is supposed to watch over Amy and me.  I wonder when Daddy will come home; maybe I won't be sick when he is here.

It's Thanksgiving 1940 and it's my first birthday.  I have spent most of this year with Granny and Grampa because I don't get sick when I'm there but I always get sick when I go home with Mommy.  It's so wonderful to be at their house because they hold me lovingly and talk to me far more than Mommy does when I'm at her house.  I miss Mike and especially Amy when I'm not at home with them.  Another thing, Mommy is going to have another baby in just five months and now the doctor says that she has to stay in bed everyday until the baby is born.  That means that she won't take me home with her; after all, she has Mike and Amy to take care of and to help her with things while she stays in bed. 

It's March 1941 now and my baby brother, Ames, was born in the hospital.  I still have to stay with Granny and Grampa; or, should I say, I get to stay with them and my two aunts.  I'm always happy when I am with all of them; and, I don't get sick.  Daddy is home now but he keeps busy working and helping with Mike and Amy.  He never holds me and when he bends over me to say hello, I don't like how his breath smells because he smokes cigarettes and drinks whiskey.

The months have passed quickly because now I am two years old and I still spend most all of my time at Granny and Grampa's house.  Mommy is going to have another baby in January 1942 so she is a busy mother and housewife.  She's just too busy to have any time for me at her house since Ames takes up a lot of time and she doesn't feel very well due to the pregnancy.  I so love being with Granny and Grampa.  They bought me lots of toys and take me to church with them.

I'm well over three years old now and this has been a terrible year for my family.  Mommy's baby boy, Donnie, was born in January and she was very happy.  Daddy went to California to find a job.  Then the worst thing happened when Donnie was five months old.  One morning in May he was feeling feverish and weak so Mommy took him to the doctor who said he had spinal meningitis. He died three days later.  So this has been a really sad year for Mommy because her baby died.  She loved him very much like she loves Mike, Amy and Ames.  As usual, I have spent most of this past year with my wonderful, loving Granny and Grampa.  My aunts are getting older and they play with me often. 

I wonder what it would be like to live every day at home with Mommy and my sister and brothers.  And, I wonder if I'll ever get to know my father; he's gone most of the time.  He doesn't come here to see me because Granny doesn't like his drinking whiskey except when she needs a pint of it to make her peppermint cough syrup.

CHAPTER TWO

Everything has changed.  I'm not happy.  Not long after baby Donnie died, Daddy went back to California to work in the shipyards to replace the America's fleet that was destroyed on December 6, 1941.  Then, he wanted Mommy to go there also.  I overheard her talking with Granny and Grampa about whether to send me off to California or let me stay and always live with them.  She knows that they love me so much and make happy.  I hoped Mommy would agree to let me stay with them; but it was decided that I should grow up with my sister and brothers, so I had to leave Granny and Grampa and my aunts and go three thousand miles away from them.  I cried and cried the morning Grampa carried me to the truck and put us on the train to go to California.  It was raining really hard; about as hard as my tears were falling. 

Here in Santa Paula, California, I play with my sister and brothers but I miss Granny and Grampa and I don't think Mommy likes me very much.  She doesn't talk to me very much and she scolds me more often that she does her other three kids.  I don't know why she gets so mad at me so much. She says my name, Linda Gayle, so angrily as if she hates the name, or maybe she hates me.  I just want to be the good girl she will love. 

Well, we moved back to Oklahoma after I my fourth birthday because the United States drafted Daddy and he joined the U.S.Navy.  Mommy brought all four of us on the train that was filled with soldiers and sailors leaving to fight the wars in Europe and Japan.  Daddy is on a ship somewhere near the Philippines and won't be home until the war is over. 

Mike and Amy go to school now and I stay home with Ames and Mommy.  We live two miles from Granny and Grampa so the three of us walk over to their house sometimes.  Often, I get to stay overnight at their house since I don't have to go to school.  I am so happy to be back in Oklahoma where I get to see them.  They love me so much and tell me often.  Granny likes to kiss my cheeks with a squeaky sort of kiss; and, then she laughs when I giggle.  My cousin Sondra is at their house most of the time when I visit there. I think that she and I are the favorite grandchildren that Granny and Grampa have.  It's nice being that special.

