|
| |||||
|
|
|
| ||
My story
|
I was born in 1953 in Hamburg, Germany, the second of eight children.
I was a sad child, an unloved, abused and depressed child. A child who was told by her mother every day that she was useless, worthless, ugly, stupid and undeserving of love. A child whose parents never told her they loved her.
My older brother tried to be there for me and to protect me, but he wasn't always there, of course. He and I tried to look after the younger children as best as we could and protect them from abuse. But it was hard, there were five younger brothers and a younger sister to look after. The only love we received was the love we gave each other.
My father tried to stay out of things, he didn't like getting screamed at, either, he was a weak man, unable or unwilling to stand up to his wife and to stand up for his children. When he got mad he'd throw things, and then go into the basement to play with his 'toys' (puzzles, electrical projects, etc.). It didn't help us any.
My mother didn't like me. I wouldn't allow her to change my personality, I refused to accept her lies as the truth, and to acknowledge to the world and to her, that she was right when she was not.
I tried very hard to please her. I looked after the younger children; by the time I was eight I would bake cakes, cook for ten people and did laundry. By the time I was ten I did the mending and ironing for the whole family as well, and clean the house. But it was no use, the only way to please my mother would be to change into somebody I was not. And I was not going to be broken.
She broke my younger brother, Michael. Until he was about seven or so, he was the 'bad kid', who would be blamed for her heart problems, and her bad moods. But after breaking countless large cooking spoons on his back, and after much mental abuse, he turned into her lackey. He agreed that whatever she said was true, even if it was obviously not so.
He also would do anything she told him to do. When she was angry with me, she'd send him to beat me up (until I was about 19 years old, at which point I moved out), and he would do it. Not that I wouldn't fight back, but he was bigger and healthier than me. I had severe asthma and fibromyalgia. We didn't know it was fibromyalgia then, I was only officially diagnosed in the spring of 2000. But we obviously knew that I had no energy, and was in terrible physical pain most of the time.
My mother was a pathological liar, and I see now that she was mentally ill. She had made up her own version of reality, and her own version of the truth and believed firmly that I was the liar.
A couple of times I had the courage to tell an adult, who I dared to trust, the truth. Both times this person called my mother, and was soon convinced that I was the pathological liar who delighted in making up stories about my mother. I gave up and stopped trusting anybody but some of my brothers.
I also decided that I didn't need love, that in fact hugs and kisses and love were undesirable. Only babies and small children were allowed to touch me, and I'd hug and kiss them, because it was safe to do.
I was also molested by my step-grandfather from the age of six until 12 years of age, at which point I stopped visiting my grandmother. I don't remember much of what he did to me, and I am very afraid of the memories coming back some day. But I trust that God will give me the strength, courage and support I will need if the memories ever return.
My baby brother was the most precious person in my life, I looked after him most of the time. He was the sweetest little guy, and he looked identical to pictures of me when I was little. He even had the same hair colour (red). My mother didn't like him any more than she liked me, because he not only looked like me, but was in his personality like me also.
I couldn't understand how anybody would be capable of not liking this sweet child. It never occurred to me that, since we were so alike, it didn't make sense for her to not like me, either. That maybe I was a beautiful, sweet child as well!
When I was twenty years old I met a couple who had just adopted a set of ten month old twins, a boy and a girl. I loved babies, and so I wanted to be around them. They were Christians, and had me first come and babysit for them. Soon they'd invite me for the day on weekends, and then overnight. Eventually they asked me if I'd like to come to their bible study, just to listen. I came, and I listened. They never pressured me to participate, and neither did their friends (I would never have gone back if they would have tried that).
Then I went to church with them. I liked the music, and I was fascinated by them all calling each other brothers and sisters, and using their first names with each other (in Germany at the time even good friends would call each other by their last names).
My mother told me they were fanatics and crackpots, and bad for me. I didn't listen, I didn't care what she said. I knew she was wrong, that she was the crackpot, and bad for me.
When they invited me to an evangelization meeting, I went. There was much singing, and people gave their testimonies. During one particularly stirring song the Holy Spirit showed me that Jesus was real, that He was alive.
When on the way home I told my friend Peter what happened, he immediately pulled over, and we prayed and I gave my life to Jesus. It was a happy day for them, they had been so very patient for two years!
After being dropped off at home, I walked into the living room. My mother looked at me and said, "Uschi (pronounced like 'bushy' without the b), what happened to you, you look so different!" I told her, "I met Jesus Christ tonight and gave my life to Him." Well, she got that evil look in her eyes (I had seen that many times before) and started to laugh this uncontrollable, evil laugh, and my brother Michael joined her.
Then she told me I was saying that only to please my friends, and she and Michael would soon cure me of that crazy notion.
WELL, THEY DIDN'T SUCCEED, BECAUSE HERE I AM, AND I STILL LOVE JESUS.
