Requiem for Peace or Opium; Mama’s Visit July 2007

Mama came to visit for a month this last July.

From a correspondence a few weeks before her visit I realized that Mama intended to get into and “regurgitate” the past. She started spewing and acting out her anger, hatred, and rage the first day she arrived, and went on daily for the entire month she was here for hours on end... I'd be so overwhelmed with her seeming endless spewing anger, criticism,  and hatred towards me that I would be on my hands and knees retching in my garden and driveway...  

Yet this was a turning point because my mother had no idea about any of my lifetime of achievements, education,  or accomplishments... my siblings had never told her, and had built on the crazy lies, rituals, division, deception, and false witness of the Pedersen Family Hate Club instead.  My mother was STUNNED and so proud  of how well my son Greg was raised, and how happily married, successful, and what a beautiful family he and Tanya were raising.  

Going through my photo albums my mother was able to see the warm, stable, supportive environment and group of friends that we had... and the many sports activities, trips, vacations, and group outings and community events that we were involved in.

My mother became so proud.   Greg was my mothers first and only grandchild who had really succeeded in making his way in life independently so far, and I gave my mother all the honor by telling her how I had tried to raise Greg the same way she tried to raise us.. near the beach, great schools, clean healthy place to play and run in a nice environment, with healthy nutritious home cooked food.

I respect, honor, and love my mother for doing the best she could. Her agenda this visit was to regurgitate all her anger, hatred, and rage that has festered and multiplied all these years. A couple of times Mama raised and pointed to the matter of how my first cat died, as she painted me to be a horrible monster.

My relationship with my mother has been very troubled my entire life. Mama has hated me for 2 major reasons, and about a million lesser reasons. She hated me for wanting a relationship with my father, the monster so unworthy of a name we were forced to call him “Mr.” My mother also hated me for rebelling and speaking out against the abuse, dysfunction, depression, and despair occurring at home and trying to get help. (Actually, I think she hated me before I was born, as she claims she tried to abort me 3 times to spare me from getting ruined by “Mr.”)

My family is extremely toxic for me. Since leaving home, I have learned and become accustomed to living on entirely different and healthier levels of communicating and relating. Relating on those former levels destroys my spirit and makes me very ill. In the mid-80’s when I was doing a tremendous amount of emotional and family-of-origin work, I had let go and forgiven so much of the stuff from the past. Actually, I had made a trip all the way to California specifically to apologize and make amends to Mama and my siblings for my shortcoming in my part of the dysfunction and pain. Mama continued to reject me and I was shut out from her life another 20 years until the last couple years since Papa died, she was diagnosed with cancer, and I invited Mama on a dinner cruise/ family reunion meeting I had planned. Mama came for a brief weeklong visit last year and was impressed to see how much good I had accomplished over my lifetime.

My very first cat was a beautiful precious little gray and white female. I adored her! She was my heart! Finally, I had something at home that I could love that loved me back. I couldn’t decide whether to name her Peace or Opium so I named her Peace or Opium. (Disclaimer: I do not support any use of opium other than medical use. I recommend everyone experiment with, try, and OD on peace.) I was 15 at the time in 1969, and my mother, 2 sisters, and younger brother and I lived in a rental house in Westport, Connecticut.

I was living in an unfinished storage room in the corner of the basement, where I could stay out of the way and find solitude from the torment of my mother and siblings. I had Peace or Opium for about a month or so, and she was my life. One day I made a collar out of yarn for her, to which I attached another long piece of yarn for her to play with and use as a leash.

My older brother Toto had just turned 17. Toto had already left home and was living on his own, going to high school, working, and making money… doing quite well. He had his own apartment in Westport and an MG midget sports car. Toto was also an outcast in my family for wanting a relationship with Papa, and for rebelling against Mama’s abuse. Toto had run away from home at age 11 and had learned to do okay on the streets in NYC. Toto would pick me up in his MG some mornings on our way to Staples High School, or sometimes he would stop by to visit or pick me up and go for a little drive.

Whenever Toto would come to visit family or me, or pick me up for a ride was a big deal for me. Although Mama disapproved, Toto was one of the few relationships she could not deny me and I was “allowed” to have. Toto was someone I could talk to and was a solace from the torment and pain. Toto is a major Frank Zappa freak, who had an affinity for naming his dogs after Frank Zappa’s children Moon Unit and Dweezil.