I wish Mommy treated me lovingly, even sometimes.  Yesterday I did or said something that she didn't like.  I still don't know what it was; but I do know that my legs and butt have red stripes all over them because she used the black leather belt and spanked me over and over for a long time.  She was holding my arm with her left hand and hitting me really hard with the belt in her right hand.  I was hurting so bad that I ducked under the dining room table and when she swung the belt, she hit her hand on the table and yelled at me louder than ever.  She kept hitting me and pulled me all over the room.  I didn't think she would ever quit.  I saw Amy standing in the doorway crying; she knew that Mommy was doing something bad, really bad.  I wonder if Mommy will ever love me.

Daddy came from the war and we moved down the road to a bigger house.  Amy and I sleep in one little room and the boys sleep in a different one.  Daddy comes home late every day and on Friday and Saturdays, he and his brother, Uncle Chesly, come home drunk.  Sometimes, us four kids walk across the pasture, the railroad tracks and the creek, then up the hill to Granny and Grampa's house.  I like it when I get to stay there all weekend.  They love me so much and tell me that they do.  It feels so good to be loved.

One day Sammy, our cousin, and her parents came to visit us.  While our parents and Uncle Chesly were visiting in the kitchen, all of us went down the hill to the cattle watering pond and went swimming.  The boys swam naked but us girls kept our white panties on; not a great idea because when we got tired of being in the water and waving at the engineers when the train went by, our panties were stained by the dirty pond water.  Amy suggested that we take them off and bury them in the cow's lot so Mommy would get mad at us.  That's what we did and Mommy never knew.  The boys didn't have to worry.

We worked hard at the jobs Mommy and Daddy gave us.  We hoed weeds in the garden and helped pick cotton at Grampa's.  Amy and I always had to be sure that little brother Ames didn't pick more cotton than we did, or Daddy would give us a whipping with his belt. 

Mike was a good brother and my friend most of the time.  But, one day as we were all leaving the school to walk home, some boys were calling me names about being fat since I wasn't as skinny as Amy.  Instead of being my friend, he joined them in calling me names and that made me cry more than ever.  When I told Daddy what happened, he whipped Mike for not taking up for his sister.  I was glad that Daddy said that brothers are supposed to be their sister's friend, not act like their enemy.

One day when the four of us were playing in the pasture that was terraced with mounds that kept the water from always flowing downhill when it rained.  We played there a lot.  That particular day, Mike put his arms around me and kiss me.  That surprised me.  Then he told Amy and Ames to stay where they were and kiss each other, while he took my hand and led me away from them.  Then he kissed me again and we checked each other out to find out how boys and girls were different.  Amy and Ames just walked back to the house. I liked being kissed.  It reminded me of Granny and Grampa's kisses that showed me that they loved me.

I'm in fourth grade now and we have moved to a different school, Moore Elementary School, where Ames and I are in one room and Amy and Mike are in the other room of our rural schoolhouse.  Yesterday it snowed all morning and it was exciting for all of us when we went outdoors to play during the lunch hour.  Some kids made snowmen and others just ran around or made snow angels.  My friend Toady, her real name was Virginia, and I were in the outhouse with other girls when the boys started throwing snowballs up and over the wall around the outhouse.  I looked out and saw that Amy and Mike were in the group that was throwing snowballs.  Toady and my friend, Anne, and I did what other kids were doing: we re-made the snow into harder snowballs and threw them out from the outhouse.  Everyone was having fun and laughing.

Suddenly, both teachers started ringing the bell.  They made all the students go to their desks and wait until they what punishment they would give us for throwing snowballs.  Finally, they each told the students in their room that they had a choice of punishments.  They could either take a paddling, or they could write "I will not throw snowballs in school" a hundred times.  At the end of the day, seventeen boys and five girls took the paddling by their teacher.  The five girls were Amy, her friend Jo, Anne, Toady and me.  The paddling wasn't very hard because we were wearing our winter snow pants; but it was funny so all of us laughed on the way home from school. 

Mike was always playing tricks on Ames and me.  I don't know why he thought it was funny when he 'dared' and 'double dared' us to lick the railroad tracks; but we would never say no to his dare.  That wasn't very smart of us.  Our tongues hurt for several days after touching them to the frosted and cold railroad track.  Daddy scolded Mike.

