This story is about James, written by his daughter. James was born in 1921 when his mother was 46 years old, with a sister following one year later. His parents fell in love at ages 19 and 24, both of them were working in a large mansion in the city on a street named South Temple. James’ mother was a nanny and his father was the plumber for the mansion. James’ father was not of the same religion as his mother, and at the time it was a significant problem, because his mother was not given consent by her parents to marry so the couple waited over twenty years.
After the birth of James and his sister Patricia, his father moved them into a new home he had built for the family. One day running across a lawn trying to catch the streetcar, James’ father tripped on a wire and fell, hitting his left hip on the curb and breaking his hipbone. Back in those days they did not have total hip replacements, so an elevated shoe of four to six inches was worn to even his hips out. His father was always in pain. Needless to say, he no longer could work as a plumber, so they sold the house and moved in with his mother’s brother.
James and his sister were close and the family spent many hours together in the kitchen around the table laughing and playing games together. They were very poor and James’ mother had to work to put food on the table. James loved his mother dearly but he could talk and laugh with his Aunt Lottie and they were very close.
His uncle and aunt, who were wealthy, would come take the family fishing and on other excursions. When James was nine years old, his aunt Lottie passed away, leaving his heart broken for a lifetime. He always felt the melancholy of this loss which never seemed to leave him.
James was always asked by his mother to go on the streetcar and buy day-old bread. Later in his life, he realized the funny smell and taste to the bread was mold because they had no refrigerator. Also looking back at his life, he realized how poor they really were. His mother worked from the time James was just a young boy. When James was ten years old he took a job as a paper delivery boy in the wealthy part of the city. The first money he made he went right to the corner store and bought his first jug of milk to drink. He loved fresh milk and drank it the rest of his life.
At age sixteen he left home to go work with his uncle in his factory in Idaho. He would not return again until World War II broke out, around age nineteen, he came back home long enough to sign up so he would not be drafted and leave for war.
He was a bombardier, which was very dangerous. The leaders over his division saw something very unique and requested that he stay stateside and teach the other soldiers. James was a teacher from that point on. He came out of the war and met his wife through her brother who was also serving in the war. Mary J was tiny, just five-feet one-inches high. James was six feet two inches high. She weighed all of 95 pounds when she came home from the Marines.
They courted for one year and married. James’s mother warned him that his new bride would be difficult to live with and she was right.
James graduated in zoology and biology and became a sixth-grade teacher; he later became a principal. He was one semester away from getting his master’s degree, but never completed it.
James began to see problems in Mary J within weeks of being married, she had some odd ways to her when she was around other people. She seemed irritated and said things that were not appropriate.
Despite this, James loved Mary J and he looked past her problems, for many years. Children came along and with each child James recognized changes in his wife. She took care of the children, kept them clean, well fed and dressed, but she was strange with neighbors and family. After their seventh child, a horrible accident took the life of her favorite brother and Mary J snapped, and life was never the same again. She was withdrawn, angry, accusing and violent. This behavior intensified and late one evening, James took Mary J to the hospital emergency and they admitted her to the psych ward.
There were bars on all the windows, and the doors in and out of the unit were like a jail door with bars. I recall going to see my mother at the hospital, we both stood in front of the jail-like door waiting until someone came and opened it and let us in. When I walked into my mother’s room, I instantly was afraid of her because she was not the mother I recalled at all. Her eyes were glassy and she was very paranoid about everything said and about anything done in the room. I recall looking at my father’s face and he looked tired, worried and just plain exhausted.
My mother eventually came home but everything was different. She neglected my youngest sister completely so all of us had to pitch in and help my father out with taking care of her, she was only three years old at the time.
My mother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. My father was told it was the worst mental illness a person could have and if he were not careful with his children, he could come home one day and we would all be dead. She would kill us because she was protecting us from other people and what they might do to us. Life would never be the same again.
Life was tough and my father worked several jobs to make ends meet. We had food and clothing, a house to live in but there was no mother, no love, no connection at all. In so many ways, my dad tried so hard to have normalcy in our family by taking us on trips every summer and to an amusement park every August. As the years came and went, the scars of such a home life destroyed us all. Paranoia about neighbors, family, and even our own friends we brought home, took its toll on all of us. My father became depressed with feelings of loneliness and despair. My siblings all went their different ways, all of us with problems of our own because of this type of upbringing.
Mother became a street person. She would leave the house around noon to go to a job and we would not see her the rest of the day. She would slip into the house in the early morning hours, having walked the streets all night after her work ended. Sometimes she did not come home at all, when we asked her where she was, she responded that she had fallen asleep in the cemetery on a bench. My mother believed everyone around her was the cause of all of her problems and my father received the worst of her venom.
Over the years my father regained his ability to see life through laughter and smiles once again. After going through a very long grieving period of losing his wife, despite being in the same house with her, he started to heal. My father passed away at age eighty-four with a clear mind, perfect eye sight, a pleasant and kind disposition. He never let the effects of his wife cause him to permanently lose sight of the purpose of his life. Two days before he died, my dad let me know how much he loved Mary J and would marry her all over again.
What a beautiful story. What a horrific life and journey. What an amazing ending.
