Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Crazy grandma. Okay, so Corky asked about my evil grandmother. She was an only child, born about nine years after her parents married. Her mother beat her when she was a child, my other grandmother remembered that they could feel the welts through her clothes. She ended up getting pregnant when she was 17, in 1930. Two people told my mother that her parents chained her to the basement wall and her mother beat her with a coal shovel. She was sent to southern Michigan to hide out, gave birth to my father at the University of Michigan hospital, and then gave him up for adoption. My father's father found out, told his parents, and they went and found him. My father's grandmother raised him until he was about 4 years old.
Crazy grandma's mother Blanche (yes, that was her name) died suddenly around 1932 and grandma immediately married my father's father. They had another kid in 1938, my aunt. And sometime between 1938 and 1940 the marriage soured and she divorced him, and then poisoned her kids minds against their father. She married the hired hand in 1940, a weak-willed wimp, and in 1944 they had a son, my uncle Tom.
The evil really begins with his birth. Tom was spoiled beyond belief. He developed diabetes and the spoiling worsened. Step-grandfather would wake up at night and discover Tom sitting in their bedroom, watching them. He wanted to take Tom to a shrink, she refused, there was nothing wrong with him. She became more paranoid. She tried to control every aspect of her children's lives. One way to control people was to fake a heart condition and pretend to have heart attacks periodically. When my father married my mother, she refused to attend the wedding.
My uncle tried to escape, ran away and married. She tracked him down and forced him home. The wedding ended. Later he married another woman and moved across the driveway. He ate breakfast with his mother every day. When my aunt had a nervous breakdown after discovering her husband in bed with another woman, grandma tried to have her locked in an insane asylum to get custody of her two pretty blonde daughters. My aunt's in-laws had to spirit her away in the middle of the night to rescue her. My parents did nothing, my mother says "You don't know the power she had over your father."
In 1971 step-grandfather died unexpectedly of a heart attack at my aunt's house. Grandma came home with Tom and opened a safe, destroying my grandfather's will, preventing my father from obtaining land meant for him. In the mid-1970s my uncle divorced his wife and my parents and aunt testified in my other aunt's favor. That was the last I saw of her. Soon afterwards a for sale sign went up on land that my father had been promised by his stepfather. Father went to see his mother, she said to him "Promises mean nothing." My father would die years later knowing that his mother had never loved him.
At the divorce trial a psychologist suggested that grandma and Tom were involved in an incestuous relationship. They frequently slept in the same bed, although my uncle was in his 30s. They paid off the Friend of the Court and got custody of my two cousins. The mind poisoning continued. In the summer the cousins would visit us with their mother and Grandma and Uncle Tom would drive by every few minutes in their RV to spy on them. We stopped that by running out and waving, shouting "Hi Grandma."
Later Uncle Tom was married three more times. The first two Grandma broke up. The last one worked with Tom to get Grandma's extensive property in his name, and when the last deed was signed, Grandma was thrown out of her own house. She went to stay with a cousin, and when the possibility of a lawsuit ensued, Tom snuck into the house with a gun to take her back. She died at 76, he died a few years later at age 53, crippled and broke after my cousin paid off his debts.
That fucking bitch did a lot more than this sparse tale tells. She was an expert at exerting control, her children her puppets. She ruined lives with no regard, instilling hate, warping minds. In turn, my father tried to control his children and never understood his role as a father. Luckily, his children are more self aware, and understand the reasons behind his actions. We've mostly escaped the mental torment that he lived through.
Do I feel sorry for Grandma? Yes, she was abused as a child. But that was no reason to do the things she did as an adult. Eventually you have to take responsibility for your actions, and she never did. She viewed herself as superior, beyond reproach. She was a failure. Her legacy is that all of her descendants view her with disgust. I don't think she would be happy about that. But then, I don't really give a fuck what she would think.
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Crazy grandma's mother Blanche (yes, that was her name) died suddenly around 1932 and grandma immediately married my father's father. They had another kid in 1938, my aunt. And sometime between 1938 and 1940 the marriage soured and she divorced him, and then poisoned her kids minds against their father. She married the hired hand in 1940, a weak-willed wimp, and in 1944 they had a son, my uncle Tom.
The evil really begins with his birth. Tom was spoiled beyond belief. He developed diabetes and the spoiling worsened. Step-grandfather would wake up at night and discover Tom sitting in their bedroom, watching them. He wanted to take Tom to a shrink, she refused, there was nothing wrong with him. She became more paranoid. She tried to control every aspect of her children's lives. One way to control people was to fake a heart condition and pretend to have heart attacks periodically. When my father married my mother, she refused to attend the wedding.
My uncle tried to escape, ran away and married. She tracked him down and forced him home. The wedding ended. Later he married another woman and moved across the driveway. He ate breakfast with his mother every day. When my aunt had a nervous breakdown after discovering her husband in bed with another woman, grandma tried to have her locked in an insane asylum to get custody of her two pretty blonde daughters. My aunt's in-laws had to spirit her away in the middle of the night to rescue her. My parents did nothing, my mother says "You don't know the power she had over your father."
In 1971 step-grandfather died unexpectedly of a heart attack at my aunt's house. Grandma came home with Tom and opened a safe, destroying my grandfather's will, preventing my father from obtaining land meant for him. In the mid-1970s my uncle divorced his wife and my parents and aunt testified in my other aunt's favor. That was the last I saw of her. Soon afterwards a for sale sign went up on land that my father had been promised by his stepfather. Father went to see his mother, she said to him "Promises mean nothing." My father would die years later knowing that his mother had never loved him.
At the divorce trial a psychologist suggested that grandma and Tom were involved in an incestuous relationship. They frequently slept in the same bed, although my uncle was in his 30s. They paid off the Friend of the Court and got custody of my two cousins. The mind poisoning continued. In the summer the cousins would visit us with their mother and Grandma and Uncle Tom would drive by every few minutes in their RV to spy on them. We stopped that by running out and waving, shouting "Hi Grandma."
Later Uncle Tom was married three more times. The first two Grandma broke up. The last one worked with Tom to get Grandma's extensive property in his name, and when the last deed was signed, Grandma was thrown out of her own house. She went to stay with a cousin, and when the possibility of a lawsuit ensued, Tom snuck into the house with a gun to take her back. She died at 76, he died a few years later at age 53, crippled and broke after my cousin paid off his debts.
That fucking bitch did a lot more than this sparse tale tells. She was an expert at exerting control, her children her puppets. She ruined lives with no regard, instilling hate, warping minds. In turn, my father tried to control his children and never understood his role as a father. Luckily, his children are more self aware, and understand the reasons behind his actions. We've mostly escaped the mental torment that he lived through.
Do I feel sorry for Grandma? Yes, she was abused as a child. But that was no reason to do the things she did as an adult. Eventually you have to take responsibility for your actions, and she never did. She viewed herself as superior, beyond reproach. She was a failure. Her legacy is that all of her descendants view her with disgust. I don't think she would be happy about that. But then, I don't really give a fuck what she would think.
