2013 was the worst year of my life. The first quarter of the year was the heart wrenching experience of watching my father die. He had cancer. We knew he was going to die, but he thought we didn't know. He didn't want us to know. He wanted to live his final days as if nothing had changed. It was difficult to watch him die while not being able to discuss his death with him. He was a great man. I miss him with all my heart.
Beginning near the end of 2012, I, and others, noticed that my wife was losing her mind. At first we thought it was dementia. She thought she was fine, but it was obvious she was not. I flew home from my job (I was commuting by airplane at that time) just to drag her to a doctor to have someone take a look at her. The doctor also agreed that something was very wrong. However, my wife refused the MRI of her head that they wanted . She insisted she was fine, as she continued to decline. By April of this year, she began lashing out at me as if responding to things I had not said nor done. By July it was clear that she was hallucinating. Her usual paranoia gave way to a completely delusional paranoia and she made endless insane accusations and threats. By August she was accusing me of "putting voices in the house." I put together the pieces of information she left about - things she wrote on the mirror after taking a shower, things she posted on facebook, notes she left around the house, and comments from others that knew her. She was possessed by a very elaborate delusion, hearing voices, seeing things that were not there, and directing her paranoia at my daughter and I. In a sentence, she had become overtly schizophrenic.
I reached out to her family for help when it became clear that she would not willingly seek help for her mental illness. Her family responded with nothing but denial. I sent her home to El Salvador hoping they would get her treatment, but they did not. She came back home. I don't know what to do.
In July, due to my wife's obsession with putting carpet powder on the floors, our cat died of lung cancer. We had urged her for years to stop putting the powder on the carpet, but she continued to do it no matter how hard we tried to stop her. She would do it when we were not home. Our beloved cat of many years coughed and coughed. I took her to the vet. She stopped eating. X-Rays revealed her lung cancer. One evening, she laid on the floor. My daughter patted her and she began purring. She continued purring when my daughter walked away for about 10 minutes. When she returned, our beloved cat was dead. My wife didn't care. My daughter and I were distraught.
Because of my wife's mental illness, I had to leave my job and take a job closer to home. I realize that things cannot work out. There is only so much abuse I can take. I now look forward to a future without a mate. 2013 was the worst year of my life.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Let's Retire Sarah Collins Rudolph, The Fifth Little Girl
On September 15, 2013 the world remembered the four little innocent girls, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Denise McNair, and Carole Robertson who were murdered in the bathroom of the 16th Street Baptist Church 50 years earlier by the KKK in the racially charged city of Birmingham, Alabama. Prayers were prayed, songs were sung, sermons were preached, and bells were tolled. The title of the sermon to be preached on that terrible Sunday morning was "A Love that Forgives." It was not "A Love that Forgets" and yet that is what the city of Birmingham did for 50 years.
Because there was a fifth little girl in that bathroom that morning and she survived the blast though she was terribly injured and disfigured by its effects. Her name was Sarah Collins Rudolph, she was twelve years old and before this year she was rarely mentioned along with the four little girls who died, one of whom was her own sister, Addie Mae Collins. She was scrubbed from the history books.
Sarah lost her left eye in that blast and suffered cuts and embedded glass throughout her entire body. On that day her dreams of becoming a nurse or a mother were demolished along with the church and the stained glass face of Jesus that was blown off with it. And then she was promptly forgotten.
During the service this past weekend no special chair was set aside for the lone survivor of that day, no special parking place, no invitation to speak and tell her story, no fund to benefit her, the lone survivor of that day. Sarah was indeed an afterthought. It is shameful!
And the next day September 16, 2013, after everyone had patted themselves on the back for an event that brought in millions of dollars to the city of Birmingham, 62 years old Sarah Collins dragged herself out of bed at 5:30am and prepared herself to go to work cleaning homes in order to pay her ongoing medical bills which are a direct result of that fateful day.
So, since the city of Birmingham and the state of Alabama and even the church, which has an enormous endowment, has not offered to retire Sarah, a real alive National Treasure, from the relief of overwhelming bills and menial labor, let us-- the rest of the world do so. At the very least let us raise enough money to cover her medical bills and send her on a vacation with her husband. She deserves that much. She did not ask to be a national treasure but because hatred tried to take her life and then apathy guaranteed her abandonment, let us not go another day without correcting this horrible miscarriage of justice. Let's give a woman who has suffered 50 years quietly and in dignity a gift. Let's retire Sarah!
Rev Toni DiPina