Roe Messner and Mama

 

My Mikey, I love you

∞ • π³ + 1

I’m seeing criticism of Roe Messner in different places .  They say he didn’t even wait until the ink was dry on Tammy Faye’s death certificate before he married.  This upsets me, because it’s what others (and I) said about my mother after Daddy died so suddenly.

After Daddy died….within two months, Wayne, my step-father, was in the picture.  They were friends to start with.  It led to marriage later.

Nanny kept on and on about how "no decent woman would do what your mother did".  I fell right into that line of thinking, and I gave Mama hell about it.  I criticized Mama to lots of people, and I will never forget when my favorite teacher came to Mama’s defense.

Marianne Anderson told me, one day, that some people who have had a happy and successful first marriage tend to remarry fast.  She also told me that it seemed to her that my mother might be the kind of woman who just needs a man around to function.  I think she was right.  Mama has never really been all on her own.  She went from Memaw and Papaw to Daddy, then to Wayne.  I realize there was plenty of time when Daddy and Wayne both were not home…..they were both truck drivers.  I say "were" for Wayne, too, because he’s retired now.  That left lots of time for Mama to function LIKE a single mother, but she wasn’t a single mother.

I don’t know.  I just know I’m not bitter about it anymore.  I never should have been, really.  I should have left well enough alone.  I also wish that my step-father would learn to forgive and try to forget.  I know forgetting is the harder part of that, so I don’t ask that he forget…just try…but he can forgive me, damnit.

Anyway……

I’m just feeling reflective.  Elisabeth’s recent judgement errors are so much like my old ones.  She’ll regret them when she matures.  I know, because I live with a sadness that won’t go away.  I’m not always sad or anything, but when I remember how I treated my own mother when I was a teenager, I feel the same sadness every time.  It won’t go away.  I’m stuck with it.  It’s a consequence of my own selfishness and stupidity.  Elisabeth will share this burden with me, someday.  Not MY burden, but THIS burden.

I love her, and I hope she’s safe.  They moved out.  I don’t know if I said that in here or not.  They won’t tell us where they went, so I don’t know where they live now.

Damn life.  It’s so complex!

Take it easy,

Oscar…in a mellow mood