Over the next couple of days while Mama stayed in the hospital, we were going to her house to make sure that everything was cleaned up and put together. The dining room was full of flowers, cards and letters. Phone calls had begun pouring in. My sisters and I were returning the calls as fast as we could, but it was becoming overwhelming. Mama was very popular in the Kansas City community. As people were finding out about her illness they all wanted to express their concern.
The funniest thing to me is that some of the people that called were crying long and hard. They wanted us to console them. I found myself telling them,
“Hey…keep your chin up. Everything is going to be alright.”
I quickly got tired of those calls. I thought that it was pretty damn selfish of people to call us, looking for support at a time when our family was in need of support.
When Mama finally made it home from the hospital, she was greeted with a house full of her grandchildren and family members. No one acknowledged her illness. Aunty Olivia and Aunt Margie kept everything light hearted and very simple. In times like these you often hear about family members arguing like cats and dogs. The pressure of a family member with a terminal illness can be stressful on other members of the family, but we had found a way to work around this whole thing together.
Mama’s best friend Carol was also at the house every day as well. She played a major role in keeping things moving. She made sure that Mama had everything she needed and she stayed with Mama when everyone else had other business to take care of.
After being off work for so many days, I realized that I had to go back. I tried to get back to my normal routine as much as I could, but it was pretty har...
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...damn about them one way or the other, but apparently my children and I had made a very large impact on these people and for some strange reason they could not get over the fact that we were no longer a part of their cult.
Sister Mandy would often stop by and tell me stories about the things they were saying. She told me that they were obsessed with me and everything I did. She told me that they had a strange obsession with my youngest son Eric. They even went around Kansas City telling everyone that they had to find a way rescue my youngest son from me because I wanted to turn him into an evil wizard.
Then another time Mandy stopped by and told me that Ahaziyah had twenty-seven Hebrew Israelites piled up, living in her house. I could see that happening since a lot of the young men did not have jobs because of their belief system. Apparently their belief system
I, of course, knew my mother as a mother. As I have reached adulthood and become a mother myself, I have also known her as a friend. My mom shared much of herself with me, and I saw sides of my mother as she struggled with her cancer that I had never seen before, especially her strong belief in positive thinking and the importance of quality of life. I was privileged to know so many facets of my mother, but certainly I did not know all. There were parts of her life that I didn’t see, relationships that I didn’t know about. Last night, at the wake, so many stories were told to me about my mom’s strength, courage, humor, kindness, her quietness, her loyalty as a friend. It was so special to hear of these things that my mom said and did, to know some of these other parts of her life. I hope that her friends and family will continue to share these stories with me and with each other so we can continue to know and remember my mom.
A memorable occasion that involved difficult social communication occurred shortly after the death of my grandmother. My mother expressed her desire to continue paying my grandmother’s refinanced mortgage so the home and land could remain within the family. As my grandmother’s primary caretaker up to her death, my mother had spent the past few years watching the woman who raised her wither away. She exhibited symptoms of depressions such as; not finding joy in things she once did, insomnia, and decreased appetite.
Cults have existed throughout history since the beginning of time. A cult is defined in Webster’s dictionary as a “system of religious worship with a devoted attachment to a person, principle, etc.” Over the past thirty years numerous religious cults have caused “ tens of thousands to abandon their families, friends, education’s, and careers to follow the teaching of a leader they will never meet”(Beck 78).
It had been a cold, snowy day, just a few days after Thanksgiving. My grandmother became immensely ill and unable to care for herself. We knew she had health problems but her sudden turn for the worst was so unexpected and therefore we weren’t prepared for the decisions that had to be made and the guilt we would feel. Where would grandma live? Would she be taken care of? So many concerns floated around. A solution was finally found and one that was believed to be the best or so we thought.