While our parents were gone one day, the four of us decided to play 'rodeo' which we played by catching Daddy's calves and riding them for as long as possible.  That day, when it was my turn to ride, Mike caught the wildest and biggest calf with a rope and dared me to ride it.  I did and the ride was fun until Mike opened the gate of the corral and the wild calf took off down the hill until I finally fell off.  I landed in a ditch that had some metal in it and my leg was cut quite badly.  It bled a lot.  Mike, Amy and Ames chased the calves back into the corral but Daddy was mad at Mike for opening the gate and causing me to cut my leg.  Daddy whipped him.

Another day Mike hurt me even worse when I was in fifth grade.  We had hoed weeds from the cornfield with Mommy one morning then went home to lunch.  Mommy decided to stay at the house and can tomatoes for the afternoon but the four of us had to go back to hoe corn.  When we got to the electric fence, Amy and Ames crawled under it; but Mike 'dared' then 'double dared' me to touch the electric barbed wire.  Usually the wire clicked off and on and it was easy to turn loose from it after a shock or two; but that day, there was something wrong.  I touched the wire but couldn't turn it loose because it didn't click off and on like it should have done.  I was captive of the wire until Mike finally took my other hand and pulled me away.  He felt the shock too.  The barbs of wire cut my hand pretty bad.  Mike got scolded by Mommy and I didn't have to go back and hoe corn.  My hand hurt a lot and Mommy bandaged it.  She held my hand tenderly as she doctored it.  Maybe she loves me just a little.

Fifth grade has been a difficult year.  One day during the lunch hour, Uncle Chesly sped by the school in his pickup; then, minutes later, he passed going the opposite way and Daddy was speeding behind his pickup.  Our Grandfather had blown his brains out and bled horribly in Uncle Chesly's kitchen which he shared with his brother and ten year old niece.  What a horrible thing he did to their home.  I'm so glad he didn't do that in our home. 

During the days of the funeral many family pictures were brought out and viewed by everyone.  That was a bad thing to have happened because when Daddy saw a picture of Mommy with Uncle Chesly in his Army uniform, Daddy got extremely jealous and angry.  Every night he would beat Mommy, swear at her and tell her she committed adultery and beat her more as he told her to confess who the man was.  Amy and I could hear everything they said and how hard he hit her, because our bedroom wall was between their bed and ours.  We heard everything and realized Daddy hated and hurt Mommy.  During the day, I felt so bad for her that I wanted to hug her and tell her I loved her and never believed that she ever did anything bad.  But, I said nothing and didn't hug her; she was in so much pain that she didn't hug any of us four kids.  She always looked so sad and she must have hurt all over from his beatings.  Daddy ran away to California and he stayed there for a year while Mommy got a full time job at a department store to provide for us kids. 

When Daddy came back at the end of my sixth grade year, Mommy packed things and all of us moved to California.  I thought maybe that meant that he no longer believed that Mommy was guilty of adultery, that it was just in his fearful imagination.  Wrong!  At night Amy and I could still hear him accuse her and hit her.  She got a job in California and we stayed with Daddy and acted like a happy family.  One day after he had hit her and was yelling at her, the landlord knocked on the door.  Suddenly, everything changed and we sat down, Mommy sat down and Daddy gave the landlord a check.  You would have thought we were a happy family even though Mommy had blood on her face; us kids weren't fooled.  I wonder if the landlord was fooled. 

Pretending to be a happy family when other people were around is odd and is a hard way to live.  Daddy pretended to love Mommy and that he wanted to live with her and us, while treating her so badly.  It's sort of the way Mommy treated me for years; she pretended to love me when she didn't.  I don't think there is any love in the family I have to live with; it's an odd and imaginary way of living.  It doesn't make me happy.  Moving us to California again was supposed to made us happy; but it didn't.  Love didn't move to California with us because there wasn't any love in our family.  The pretence of love in our family made me feel so sad.  I kept wishing I could be back in Oklahoma where I could visit Granny and Grampa once in a while and feel truly loved.

When I was in eighth grade, one Sunday afternoon was the scariest day of my life.  Daddy never went to church with the rest of us but Mommy never missed church.  That day after dinner was over and the dishes were washed and put away, Daddy called all of us into the living room.  He told us four kids to sit together on the sofa.  He put two chairs in front of us and told Mommy to sit in one.  He left the room and when he returned, he was carrying a loaded shotgun.  When he sat down in the other chair, his shotgun pointed straight at us kids.  I was so scared.  I believed Daddy was going to shoot all of us dead and bloodied. 

