All of my siblings have very limited or no contact with her. She tries to act helpless about the abusive years, like it should be a bonding thing between her children and her...but it drives us away. If she can corner us long enough she will tell every story about how she remembers it and I suppose she is looking for some kind of compassion from us, but we are tired of hearing it. Then she tries to give us ideas about how we should live our lives. This is usually something I know and she tells it for the third or forth time. I am 50 and she still tries to be a mother, which would not be bad if she treated me like an adult. Sometimes she comes off like a prissy mother-in-law that all she wants is her way. There’s more. One of my younger brothers is schizophrenic, has been since he was 17, he is now 45. If my brother does not stay locked up in his home (with caregiver), he gets out and masterbates in the front yard in the broad daylight. Mama says it is because he needs sex. Mama also says that he isn’t schizophrenic, but the medicine made him that way. Yep, there is more. So right after she divorced daddy, she believes God led her to the discovery of the cure for cancer and all other diseases. My mama takes a pillow case and fills it half way with cedar boughs and green grass when it is growing in the yard. She takes this pillowcase and uses it like a tea bag in her bath and then baths in the water. She believes that if my schizophrenic brother would bathe like this, that it would cure him. She has even wrote a pamphlet about it. She takes it to churches, gives it to anyone and everyone. You call her house and you dialed the wrong number...she be calling you until you block her and telling you about “grasswater”. She says her next book will be, “My children hate me because I cured cancer”. Yesterday she brought home a 30 pound whole ham. We don’t have a stove or an oven...or even a pot that big. Strange, but I can only find one fork. I don’t even know how to ask a question....is this some aging thing, or is it some mental thing? My gut says she is not far from having no cheese at all on her cracker. To be honest, I think I am so used to her, maybe I just think she still has some of her crayons left in her box.
Yes, I agree with you that it sounds as if your mother is definitely mentally off, unbalanced -- crazy, just to be blunt. It sounds as if she has been that way at least since the divorce 25 years ago. Has she ever seen a doctor or had any sort of treatment for her mental health issues?
I told my mother this story, I said to her that her “grasswater” is what brought you to God, but throwing it at others to believe isn’t going to get you anywhere. It is what God used to bring you to him, like the hole the lady had fallen in. Each of us have our own way to God and she shouldn’t push her way on people.
I thought I did good.
An hour later she come in the room to tell me that my preacher is not a good preacher that she can not believe in what he says. Ugh.
She claims God wants her to knock on doors and tell people about Grasswater....I told her, well just know there is going to be people that think you are crazy and knock you off their porch.