The joys of having a loving, caring, and sweet grandmother, all stolen from me by cancer. The day of her diagnosis and the doctors giving her a time expectancy. Sitting in the room, Dr. Vargas mumbled, “Lucila Toro, I’m sorry to inform you have stage two pancreatic cancer.” As a child, I was trying to grasp this information of how all my beliefs in God could fail me, death I had hoped my
During the last moments of my mother’s life she was surrounded by loved ones, as she slowly slipped away into the morning with grace and peace.
She left her house with a radiant smile and that same smile continued as I watched her open the door to the car with my father firmly entrenched in the driver's seat. They were on their way to buy a tire for her car which so happened to be three miles from our home. Time crawled along at snails pace and eventually my brothers and myself wondered where my father and godmother were. Within an instant my mother screamed for me and I ran to her as if my life depended on it. Instead my life was not in the balance it was my godmother who had lost hers. Instantly shattered and numb I was afraid to ask the next question but my mother eased my ...
phone in disgust. It startled and in a way disheartened me, the way many of the
...agarin, “There are symptoms that can identify whether or not a family member has been influenced by a cult member or leader, such as personality changes, dramatic shifts or values of belief, changes in diet or sleep patterns, refusal to attend important family events, inability to make decisions without consulting a cult leader or guru, sudden use of a new ideology to explain everything, simplistic reasoning, a new vocabulary, insistence that you do what he or she is doing.”(Sagarin) The victim never really goes back to the person they were before they were recruited into a cult. They are mentally unstable and vulnerable. Most families force their beloved family members into dull therapy sessions when they really need is a caring, nurturing environment. The family members of many clan victims are left to collect the broken pieces of their beloved family member.
I had the pleasure to interview my grandma, Olga Hernandez. She was born on November 8, 1951 in Cuba. She worked in a workshop making clocks. After she retired, she took care of me while my mom worked. I consider her to be my second mom because she lived with me for eight years. She taught me love, discipline, manners, etc. My grandma is: strong, beautiful, caring, and passionate. Most importantly, she is a breast cancer survivor. I chose to interview my grandma because October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I couldn’t think of a better time to do this interview. I like her story because although it’s sad, it has a happy ending. It shows you that no matter how hard things get, there’s always light at the end of the tunnel.
It was June 6, 2011. I remember taking my mother to the County Hospital’s emergency room. She seemed extremely exhausted; her eyes were half-closed and yellow, and she placed her elbow on the armchair, resting her head on her palm. I remember it was crowded and the wait was long, so she wanted to leave. I was the only one there with her, but I did not allow her to convince me to take her home. I told her in Spanish, “Mom, let’s wait so that we can get this over with and know what’s going on with you. You’ll see everything is okay, and we’ll go home later on.” I wish then and now that would have been the case. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with colon cancer that had spread to many parts of her body including her lungs and kidneys. The doctor said to me not considering that I was a minor and my mother’s daughter, “Her disease is very advanced and we don’t think she will live longer than a year.” With this devastating news, I did not know what to do. I thought to myself that perhaps I should cry, or try to forget and take care of her as best I could and make her laugh to ease her pain.
A family friend, Rose Widmer, came over as my mom and dad were getting ready to leave. She would be staying with us because it looked like they would not be coming home that night. As Kelly and I were eating our supper, my mom came into the kitchen and sat down beside me. She explained to us that our dad was very sick, and that he was having trouble with his brain. She used the term "brain abscess." She said that this is what the doctors speculated was wrong with him, but they needed to go to Fort Wayne to take precautions.
This scene perfectly shows us how many people seem so overwhelmed by their relatives sickness, they forget who is really suffering and decide to leave so they will not have to deal with that. Quite often friends and relatives of people chronically ill or disabled do not realize how big of an influence they have on the lives of their kindred. Sometimes it seems like it is the families who struggle more than the actual handicapped person.
In March of 1998, my father was rushed to the hospital because of a heart attack. I remember getting home from basketball practice without my mother home. Instead, my sister was there with her children. The fact that my sister was there was familiar to me, but something did not seem right. My sister stayed with me and did not tell me what happened. Later that night, after my sister left, the news that followed would prepare me to encounter the most defining moment of my life.