He then pointed the barrel of the shotgun at Mom's face and demanded that she tell her four children that she had committed adultery and that she tell who the man was.  For so many years, Amy and I had heard him accuse Uncle Chesly and her of adultery.  She kept saying she was innocent and I believed that  as a Christian, she would never commit adultery.  Daddy did though and he always went to the bar that was owned by the woman he had lived and slept with while his family was not in California.  I believe that he continued to spend time with her.  After all, he spent hours in her bar every day of the week until Amy called him to come home because she had cooked dinner.  That shotgun looked like a big canon and I was scared that Daddy was going to shoot all of us dead. Hours later, he left with the gun.  The next day he returned without the gun.  That incident was never spoken about again by anyone in our home.  Fear became the strongest member of our family after that and, I don't think anyone in the family felt much love anytime.

Not long after that, Granny and Grampa visited us from Oklahoma.  Their visit was wonderful.  Once again, I remembered love and felt truly loved by them for the few days that they were with us.  They loved Mommy and Mike, Amy and Ames as well as loving me.  They hugged us or would just put their hand on a shoulder to show love.  Mom never had done that to me as long as I could remember.  I just never felt her hug or love.  Even in family photos, she was never by me and never put her arm around me.  She always seemed to be angry at me.  Daddy just ignored me.

How, I wonder, can a girl understand what love is, if her mother and her father never show love to her either in words or action.  Maybe that was the reason that I liked having boyfriends who would hug me and kiss me because they loved me.  I had boyfriend all the times of my life.  In elementary grades, Mike's girlfriend was Anne and her brother was my boyfriend.  In junior high, my boyfriend was our teenage neighbor, Mike's friend.  In high school, my boyfriend was named David who went to our church.  After high school, there was my friend's brother and then the guy I finally married.  They loved me but I never did anything that could make me pregnant because that would have made Mom hate me for sure.  She was glad that I loved church boys.  Mike was glad that I loved a boy that was his friend so he an I were good friends until the night that he and David had a fist fight.  Mike and I were a lot alike because we didn't like church except as a place to meet someone to love with boy-girl teenage love.

After high school I got a job, bought a car and still lived at home because I was six months from being eighteen years of age.  Mom and Dad treated me like a stranger in the house except when they demanded that I do work around the house.  I didn't pay room and board but I would buy Mom special things that she wished for such as the fireplace décor and tools.  I never felt love there; and, sometimes it didn't seem like they loved each other.  He still accused her of adultery and still yelled at her and beat her at night demanding that she admit who the man was.  I heard it from my bedroom or during what should have been a Sunday afternoon.  He was drunk every night and was more drunk that every on Friday and Saturday evening.  Seldom did he come home from the bar owned by his woman friend before 2:00 a.m..  Mom knew all that and stay quietly angry all the time.  She and I never talked about it and Mike was married and Amy was going to college.  Everyone in our family just did their own thing and nobody acted like they loved anybody in the family.

I met a guy who was in the Air Force that summer after graduation and spent lots of time with him while my friend Paula and I had fun together.  She liked his friend.  One night after he and her boyfriend returned to their Air Force Base, she and I drove to Sacramento and the Mother Lode gold country.  It was fun being together, and it felt good being out of high school and having a job; actually, it felt like I was already an adult.  I dropped her off at home about 8:00 a.m. and drove on home, not even thinking that I had done anything wrong.  But, when I walked in the door, hell hit me in the face.

I walked into the kitchen where Mom, Dad and Amy were talking.  Dad glared at me and told me to go to my room immediately. I wish I had been old enough and bold enough to have turned and walked back out the door.  But I minded Daddy and figured he would scold me  if anything.  I was not prepared to be told to "take off your clothes down to your bra and pants"; but I was so scared by then that I did what he said.  Then, he took off his stiff, narrow leather belt with a metal tip and began beating on my barred skin.  I cried. I screamed.  I felt blisters and cuts appearing on my skin.  It seemed like Daddy would never quit hitting me.  Then he accused me of being a "damn prostitute"; but I was innocent.  I had never had sexual intercourse with any boy or guy I was with.  Daddy had sex with who knows how many women, so he assumed that I did the same as those women.  His accusations were false but the blisters and red welts on my body were real.