Toto had come to visit and pick me up to go for a ride… sometimes we would get stoned or drop acid and go for a soft serve cone at Karvel or a burger at Big Top Shoppe drive in on the Old Post Road/Kings Highway. (Disclaimer: I do not encourage use of LSD.) Toto was not always allowed to come visit.

I was not allowed to close the door to my bedroom so I tied a slip loop handle at the end of the yarn attached to my kitten’s collar and slipped it over the doorknob of my bedroom door so she could not get loose. (If I closed my door or locked myself in my bedroom Mama would break the door, once breaking it down with an axe.)

Mama warned me to not leave Peace or Opium tied to my bedroom door because Moon Unit might “attack” it and that I was sadistic for leashing her. I kept her leashed to my doorknob and I went to each of my siblings telling them not to let my cat out.

My mother’s version is that I was some dangerous sadistic psycho who enjoyed seeing my kitten jump on the end of the yarn and pouncing away and hit my bedroom door when Toto’s black lab puppy, Moon Unit sniffed it. Moon Unit sniffed Peace or Opium and walked away.

When I returned from driving around with Toto, I discovered that Peace or Opium was gone! I searched everywhere for Peace or Opium calling for her. I could not find her anywhere in the house! I started crying and screaming, flipping out and losing it… becoming frantic begging my family for help to look for her. I went to each of my siblings asking who had Peace or Opium and let her out.

They all denied it.

I looked outside in the dark calling for her until all the flashlight batteries had died. I was hysterical. Mama and my siblings taunted me about how my cat could be slowly dying somewhere, and Mama applied the guilt trip of how I should have listened to her. I hysterically cried myself to whatever little sleep I got that night.

Mama’s version was that Peace or Opium slowly froze to death that night and that when I found her lifeless body, Peace or Opium was frozen stiff.   I recall it was shortly after I was  pulled from the mental hospital... recommended by a therapist for me to have something to love and talk to and love me back.

When I found her dead body that next morning, rigor mortis had set in and there was no way to save or revive her, though I tried repeatedly to perform mouth to mouth. I found her hanging on a large pile of sticks and branches in the yard alongside the drivers side of Mama’s car… the yarn tangled and tied on the top of the branches and the yarn looped around her neck a few times. I remember it took me a few minutes to untie and untangle her and the yarn from where she was strangled and hung.

When I brought my cat’s lifeless body into the house Mama blamed me for killing it. I lost it. I took the blame and was inconsolable. (Not that any consolation was offered.) I tried to revive her performimg mouth to mouth resusitation and prayed to God to revive her. I cried hysterically.

I cried hysterically for weeks, hating and loathing myself even more than I already did because of it. I had loved my cat and hated myself for killing it. I wanted to die and kill myself for being such a horrible person. I totally broke down mentally, and would get hysterical and suicidal whenever Mama and my siblings would ritually taunt me and throw and rub my horrible deeds in my face. It became where at will and whim they could trigger me to lose it- crying hysterically in despair. Mama threatened me with having my stomach pumped again when I cried “too much”, so I eventually buried Peace or Opium in my self-hatred, guilt, and shame.

So when Mama first started this summer’s visit with her relentless barrage of spewing hatred and anger and attacking “you” statements, I was thrown back to my childhood of growing up with all her hatred and rage. I spent much of the first three days of my mother’s visit devastated, depressed, avoiding her, and crying in bed. Yet with my “adult eyes” I could see, realize and recognize and understand why no wonder I had grown up hating and despising myself as much I did. Any normal child would have grown up hating and despising themselves if they had grown up with the hatred and rage that my mother expressed.

My best friend of 28 years, Priscilla, called to check on me and see how it was going. (I have been getting back in touch with friends again, and becoming more available on the phone.) I told Priscilla of my despair that my mother’s attitudes… how they have never changed after all these years, closed to any discussion, reason, or evidence. I poured out my heart how my mother was refusing to use the healthy communications skills handout I had given her, or the list of who God says we are. Priscilla encouraged me to get out of the mode of being a “wounded child”, to accepting and embracing that this was my mother’s process. Priscilla, the wonderful friend she is, asked me what I needed to make my life spectacular.

So I started to use my Dialectical Behavioral Therapy skills of mindfulness… having a Teflon mind to the barrage of rage and becoming more mindful instead.