In 1978 I went to Montreal, Canada, where I met my future husband. We were married the following April in Germany, and I have lived in Canada ever since.I didn't know the bible well enough to see that the church he had been attending, and which I was now attending, had obvious cult characteristics. I liked the fellowship, the many children.
At first I didn't realize I was being mentally abused by my husband and the church, because that was just normal for me. I had never known a time when I wasn't abused. By the time I realized that something was very wrong with that church, my husband was severely brainwashed and believed everything he was told. I was totally powerless, with his parents rejecting me, and my family far away (not that they would have helped me, anyway).
And now I was being abused in the name of Jesus. I was confused, maybe it was all my fault after all, maybe I was really unlovable, even to Jesus. Maybe I really was worthless.
We stayed in that church for 18 years. Finally I had the courage to refuse going to church on Sundays. Half a year after I quit, my husband quit also, and started looking for a different church. We finally found a Brethren Church, which we attended for six years.
My depression was very severe by then. I was seriously suicidal, and the only reason I didn't try killing myself was, that I didn't know if I would go to Heaven if I would do that (praise the Lord for that uncertainty).
I still didn't trust anybody and had learned early on in life to hide behind a mask of happiness. But behind it I was hiding in my fortress, cowering in a corner behind thick, high walls. No love was allowed to pass these walls either way.
By February of 1999 I was in such bad condition that many days I was unable to get out of bed and face the day. Finally my husband agreed to let me see a counselor (before he had always told me that I was depressed because of disobedience, that I wasn't listening to Jesus. All I had to do was rejoice in my sufferings, and I'd be fine).
The week before seeing Terry, a Christian counselor, for the first time, I told my bible study group on Wednesday night that I was severely depressed and was going to see a counselor, and I'd appreciate their prayers. I didn't know what to expect, my feelings told me that now I would be rejected. My mother had always told me that if somebody would find out what I was really like, they'd hate me and wouldn't want anything to do with me any more.
To my surprise the opposite was true. They told me they loved me, and they prayed for me, and would continue praying for me at home. I was crying, it was amazing, they actually loved me, me, who had refused to love anybody and had rejected their love before, who was even afraid to love Jesus!
I saw Terry for a year and a half, every two weeks. He never pushed me, but very gently taught me to trust and to love God and people again. He was the first person I had trusted in nearly 40 years, but he had to work hard and patiently to earn that trust!
He also helped me to forgive Jesus for letting things happen to me, and to forgive everybody who treated me badly, including my mother and brother. I understand why my mother did what she did to us, because she was an abused child herself, and so was my father. She was suffering from severe depression, and looking back, I know she had fibromyalgia as well (it is very common among people who have been abused).
Terry taught me that I needed to take the risk of loving. That I would never be truly alive until I allowed love back into my heart. I learned to accept God's love, and to love Him. I learned to make friends (I never had any before) and to love them. I have been hurt a few times, and I have made mistakes. But I have found that I was only existing before, and now I am actually living!
This is some of what I said in the card I made for Terry three years ago, before our last counseling session, and I think it says it all:
Dear Terry,
you've helped me come a long, long way,
from despair to hope,
from crying to laughter,
from sorrow to joy,
from merely existing to living fully.
You have taught me to live in the present
and to look with hope to the future,
instead of dwelling on the past.
You showed me who I am in Christ,
but, most importantly, who He is.
I've learned to love and trust God
and to accept His love and forgiveness,
and as a result
I learned to love, forgive and trust people
and to make new friends.
I've moved from timidity to boldness,
from insecurity to confidence,
from seeing myself as ugly and useless
to knowing my beauty and value in Christ,
for God created me, and He doesn't make mistakes.
I will never forget what Terry has done for me. He is the kindest man I know, and I am so very glad that we are still friends now.
Through him I also found southern gospel music, which has often been my lifeline. When I get so down or upset that I can't pray any more, listening to that beautiful music will help get me out of that destructive mood.
I am slowly finding out what my gifts are, which were buried for so long. Somehow I always knew I was a writer, but was for the most part unable to write, until I came out of the depression. I am amazed myself at the poetry I am able to write now.
This year (2003) I took a course at Ryerson University in Toronto in audio production, and I am now in the process of producing the pilot of my own Canadian southern gospel radio show. I hope to send it to all Canadian Christian radio stations no later than this fall. Hopefully they will like it and broadcast it! I want it to be a syndicated weekly show.
Both my parents are dead, my mother died in 1986, and my father in 1997, both of liver cancer (and no, neither one was an alcoholic, in fact, I have never seen either one of them drunk). I wished I'd have had more time to try to work things out with them, but most of all, to be able to get them to accept Jesus Christ as their Saviour. But I guess God's plans aren't always what we would like, and I have to accept that.
