From Beyond The grave

For those of you who have read my autobiography, I DID TELL I DID you will know how I was treated by my mother. How I told her about the sexual abuse by Bill and how she chose not to believe me. When I wrote my life story, I purposely focused on how it was for me. I didn’t include very much at all about my family, my siblings. Each member of any family has their own perceptions of how life was. I told mine, from my perception, my truth.

 

There was a great deal that I left out of the life I had as a child. Some good and mostly bad. I had this sense of loyalty I suppose, to my brother and my sisters. Not that some of them ever showed me any loyalty. These past few weeks I have begun to realise that nature is more important than nurture. If someone has ‘bad’ in them, then it will eventually come out. It doesn’t matter how much we try and influence the good into a person, nurture them to be loving, respectful and mostly honest, if it is somewhere in their nature, it will show. Well sadly and ashamedly, I have to admit that the bad has come home to roost in the guise of my eldest daughter and my youngest sister. I am going to tell you some of what has brought me here, to this page today. Everything I wrote in I DID TELL I DID is the truth. As anyone who knows me but especially Melissa knows, I cannot lie and I won’t lie.

Throughout our lives I tried hard to look after Anne, loved her pieces as they say. But if my ‘mother’ was having a hate Cassie time, then so would Anne. When she was 14, I had been estranged from the family home because I had chosen to marry the son of a publican, if you remember from my story, when I took Anne to see a doctor I worked for. I knew there was something wrong. I had seen her standing outside of where my ‘mother’ worked looking scared. She was pregnant. I hadn’t been home for more than a year but I took her home and was greeted with ‘why couldn’t it have been you’ and a look of hatred from the woman who by now was hugging her youngest daughter. It felt like it was my fault, again.

Anne was sent away into the country, which was what people did when their daughters’ got into trouble’ and I visited her a few times. When the baby was born it was me who went to see her in the hospital and me who held this tiny bundle whom my ‘mother’ had said would be adopted. Anne didn’t mind, didn’t seem to care, she was only 15 by this time and although much more worldly than was good for her, in my eyes was still a child.

Life went on as though nothing had happened and she was once again the blue eyed daughter whilst I was the outsider. A few times in the next few years, Anne and my ‘mother’ fell out and Anne would come and live with me. As readers will know, my mother never changed towards me, still hated me and took any opportunity to let me know this. Her behavior towards me was cruel and undeserved but continued all my life. Years later she eventually went to live with Anne and wrote me letters saying how unhappy she was. I felt sorry for her, phoned her regularly, wrote and visited her in hospital when she was ill. A three hour journey each way. She asked me to promise that I would go to her funeral and take flowers. I made this promise believing that at last she did care. What I didn’t know was that she had promised Anne to keep me away and not allow any flowers from me. When she died Anne tried hard to stop me from saying goodbye, in the chapel of rest and at her funeral. I really believed in the end that she had changed, my mother that is, that she did love me but it was all part of a game that she kept going and is still seemingly controlling through the being that is Anne. A reincarnation of the wicked woman I was born to.

At the time of my wedding and birth of my first daughter I didn’t see Anne, didn’t see my mother as we had fallen out regularly and life was okay. When I became pregnant with Jack, they had no part in my life and that was fine by me. Sometimes I would try and make things right between all of us but there were times in my young adulthood, when Melissa was small and even after Lucy was born when Anne and my ‘mother’ would undermine me when we were all together. My youngest sister made no secret of trying to turn my daughter against me but Melisssa and I were so close that couldn’t happen. Many times throughout my adulthood this woman caused me a great deal of pain and hurt, acting like my ‘mother’ always did. I was horrified when I went to my eldest sister Ellen’s funeral, to see my ‘mother’ walk round the corner just before the service started, making an entrance the same was ‘mother’ would have done. She looked like my ‘mother’ and I can remember feeling very shaky but of course it wasn’t. It was Anne, my ‘mother’ reincarnated in every way. She didn’t speak with me, in fact she hasn’t spoken with me for 30 years, after she took my ‘Dad’s ashes away secretly after I had made arrangements to carry out Dad’s wish and have him scattered off a lighthouse where he had grown up. Without telling me she collected the ashes and never ever told me what happened to them. After Ellen’s funeral and a small gathering at a local pub, everyone went home to my brother Tom’s house. Although Tom’s daughter tried to coax me into going, I knew that this would be an opportunity for Anne to start trouble. Needless to say I went back home with Daniel.

Melissa lived a long way from e but we kept in touch, she rang me daily. In 2013 after my working hard with Melissa to help her adopt her daughter, I had made a statement to the Social Services, as Melissa’s pivotal support, the one who she would go to in a crisis. I had promised to pay off her bank loan so that she could afford to keep this little girl. I wrote on here about my happiness in having a new grandchild, a granddaughter. We were all very excited. Melisssa then fell out with me because I would not lie for her to Social workers about how she treated one of her foster children. I would hear her on the phone, shouting at one particular little girl, in the same way, using the same words as my ‘mother’ would use to me. I was really upset. I couldn’t believe the tone of voice I could hear. Just like her grandmother before her. I told her how this little girl would be feeling, I knew how it felt. She became cross with me. She blocked me on here and sent vile emails to me. I was devastated and didn’t understand what was happening. She had fallen out with me before over the years and we always made up. I had hoped that one day this would happen again. It didn’t. The reason it didn’t and won’t is because Anne is now in her life. She is calling Melissa her daughter and my grandchildren her grandchildren. Cruel, despicable and just like her mother. But more importantly than that, she has told Melissa such wicked evil lies that are libelous and wicked to the core. What hurt more I think, is that Melissa seems to be believing these lies and has as she said on my page, disowned me as her mother and taken Anne as such. This proves nature above nurture as I brought Melissa up to be honest, kind and respectful. My mother and my sister’s traits do not include these qualities and neither, it appears, does Melissa now. The pain of this is unbearable. My mother still hurting me from beyond the grave.

Now, if she had done all of this direct to me, I wouldn’t be writing this blog today, but she didn’t. As some of you know, she wrote it in comments on my author page, bad language, lies, and a threat to come down to where I live and….. She never elaborated but it was still a threat. Then to my horror and pain, Melissa also wrote on my post, comments that are hard for me to write but that some of you have read. Readers read all of this, friends who are friends in reality and my son, will all have been able to read this. Unforgivable!

All of my life I lived a lie, that is why the truth is so important to me. All of my younger life I lived in fear. Back in 2012, the Jade Wood horror, I began to live in fear. I am not going back to being afraid again. I t has to stop.

 

As I said at the beginning, I grew up in a very dysfunctional family but told my own story. I could have told it all, ‘warts n all’ involving the other members of my family, telling how they too, at least Anne, has caused me pain and hurt over the years. But felt a very misguided sense of loyalty to them. Not anymore. They are trying to ruin my name, my reputation and my life and I won’t let them. I don’t know if they can read this, I don’t really care. I have always protected them by leaving the things they did out of my story but not now. It is not all of them, in fact it is only one, the one who has tried to take over from the matriarch of us all, Anne, my ‘mother’ from beyond the grave.

Thank you for reading my blog. Please comment if you so wish. Happy November all. xx