am not sure if this is what you want Kenn. Mothers day is Sunday this is my gift to her and my answer to you.

To start with mom is one of those that hates for people to make a fuss over her. She always cuts herself down, and hates to take credit for anything. She says she is sorry for things she can’t help. Mom has had clusters for 20 years I am 20 so she has had them all my life.

My mother was special all her life from the things her friends and my grandparents have told me. I think people are born special like mom. When mom was little she had a way with animals. She was a ugly duckling in school, she was poor. The house she lived in was run down and she had no bathroom. She had a out house. Kids made fun of mom cause she had a boys name and her cloths were not as nice as theirs. Mom stayed by herself in her room and listen to her music instead of having friends. She only finished 9th grade I think and moved away from home at 16. She had a hard time but she made it. She even finished school through the mail. She started as a waitress and became a manager. She went from there to forming a Humane Society for animals. She did all this and worked.

Then she met my natural father and mother. She worked at a motel as night manager. There is where she saw me for the first time and my sisters. We had no money and no place to live. Mom let all of us come live in her one bedroom apartment. I was three months old Heather was two years and Tiffany was five. Mom worked and told my dad they could stay rent free until they got on their feet.
Mom came home from work and found that my natural parents had put us in a foster home and that we had been split up. She order my parents to get us back or get out. They tried but the social worker would not give us back. So my mother paid for them to get a divorce and she married my natural father, and adopted me form my natural mother. My mother did not love my natural father but stayed with him for two years and they had my brother together.

The first year my mother was with my dad he beat her up and it was soon after that that she started having clusters. He beat her for waking him up at night. He beat her when she was eight months pregnant. The only thing that kept her there, was us. My real father said he would take us away and she would never see us again. My mom worked and made sure we had food and clothing. She took us to work with her. My natural father could not keep a job. So he joined the service. He sent her $50 a month. Mom filed for a divorce. She expected a fight over us but he did not fight her. She got custody of my sisters and I, but her mother intervened the divorce and took her only natural child. The judge did not think she was health enough to take care of her son. Now that’s a joke if I ever heard one. She was health enough to take care of us but not our brother. My grandfather was well known in the county and friends of the judge. Mom had a heavy burden. She was alone taking care of us, and she had clusters.
Mom went to the doctor for her clusters and they placed her in a mental hospital where she was given shock treatment, she left us with out grandmother durning this time. But it did not help. When she got home she went right back to work and took care of us, and still had clusters.

Mom was working as a night manager at a restaurant and it closed down then she went back as a night manager at another motel. I don’t know how she did it.
I remember nights that she cried because she wanted her son. I remember nights that she hurt from the clusters. Mostly I remember my mom saying I love you and I want you to be everything I am not. I want you to learn and finish school and be somebody. Mom never realized she was somebody the greatest woman I ever knew. Mom met my dad I have now. I remember mom taking us to meet him he was a cook at a waffle house. I think mom-said girls that guy kind of cute isn’t he. Then he came over to our table and asked us all our names. When he got to mom he joked about her name being a boys name. We soon became a family. My dad he took good care of us. But he could not fix my moms head.

I remember dad taking us out on the porch to sing songs cause she did not want us to see her in pain. I guess I was around seven before I saw mom with one. I was home from school sick. She had oxygen and she was hurting and her hands were shaking and she could not fix the something on the tank. I was scared she realized it. In her pain she showed me what the oxygen was and fixed what was wrong. She put it over my face and said see it doesn’t hurt. She then told me it would help her pain go away. From then on I became her nurse. She let me work the oxygen, my sisters thought that was cool so mom gave us all a job and after our job was done we got a box of toys called the headache box. I liked the toys but I really hated that box cause it meant mom hurt. The best thing I think she did for us was to let us help. It made us feel less useless. I know now it took a lot for her to do that, in the pain she was in. I got the oxygen, Heather would get the ice and Tiffany would make coffee. Then mom would tell us to get the box and go play in our rooms. Mom never yelled at us when she had a headache.

Mom liked to go outside when she had a headache so one time she got it in her mind that if she slept outside she would not have a cluster. She put a tent in the back yard and a hammock. She let us camp out in the ten and she slept in the hammock. It did not work. Mom made that night fun even when her cluster hit. She didn’t wake us up we hear her crying and went and got dad. Mom was always concerned about us.

I would watch mom get up tired sometime there was no sleep but she always made sure we had breakfast and would take us to school and off to work she would go. We had to stay home alone from 3 to 5 but mom called us three or four times to check on us. Then at night mom would come home cook, and clean and help us with our homework. Then put us to bed with a hug and kiss, after we were asleep she would fight the demon in her head.

Mom and dad worked together to go to things at school. If mom was hurting dad would go and take the camcorder. Then when mom felt better she would watch it with me and tell me how proud she was of me, mom never missed any thing us kids did.


How did her pain effect us. I can say that for Heather and me it helped us to understand what pain was all about. It helped us realize that just because you can not see the pain does not mean it does not exist. She taught us to be kind to people because you never know what kind of pain they deal with. We learned to understand the meaning of true love or a mothers love just by how she reacted to things. Always a kind word even when we were our worst.

Now my oldest sister hated mom because of her pain her clusters. She held it against mom if mom did not go to something at school even dad being there did not help. My sister ran away from home had a baby and brought the baby to live with us. Mom was working and taking care of the baby and having clusters. Mom was being hit extra hard but managed to be up at night with clusters and the baby. Mom did not feel right about having the baby and thought with the clusters it was not fair to the baby. Mom gave the baby back to my sister, the baby dies a month later of crib death. Of course mom will always blame herself. Tiffany blamed mom too. Then Tiffany left and we have not seen her since. That’s been seven years. Mom searches the web all the time for her.

That’s when mom found out she had ovarian cancer and she beat that . I watched mom lose her hair and she was so sick she could not hold her head up. She fought and made it. One night I asked mom if she was going to die. Her answer was, yes but not now I have not seen your babies yet..

Mom just worked until she came here a year ago, and you know what a bad year she had this last year. The one thing I love about mom is she never lost her smile and always had time for others. She never forgets to say she loves us, and shows it every way she can.

Mom’s pain grew old with dad after time, but dad never left. Now they have separate lifes but still live together. I think they still love each but don’t know how to get back together. I know they will always be friends. The pain of cluster brought some of us closer together and we learned from it. The pain also tore a hole in the hearts of other family members. My mother holds herself responsible.
I believe that may be why she works so hard to help others. That is why she backs OUCH as she does hoping for a cure so others never suffer as she has.

There you have it the story of my mom and most all her pain. What the pain did to us. What it did to her.