Our five children are fine. I broke the cycle of abuse, and told them all through their childhoods, despite my own feelings of worthlessness, that they are beautiful, and smart, and that I love them, and that Jesus loves them. They are all well adjusted and have great self confidence and are very independent. And they all love Jesus.
We have just become members of a Missionary and Alliance Church in our home town, and I am struggling with making new friends, while still keeping in contact with the friends I made at the previous church.
My husband is still brainwashed to a degree, but is getting better, a little bit at a time. He won't go to counseling, because he won't acknowledge he has a problem.
I am still very unwell physically at all times. But I can now sing:
He touched me, oh, He touched me, and oh, what joy now floods my soul. Something happened and now I know, He touched me and made me whole.
Update, Feb. 20th, 2004:
I have actually just found out, at the age of 50, that I have Asperger's Autism and Tourette's Syndrome. After reading all the characteristics of somebody with Asperger's (I know which ones apply to me, because of people constantly telling me what I do wrong, and getting angry with me for doing or saying certain things) I understand why I have never felt that I 'belonged' anywhere, and why I am different. It also explains why I hate being touched, especially without warning. I will allow certain people to hug me now, but only briefly. If someone doesn't let go quite soon I get a panic attack.
So, I believe I must have been a difficult child (my mother once complained to me that I wouldn't allow her to hug and hold me from the age of seven), which didn't help matters any.
Of course, I have been hard to live with for my husband and kids as well. Now that they all know, they understand though, and life should get a whole lot easier. I don't know why God would make me this way, but I am not upset about it. I am sure He has His reasons for everything He does, even if we don't understand.
I will try to get therapy to learn more appropriate social skills, which might help. But my friends have accepted me the way I am, and I am not afraid of losing any of them. They are all very loving, forgiving people.
Update Jan. 28th, 2005
I was officially diagnosed by a specialist with Tourette Syndrome on Nov. 22nd 2004, and by an Asperger specialist with Asperger's Syndrome on Dec. 8th 2004. I knew I was right, but it is good to have it affirmed by professionals, because there were people who doubted me and claimed it was just my opinion.
I know I haven't written any new poems in quite a while, but somehow I have just not been inspired. I hope to be able to write again soon.
Update January 25th, 2006
I have now been diagnosed with Celiac Disease and several other severe food intolerances. After I stopped eating the offending foods my physical pains almost disappeared, making it clear that the fibromyalgia has right from the beginning been caused by eating the things I am intolerant to.
My Mother
By Ursula Stouffer, Aug. 7th 2002
Hannelotte Maria Auguste Witt was born on March 5th, 1920 in Hamburg, Germany as the second of five children, the only girl.
Her mother and grandmother couldn’t agree on a name, one wanted Hannelore, and the other Liselotte (quite common names at the time), so they reached a compromise and made up a new name, Hannelotte. Here in Canada that would be perfectly acceptable, but in Germany unheard of, and probably caused her teasing by peers.
It was her grandmother that basically raised her and loved her until her death when my mother was in her early teens. Her father made it very clear right from the start that he had only wanted boys and had no use for girls, and told her to stay out of his way. Oh, how she longed for his love and acceptance! She never told us about the way he treated her without tears in her eyes, and she never got over it.
She was very intelligent, and wanted to become a doctor. Of course, in order to study in university, you had to have the grade 13 highschool diploma (Gymnasium in Germany). In Germany there is a three-tiered approach to education. The kids that aren’t too bright will stay in public school until the end of grade ten now (then grade nine), the next level is middle school (starting after grade four, then after grade six), and the highest level is Gymnasium, starting after grade four until grade 13. The first will prepare for apprenticeships like mechanic, electrician etc., or trade school, which will result in a diploma equivalent to having a middle school diploma. The second will get you into apprenticeships for bookkeeping, secretary, nursing (in my mother’s day, just public school would still get you into nursing), merchant etc.(all college courses in Canada). Gymnasium will get you into university. When my mother wanted it, only the lowest level was free, and Gymnasium was expensive. Her father declared that it was a total waste of money to send a girl, as she would get married anyway, and that she might as well become a nurse, that would help her look after the health needs of a family whenever she got married.
From things she said to one of my sister-in-laws it looks like her father finally took notice of her when she was about fifteen, when he started sexually abusing her.
Of course, when she was a teenager, Hitler came into power, and she was part of the movement, being in the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth. Her father, being a businessman (he owned and operated a nursery and landscaping business), did everything the Nazis wanted, to be accepted and to do well in business. That meant enrolling all his kids in the Hitler Youth organization.
He had plenty of money and food, even when people around them in the village they lived in were starving during the war. She remembers there being meat and food heaped on their table, and wanting to share with others, but her father had a heart of stone and didn’t care about others. He only cared about himself.
She did become a nurse, and I believe a very good one, graduating at the top of her class. She didn’t work long in the hospital, however. Soon after she graduated her mother became ill with stomach cancer. Her father forced her to quit her job and to nurse her mother and look after the household and the younger children. Of course, he never even gave her an allowance to make up for her not being allowed to work. When her mother died when my mother was twenty, her father still didn’t allow her to return to work, making her look after him and the kids.
