Mom & Me Journals Histories: 1999 - 2001

    I still can't figure out why my mother liked it. It's a complete mystery to me.
    I have observed a relationship between what many people consider inappropriate and unexpected violence perpetrated by those suffering from certain levels of dementia and circumstances in the perpetrator's life. In my two experiences with demented relatives who resorted to "inappropriate and unexpected" physical violence:

1. With my aunt I saw (although I was the only one) how she was pretty much acting on what I considered stored up anger toward her husband, my DU. All of her physical aggression was directed toward him;
2. An aunt on my dad's side wandered down the road of menopausal hysteria one summer while our family was visiting in North Carolina. When my uncle called Dad to tell him he "needed help with [my aunt]," I tagged along. Exactly as her husband described, my aunt had locked herself in the bathroom, was reportedly naked in the bathtub which was running over with water seeping out from underneath the door and yelling that my uncle had made her feel like a whore from the time he married her. At this point in their shared lives they were probably in their late fifties. I saw it, I heard it, I watched as my aunt was forcibly dressed and dragged, screaming and lashing out at her husband, into a county van and transported to the State Mental Hospital. A couple of weeks later I went along when the family picked her up. She said, "[My husband] cain't help who is is, and after I saw all those other people in there, heard their problems, I figured I could put up with him. They were lots worse off than I was." I'm sure my aunt's physical aggression, while shocking, was not totally out of character for their relationship. She obviously harbored some ill will toward him before she ever got naked in the bathtub and screamed at him. As far as she was concerned, demented or not, her problem wasn't herself, it was him.

    It has occurred to me that, in her milder state, my mother's attraction to dementedly gory movies that make a mockery of history, fiction and people and relationships might be some sort of a release. I don't know. Maybe she liked what she thought of as the love stories. It has occurred to me since I've been living with her that my mother may have had (may still have) a taste for adventurous romance and magnetic, destined attractions, and may have been disappointed with her marriage in these respects, although I think in the beginning she thought it was going to be much more exciting and much more personally comforting than it was.