One of the things I was pondering was why my mother was bringing up the matter about me killing my cat so many years ago, and wondering and praying to God what is the lesson for me in the horror, self-hatred, and guilt. I disagreed with Mama about my cat freezing to death, but was strangled by the yarn, or if it’s name was Toilet Paper or Bumble Bee. I started remembering what happened, and that how my cat was somehow untied from my doorknob and found outside strangled tangled in the yarn.

So a bizarre, strange, and startling thought crossed my mind. Could Mama have done such a thing? (There were times we would come home to find pet hamsters dead and Mama would blame it on “Mr.” visiting. Until I left home, each beloved cat I had disappeared or died young somehow. Mama has a history of setting others up to look bad while she played as a poor victim, including setting up Toto to be beaten when he was a baby. Mama had set me up many times before. It crossed my mind if Mama was maybe the one who untied Peace or Opium from my bedroom doorknob, took her outside and tied her on the pile of branches.)

So I went to sit next to Mama sitting on the couch watching game shows on TV in my living room. I sat by her for a minute, and then asked her “Are you the one who killed my cat?” Mama did not take her eyes off the TV and said. “There were many cats in the shelters back in those days.”

I was stunned! I started flashing back on all the years of self-hatred for being such a horrible person because I was blamed and I had blamed myself for killing my cat. I flashed back on my siblings ritually taunting me and covering up for my mother and all the abuse that occurred. I started flashing back through all my memories trying to remember where someone deliberately kills another’s pet to brutalize, traumatize, and fuck with that person’s head and only coming up with psycho horror movies … Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte; The Godfather; Fatal Attraction, and my mothers accusations against my father. It flashed through my mind… what kind of mother does this to fuck over the mind of her own child, and then blame her child on top of it? It seemed incomprehensible to me as a mother and human being!

So I looked at Mama. I looked at signs on her face that she was joking, but didn’t see any. I looked for signs of love, tears, sadness, or remorse. There were none. I sat there for a minute staring at her once familiar profile, realizing how this is my mother looks and how it is one of my last times of seeing her alive. I looked for any reaction or response. She took her eyes off the TV screen for a few moments to turn and glare at me straight-faced eye to eye, and she poked me with her finger to tag me.

I flashed back on how Mama would do this whenever she beat a perceived opponent and succeeded in fucking them over somehow. It stood for “Screw you once, shame on me; screw you twice, shame on you.” I looked in her eyes and searched her face for signs of love, and saw her hatred glaring back at me, and realized that this was how she has always looked at me. Mama returned to watching TV.

I stood up, stunned… looking at her. I said something like “Wow! That is like being a psycho mama!” And then just like Jekyl and Hyde, she started pleading and begging me in a very teasing and taunting way… that she loved me, and to sit next to her and watch TV with her. She got up and brushed past me on her way to the kitchen to fix dinner, as if to provoke me on a violent level to start a physical fight. I don’t relate on that level. If anyone around me starts relating on that level, I leave. I was stunned. I felt and feel no anger… just sad and numb. I went back to my office to sort through what had just occurred. I sat in my computer chair gazing at the trees and sky. When Mama came back to plead with me to sit and watch TV with her, and then eat with her, I declined.

I had asked Shenettra to pray for healing of my mothers and my relationship during my mother’s visit. God bless Shenettra… she and others did pray for me. The healing I hoped for did not occur… but Shenettra posted a comment to remind me that God sometimes calms the child amidst the raging storm.

I had an epiphany! I realized that I am not the horrible dangerous monster that my mother has always tried to make me out to be! I realized that I was not responsible for killing my precious beloved cat, nor for any of a litany of other horrible things my mother blames me for. I realized how much this mind game had robbed me of my self-esteem, and contributed in to my core… a lifetime of hating and blaming myself. I realized how much it had messed up my head and how badly it had affected my mind and me.

And then something amazing started to happen. And then I started to feel free. It felt like weights were being lifted and I was being released from years of guilt so to love myself. In her hatred and rage, my mother had given me a gift… a gift of healing and restoration of a part of my sanity that I am not and was not the monster that my mother made me out to be. In her rage, Mama gave me a big part of my life back.

I have always detested deception, passive aggression, false witness, cruelty and nasty mind games. I pray for healing for my mother and that God bless her with His love and miracles. According to the calendars I’ve kept throughout my life, Peace or Opium died July 2, 1969. She was a very good little cat and I loved her.