He was very jealous, whenever she went out with a young man and didn’t return before midnight, he’d stand behind the door when she’d come home and slap her several times across the face, hard enough to make her fall.
She had a nice hopechest, with beautiful linen, china and precious jewelry inherited from her mother. Her mother had come from a very wealthy family in Silesia (which is now part of Poland). When the communist takeover was imminent, my grandmother and her mother fled to Germany, taking only the things that had been passed down in their family through the generations, like the family jewelry, which contained a lot of amber, but also gold, silver and precious stones.
When my mother was still in her early twenties her father remarried a woman only five years older than her. This woman hated my mother, and so my father just plain kicked her out. Now that he had somebody else to look after things, he didn’t need or want her around any more.
When she wanted to take her hopechest, she was told that those things were way too nice for her. Her stepmother took all the jewelry for herself, with her father’s permission, and she replaced the beautiful linen and china with cheap, plain things. My mother never got over losing these things, and the bitterness over what had been done to her burned in her and poisoned her very soul for the rest of her life.
At one point she met a nice young man, and they got engaged. But he was forced to become a soldier in Hitler’s air force, and was shot down during the war and was killed.
My mother lived for a while in an apartment in Hamburg during the war. One night when the sirens were warning of approaching airplanes she tarried going into the basement. When she got there, the basement was filled, and only one spot was still empty, the one next to the wood stove. Somehow everybody believed it was the most likely spot to cave in, due to the chimney going through the ceiling.
So, she sat in that spot. A bomb hit the building, and it caved in. She was the only survivor, all around her her neighbours were dead, some blown to bits. She was buried in that basement for a couple of days before they managed to dig her out. Then, instead of giving her counselling, they tried to get her to identify the bodies of her neighbours! She wandered the streets of Hamburg for days, not knowing where she was. Her nerves never recovered from this ordeal.
After the war, when she was twenty seven years old, she met my father, Werner Pasche. They fell in love. They both loved dancing, and took part in dancing competitions and did well. They enjoyed each other, and decided to get married. They married in 1948.
My mother had five miscarriages before the first living baby, and he lived only for a week. But finally, on May 14th, 1952 my oldest brother was born, a big, healthy child.
Three months after Wolfgang’s birth she was pregnant again, this time with me.
During this pregnancy my father became a Jehovah’s Witness. He neglected his job and gave in to their pressure of going door to door with them, instead of working regularly. My mother finally told him that if he didn’t leave this cult, she would leave him. He left the Jehovah’s Witnesses before I was born on May 26th, 1953.
At this time they rented part of a house owned by an older lady, who was like our own grandmother, and we called her "Oma Plonsky" (her last name was Plonsky). We were happy there. My mother had a lot of emotional support, lots of friends and plenty of teenagers who were crazy about us kids and wanted to look after us for free! And my father was able to make some money on the side by knitting sweaters on his handknitting machine for neighbourhood ladies. His sweaters were beautiful and in great demand, and that gave them enough money to live on fairly well.
We lived there until I was five. During this time three more kids came: Michael, born on Aug. 11th, 1954; Dieter, born on Oct. 5th, 1955; and Christa (the only other girl), on Oct. 22nd, 1956.
Because of my severe asthma the doctor believed that living partly in the basement (that’s were our living room was, bedrooms were in the attic, and we were allowed to share the kitchen) was causing it, and so my parents decided to move. Nobody in those days connected my fathers heavy smoking to my asthma (it is my worst allergy), and so we moved to a government subsidized townhouse in a neighbouring suburb.
This is were my own personal nightmare began, and were my mother started losing her mind.
Of course, since we took the cause of my asthma with us, my father, who would not stop smoking, this move had been made in vain.
Also, it caused my mother to lose a baby, who was born prematurely at six months, a little girl. She didn’t survive.
This neighbourhood housed primarily people from displaced people camps, and slums. For the most part, uneducated, cruel and vulgar people, the lowest of the low. We kids had been used to everybody around us loving and spoiling us. Now, when we went out we would be beat up by kids, for no reason at all! We had no idea what to do, we had never encountered that problem before. My mother didn’t know what to tell us. She herself was isolated, left without a support system, and had nobody to lean on for advice. My father was a very weak man, who had himself been an abused child and had no advice to give her.
Fortunately, my older brother finally figured out that hitting back might work! He finally discovered how strong he was. When he was being beat up by three kids, again, he hit back. He hit the kid in the stomach, and he passed out. After that day my mother didn’t have to worry about this problem any more. We went out together, and nobody dared touch us. We were tough, and we were strong, especially together. Kids would whisper when we approached: "There are the Pasche kids, you better not touch them, they are too tough for us!"
