Son helps mother salvage her life, My mother had finally found a way to separate from my abusive stepfather after 11 years of bullshit. The first few years weren’t so bad, but then he eventually became a tireless tyrant and it was time for that show to end. During the last few years of the marriage my mother had lost all self-esteem. She had become a poor pitiful drunk that got no exercise and had grown terribly out of shape. I really felt badly for her. Finally one morning I had had enough of listening to the motherfucker bitch about his breakfast not being ready — probably caused by a hangover from the boozing he had done the night before. He was about to slap my mother when stepped in and told him that if he touched her I would kill him. He said he couldn’t take the way we disrespected him and that is when I told him that he needed to pack up his shit and leave us alone…
It had been two weeks since that faithful day since when we had finally gotten rid of the bastard. I had come home and was told that he was gone. My mother had stayed in a miserable state and I could tell that she was breaking down wanting to bring the bastard back. She continued to drink at night and didn’t have a clue about what my sisters or I were doing. Her boss had given her some time off after the separation, but she really needed to work to get her mind off her worries. Finally one night I came home and found her passed out on the couch with a bottle of wine at her side. My two sisters were nowhere to be found. I tried to wake her from her drunken stupor, but it was no use and I decided to leave her there. She must have made it upstairs sometime during the night, because when I woke up to go to school the next morning she was in her bedroom asleep. The next afternoon when I got home from school I confronted her about the mess she was making out of her life.
I knew that Mom had always been dependant on having a man around. She had married my father at age 17 after she had found out she was pregnant. My sister was the eldest now at the age of 19, then there was me age 18, and my younger sister was 16. A little over 4 years after my sister was born my father was killed in an automobile accident and my mother at the age of 22 was a widow with three children. She dated a couple of men over the next few years before meeting Joe. Joe seemed like a cool guy, so after a while my younger sister and I became attached to him. He moved in and lived with us for a year before Mom married him. So as you can see she had never been without a man or kids since she was basically a girl.
I felt sorry for her, but I knew I had to make her face up to the shambles that she was creating for all us all. “Mama, I came home last night and you were shit faced drunk. It’s getting ridiculous. When was the last time you weren’t drunk at the end of the night. You’re not only embarrassing me, but you’re embarrassing yourself.”
She told me, “Jimmy, you are an ingrate. You don’t understand that we are going to lose everything. You and your sisters are out of control. I can’t take it anymore. I am going to be alone the rest of my life.”