I stayed in my room all that day.  Amy came in but she didn't know what to say even when I could tell that she was sad and felt sorry for me.  The next morning I called Granny and told her what had happened so she sent me an airplane ticket to go to Oklahoma to live with her and Grampa while I recovered from what had happened.  They met me at the airport and from that moment, there was never a question that I was loved and understood.  I stayed with them for many months and the following summer when Mom, Mike, Amy and Ames visited Oklahoma, I went back to California with them. 

Daddy and I never talked about the beating or anything about the past.  He walked me down at the aisle when I got married a few months later.  Shortly after the wedding, we moved to Washington to live near Doug's parents who were divorced.  Two years later, one baby later and a pregnancy with a baby on the way, Doug and I divorced.  I've never told my kids or siblings or parents about the terrible marriage we had.  How could I have expected any thing different than I had known about the marriage of my parents.  Their marriage taught me truth about marriage and my marriage was no different. 

Finally, I took my boys and moved back to California, got a job and cared for them without depending on my family.  My mother still didn't seem to love me; after all, I didn't go to church with her and I divorced the mean husband instead of staying with him like she did.  She never approved of anything about me and, if she loved me, I never understood anything she did or said as love or loving.  Maybe I was such an unlovable woman that I should never expect to be loved.  I felt so alone and lonely as I tried to care for my boys and to show them that I loved them; that I would always love each of them, no matter what they ever said or did in their whole lives.

When my father died, I knew that I had lost the one person who understood what I was going through.  Even though I never felt his love any more than I felt Mom's love, I could still go to him for counseling because he was such a wise man.  Unfortunately, in my anger at Mom's failure to treat me lovingly during the years to now, I expressed my anger at her and Amy because they so depended on their religion almost like addicts.  Later, Amy told me that she realized that she focused on Christianity in lieu of alcohol as her addiction.  Because of Daddy's alcoholism, Mike and I were addicted the first time we drank, science proves that.  Ames stopped using alcohol when he realized he was getting addicted.  Amy never drank addictively even after she quit church, lucky woman.  I'm so sorry that I let alcohol trap me but, Thank God that I got out of that horrible trap later in my life.

During those terrible days after Daddy's death, I got so depressed that I was ready to die at my own hand but I didn't want my boys affected by that so, I gave them up for a while until I could find my way to safety from suicide.  Because my mother was so critical and hateful of me because she had very little, if any, love for me, I could leave them with her.  She was so hateful of me that I left my babies with welfare for foster mom instead.  They were loved for two years by their foster mom who stayed in touch with them lovingly all the years that she lived, even after I got them back and we had a happy life together.

During those terrible days, I met a man who also drank alcohol and at first he took advantage of me so I was pregnant when Daddy died and I gave that precious beautiful baby to my aunt and Uncle Odell who had one adopted son and wanted a second son.  They proved to be good parents for him.  He was such a handsome baby, boy and man whom I knew before I died at age fifty-seven.

When Mike got his first divorce and had his sons, Mom let them live with her for years and was loving and kind to them.  She always loved Mike the most and even though he was always an alcoholic, she never would admit that and she always loved him the best. 

After I finally found the love with staying power, I married Dale and he adopted my boys and we had a daughter together.  During all of my counseling, I learned to love myself enough to become a more adjusted human being and I never quit loving my children and Dale.  I had lots of professional counseling and improved with medication for depression; but alcohol was never important to my life again. 

Finally, just ten or so years before I died, my mother began to be loving toward me and treated me with the kindness that I had yearned for all of my growing up years.  She finally quit hating me and loved me enough that I finally felt good when I could be with her.  I still believe that if she had loved me from the beginning of my short life, that I would have been much happier and never would have tried suicide that took away my memories nor would I have given up my sons even for a short while.  They love me and know that I love them and their children.

It's sad that I died suddenly in a second due to brain anyouerson much too early.  I was loving life and family and Mom.  And, most of all, I was being loved by Mom and my family including Amy, Ames and Mike. 

Finally, this Thanksgiving Baby received the mother's love that had been at the heart of all that I was.  Thanks, Mom, for finally loving me.  Your love made a big difference in creating happiness with life; even though so late. 


..............................
a continuing story of my sister's life...