Soon Juergen was born, on Dec. 8th, 1958. Andreas came on March 5th, 1960 (her 40th birthday), and Ulrich on Dec. 25th, 1961.
I believe that she must have suffered a nervous breakdown in the spring of 1962 (I will never be able to really know, as nobody remembers clearly, and both my parents are dead). Her doctor sent her to recover (I don’t know where, probably a sanitarium). Wolfgang was allowed to stay home, I was sent to live with my grandmother, and the rest were sent to orphanages. Michael, Dieter, Christa and Juergen were in a Catholic orphanage (no other place could be found for them, and I soon joined them there, as my step-grandfather was sexually abusing me), Andreas went to one for toddlers, and Ulrich to an infant orphanage.
When Ulrich was four months old he caught pneumonia due to neglect and died.
After being in the orphanage for about four or five months my father brought us all back home. Everybody was there, except for Ulrich. Nobody had told us about his death or let us attend the funeral.
When I asked when my father would pick him up, he told us that he was dead. I was stunned.
My parents had removed everything that would remind us of the baby before we came home. It was as if he never lived, we didn’t even have a picture of him. My mother never mentioned him again.
Life was a complete nightmare. My father didn’t really make enough money to support such a large family. Often there was not enough food, and we ate things like milk soup (with milk powder supplied by the American soldiers, who were still occupying Germany) for supper. It was just sweetened, thickened milk with lumps of flour with margarine, or noodles, maybe rice, or, if the US had supplied us with raisins, these might be in it as well.
According to Wolfgang, my older brother, often she didn’t eat herself, as there wasn’t enough (I never noticed, but since he was the oldest, she’d confide in him).
I am sure that we were all suffering from vitamin deficiencies, and I am sure my mother, as a nurse, knew that as well. But there wasn’t anything she could do about it, fruit was usually too expensive.
Around this time my mother started leaving the house at times, taking the baby with her, telling the rest of us that she had enough of us and was leaving and she would never come back. We would all be huddled together, crying and believing her at first. But she did that so frequently that soon we became suspicious, and once sent a brother after her to see where she was going. She just went to a neighbour’s house for a few hours. So, from now on we laughed after she was gone, being glad to have a respite from her abuse, knowing full well that she was lying.
When she realized that this didn’t work to upset us any more, she would say that if we wouldn’t shape up she would kill herself. That was a different kind of threat. We had no way of knowing if she meant it or not, so this threat kept us in constant fear.
Plus, with her and my father fighting constantly, with these fights escalating into throwing things and verbal abuse, we were always afraid that my parents would get divorced. But even though there was no love left, they were somehow too dependent on each other to even consider divorce.
After my brother’s death, being in the orphanage, and the sexual abuse, I fell into depression (and didn’t get out of it for 38 years). I refused to be touched, hugged or kissed by anybody except my youngest brother, Andreas. I am sure my mother didn’t realize that children can be depressed. She decided I was just a moody child (even though my nickname used to be ‘little sunshine’ just a little while earlier).
She herself was so depressed now that she couldn’t handle things, and made me do most of the household chores. I learned to cook, bake, do laundry, mending, ironing and looking after the other kids by the age of ten, and was forced to work most of the day after school, instead of playing outside like my brothers. As soon as Christa was old enough she joined me as a slave.
My mother made it very clear to us that she thought we weren’t nearly as good as the boys. She had come to believe that, even though it hurt her so much when her father said it to her. But she was miserable, so she wanted us to be miserable as well.
In 1964 my youngest brother, Norbert, was born on Sept. 27th. By then she was totally dependent on Valium to control her moodswings and her anxiety. She was having hysterical outbursts, that made us fear for our lives, throwing things, screaming at the top of her lungs and cursing at us. The rest of the kids would usually flee, huddling behind bushes around the house, while I, as young as eight, would protect my baby brother (first Andi and then Norbert). I would rather take the chance of her harming or killing me, than losing another baby brother.
By the time I was ten, my mother was really unfit to look after things. She was always ill (I am sure she had fibromyalgia, as she had the same symptoms I now have), and her depression was so severe that she often couldn’t get out of bed at all. Wolfgang and I were parenting the other kids as best as we knew how and looked after them. Norbert really was my kid (I was blamed for every problem he created, everything bad he did, since I wasn’t raising him right, according to my mother).
My mother didn’t like me and blamed me for everything that went wrong in her life. And she tried her best to make me miserable, too. She couldn’t stand any happiness around her.
And she lied. Not occasionally, but almost everything she said seemed to be a lie. She couldn’t handle reality any longer, and at some point she had started to create her own version of reality and her own version of the truth. She firmly believed her own lies, and rejected the truth just as firmly. It was very confusing for my siblings and me, as she often made us look like liars to others, when in fact, we were telling the truth, and she was lying. And, of course, the adults always believed her.
She was living a very lonely, miserable life. A life filled with pain, fear, depression and no real friends. The friends she had didn’t really know her at all, as they only saw the mask of happiness she put on when leaving the house. They only knew the phony her, not the real one. She didn’t ever confide in anyone, as she believed she would be rejected if she did.
My mother was very artistic, but used those gifts less and less as her dreary life went on. She could write beautiful poetry, but did so only when required for special occasions, like birthday poems for friends (to impress them). She also used to paint and draw, I remember a lampshade she decorated (my father had made it) for the children's room. It had cats, ladybugs, flowers, butterflies and a deer on it (at least that's what I remember, I was very little). I loved it.
For her birthday when she must have been in her fifties, my brother Dieter (who also painted), gave her an easel, paints and brushes. But she never used any of it, Dieter eventually used those things himself, so they wouldn't be wasted. My mother wasn't able to do anything fun any more.
Her mind got more confused as time went on (her Valium addiction didn’t help), until, when she died in 1986 of liver cancer, I believe she was pretty much insane.
I did love my mother, but, due to her not loving me, don’t miss her. I feel very sorry for her having had such a miserable life. I just wished I would have had more chances of telling her of Jesus’ love and forgiveness. I don’t believe she was a Christian when she died, but God will be the judge of that.
My Father
By Ursula Stouffer, Nov. 14th, 2002
Werner Otto Pasche was born in Hamburg, Germany on Feb. 15th, 1923, the first child of his parents.
Apparently his father had an extramarital affair, and his mother divorced his father when he was around four years of age. She remarried when he was around five or six. I really know very little of his father or stepfather, not even their first names. I know that his stepfather was a plumber, and owned his own plumbing business.
His mother was a very abusive mother, taking out on him what his father had done, and punishing him for it for the rest of his youth and childhood.
He thought his father had abandoned him, since he never heard from him again. He found out when he was grown up, that his father had sent him many letters, but his mother threw them out, and wouldn’t allow his father to have contact with him whatsoever.
He was never allowed to own any toys, and he had to stand during meals and wasn’t allowed to sit at the table.
His stepsister was born when he was about ten, and his stepbrother two years later. They were very unlike him, but he loved them dearly. Unfortunately, neither one of them had his superior intelligence. Since they weren’t smart enough to go to Gymnasium (high school up to grade 13, preparing for university), he wasn’t allowed to go, either. My father wanted to become an engineer, but was forced to apprentice with a plumber, to learn the plumbing business. Since both his siblings had severe asthma, his brother would never be able to take over the plumbing business, so they were going to force him to keep it going.
He was usually blamed for every mischief his brother and sister could think of and punished for it. And they made him do all the chores, since the other kids weren’t well enough to be too much help.
Shortly before the second world war his stepfather died. I am not sure how that impacted my father, he really never talked about it.
He was part of the Hitler Youth. Finally he was allowed to do something that was fun! He learned how to fly glider airplanes, and loved it. He enjoyed telling us of his adventures (he was a great storyteller, and had a very unique, subtle kind of humour), like once losing control and landing on the roof of a house, to the horror of the owners. But somehow he always managed to get out of any misadventures unhurt.
Somehow his mother must have loved him in her own way, because she bought him a piano and allowed him to have piano lessons, which he enjoyed tremendously. She also gave him a diamond tie pin when he graduated from his apprenticeship.
When he was eighteen he was drafted into the German army, the ‘Luftwaffe’ (air force), and since it was war by then, he was sent to Poland. He was a very peaceful man, and would never have been able to shoot anybody. He told me that he was unable to look at the ‘enemy’ as somebody bad who had done him any wrong. He somehow always managed to stay away from any fighting, so he never encountered a situation where he had to shoot at anybody. Otherwise he would likely have died, because he would never have shot first.
When he was in the Krimea region at one point, the soldiers were asked if there were any volunteers to become radio operators, and he jumped at this chance. As a radio operator he’d never be involved in any direct fighting, and he loved fiddling with anything electronic. He learned to assemble/disassemble, repair and operate short-wave radios, and learned the Morse code, which is what they used for the most part.
When the Russians were about to take the region, he conveniently got ‘lost’ and wandered the countryside for many weeks, having a great time. The Germans actually believed his unlikely story, or else they would have shot him for desertion.
Eventually he was captured by the Russians, and sent to a prisoner of war camp in Siberia. He arrived in the spring and had to help the farmers with planting, and later with harvesting. When winter came, he was supposed to be shipped to a coalmine. Very few people came out of those alive.
But Hitler and the Russians made a deal, that they were going to exchange 1000 sick prisoners of war. Well, the Russians didn’t have enough sick prisoners, so they looked all of the others over, and selected the ones that looked sickly to be sent home.
My father was always very healthy, but at the same time was very skinny, and never looked very well. So, he was sent home!
While on his way home, he was sent first to a field hospital (as he was considered sick, that was logical). That’s where he found his birth father. He was injured so badly that he was dying. But they managed to talk to each other. My father found out that his dad had been writing him and sending gifts all those years, and he realized that his mother had kept him from knowing that his father loved him. He was there when his dad died.
He heard that his father had remarried, and that he had half-brothers and -sisters. Somehow he never had the courage to contact them, so we never met them. I have no idea where they live or what their names are.
After the war my father tried to get his mother to help him become an engineer after all, since, of course, they had lost the plumbing business during the war (it was bombed, as was most of Hamburg).
But she refused to support him in any way, even though she would have been able to financially.
So, my father worked as a plumber, while taking evening courses to get his highschool diploma. He graduated with very high marks, and applied to engineering school. He had to write an entrance test, and scored so high that he got a full scholarship. Since those now were full time studies, he couldn’t work on the side to make money to live on. His mother wouldn’t help.
He lived in a room with a broken window. It was so cold in the winter, that the potatoes he kept under his bed (hoping that there they would be safe) froze solid.
He tried to make some money on the black market, like everybody else. But he was too innocent a person to be able to deceive anybody. Every time he tried it, the Americans caught him.
Eventually he gave up and just resigned himself to being a plumber for the rest of his life (he hated that job with a passion, even though he was very good at it). He never tried again to better himself. He worked in the airplane industry for a while, and after that in the shipyards, building ships. Eventually he worked for a plumbing company in the house building business, where he stayed for many years.
When he was 25 years old he met my mother. They fell in love, and he asked her to marry him after two weeks. They were married within a year of meeting.
Her father and stepmother rejected him and he was never allowed to set foot into their house, and they never came to visit us. We children would usually go to visit them on our own, when we were old enough (it was a trip that took two hours each way, by bus and several different trains).
My mother had five miscarriages, and the first living child lived only for a week. Finally, when she was 32 and my father was 29, my oldest brother, Wolfgang was born in May of 1952. I came a year and twelve days later, Michael was born in Aug. 1954, Dieter Oct. 1955, Christa Oct. 1956, Juergen Dec. 1958 (another miscarriage in between these two), Andreas March 1960, Ulrich in Dec. 1961 (he died when he was four months old) and Norbert in Sept. 1964.
While my mother was pregnant with me, my father joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses (he was very gullible and always easy to deceive), and neglected his duties as a husband and father, by ‘evangelizing’ for them instead of going to work. My mother soon told him that she would leave him unless he left the cult. He chose his family over the Jehovah’s Witnesses and started working regularly again. He never missed any work after that.
My father loved to knit and crochet. Once, before they were married he knitted (by hand) a very beautiful, delicate wool dress, with a flower pattern for my mother. When it didn’t fit perfectly he unraveled the dress (which had taken him months to knit) and knitted a new one. And to make it more interesting, this time with a different flower pattern! It fit this time (he was a perfectionist, I know where I got that from).
After they were married they lived in a great neighbourhood, with friends and people to support them all around. He would knit anything the neighbours would order, making up his own patterns for the most part. By then he had managed to buy a handknitting machine and was able to knit things very fast. It was a good way to subsidize his earnings, which weren’t enough to really look after his growing family. He would also be called on to fix anything that needed fixing in the neighbourhood. He could fix anything, be it plumbing, electric, carpentry, roofs, you name it he did it.
He would also knit and sew (we had a sewing machine) most of our clothing. My mother, who knew how to draw well, would design my dresses, and he would sew them. He would also take old adult coats, and use the parts that weren’t worn to make beautiful coats for us kids. We looked like rich people’s children, with our ‘designer clothes’!
My father was a heavy smoker, quite common in those days. Then people didn’t realize how smoking affected people. So, when I started having severe asthma at the age of three, nobody ever thought that maybe my father’s smoking was the cause.
When I became so sick that by the age of five I seemed to be spending more time in the hospital than at home, our doctor told us that we needed to move, or I might die. She blamed our living conditions. We were renting part of a house, owned by an old lady, whom we loved dearly. She was a much better grandmother to us than our own grandmother (my father’s mother).
We had our living room in the basement (the doctor thought the damp basement was my problem), our bedrooms in the attic, and shared the kitchen and yard.
We moved into a neighbourhood with subsidized housing for people with more than three children.
That’s when things turned into a terrible nightmare. It was like the bottom had been pulled out from all our feet. My mother was unable to handle the pressure of being away from her whole support system she had when living in the old neighbourhood. The kids around us would beat us up regularly, and we were never safe to go even out the front door! When we kids finally figured out that you had to fight back, and that there was safety in numbers (we went everywhere together) we were okay for the most part.
With my mother falling apart, and him not making enough money (the ladies from the old neighbourhood slowly stopped ordering sweaters from him), and seeing us kids being attacked by other children my father was under terrible pressure. He would withdraw under pressure, and so he gave my mother no emotional support whatsoever.
And my asthma was not getting any better (of course, now this house was filled with his cigarette smoke!), meaning that our move had done no good in any way.
He started reading science fiction series which were produced in the United States and translated into German. Each of the series he pretty much got addicted to had one thin book come out once a week, and you had to read it every week to understand what was happening (much like today’s soap operas). He would stay up half the night reading these, avoiding my mother, who was whining and nagging continuously, and who was never well (I now realize that she had severe fibromyalgia, recognizing in her the same symptoms I have now). Nobody ever believed her that she really was sick, as she looked fine, so she didn’t have emotional support. Not from my dad, and not from us kids, either.
Of course, he then had to get up at 6:00 AM, after staying up until 3:00 reading. It was quite a chore getting him out of bed. He’d hit my mother if she wasn’t quick enough to get out of his way (he wasn’t really awake when he did that, he never hit her when fully awake). So, she got up and used a broomstick to poke him with to get him up. Sometimes she’d ask us kids to do it for her, because she was too scared.
Once my father hit me when I woke him. He came into my room before he left for work to apologize, but I wouldn’t talk to him. All day I was afraid that maybe something would happen to him that day, without him knowing I had forgiven him and loved him. I was so relieved when he came home that night, and I ran right away to tell him how much I loved him, and that I forgave him. But he never told me that he loved me. He didn’t know how to show his feelings, he had to learn how to hide them during his horrible childhood.
It was fairly obvious that I was his favourite child, we were so much alike. We would sit up and talk for hours at night (after my mother was asleep, I would sneak back down, make snacks for us both and talk). When I got older, he would ask me for advice on many things, instead of talking to my mother about these things. Nobody liked to talk much to her. She was always right, even when it was obvious that she was wrong.
He was very lonely, even in the midst of such a large family. The haunted look in his eyes pained me to see (and likely matched my own). He hated his work, he was extremely unhappy in his marriage, and he was feeling very insecure in general. He was in constant fear of making mistakes.
When I was in my early teens he would still go and play badminton outside with us and do fun things. But slowly he lost all joy and stopped having any fun, other than playing cards with us at times and listening to his music (opera and operetta music for the most part, later musicals as well).
It never occurred to him that his marriage might improve if he would take my mother out once in a while, to give her a break. He never took her for a walk, to the movies, to a restaurant or anything at all! It wasn’t that he didn’t care, but he had nobody to give him any good advice, and neither one of them had seen a normal marriage in their childhood’s, and didn’t understand about these things. They were like children playing grownups (and having no understanding what makes you a grownup) all their adult lives.
For lack of support and guidance from our parents, we pretty much parented ourselves, the older kids (Wolfgang and me) being the parents for the younger ones. If we wouldn’t have loved each other, none of us would have learned how to love, either.
My father was like another child to my mother. If she didn’t make him have his hair cut, take a bath, change his clothes etc., he would never have done any of those things.
After Norbert was born in 1964, she didn’t want any more children. Condoms had failed them before, and she couldn’t tolerate the birth control pill (I now know that it makes fibromyalgia much worse). She never allowed him to have sex again until she died. My father was only 41 then (he confided even intimate things like that in me).
My mother died of cancer in 1986 when he was 63. By then only my youngest brother still lived at home. My father had pretty much rejected Norbert all his childhood, claiming he was too old to have such a little kid, and he couldn’t handle him around with his noise and chatter.
I remember putting Norbert to bed when he was about seven, and him crying, asking me why Papa didn’t love him. It just about broke my heart. I was eighteen at the time, and had to comfort him. I don’t think I was able to convince him that wasn’t true, the evidence didn’t support my words. I could just tell him that I loved him very much.
Anyway, after my mother’s death my father and Norbert finally bonded and started getting along very well. My mother’s death was a blessing to them, and they learned to love each other.
But now, of course, my father looked and smelled like a vagabond much of the time, as nobody told him to look after himself any more. And the house was a disaster, too. My brother Wolfgang’s wife wouldn’t even let their children see him, claiming he was not a good role model.
When Ken, Susie (who was 3 at the time) and I went to visit the family in 1995 Susie was scared of my father at first, but his friendly demeanor convinced her soon that he was harmless, despite his smell and long, unwashed hair. But when talking of Opa when we got back home, she asked me, if he was the one who smelled so bad. It made my heart ache for my poor, helpless father. By having had his childhood taken away, and not getting any love, he had stayed a child in so many ways.
My father had a brilliant mind, but was emotionally unable to cope. I know he was suffering from severe depression. Only Jesus could have helped, but he rejected Him. My father died in March of 1997 of liver cancer. I miss him. I often want to call him on the phone, but can’t. I just wished I’d have had more opportunities of telling him of Jesus’ love and forgiveness, which was his only hope. But it is too late now.
Update Jan. 28th 2005
After being diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome last month and reading a lot about it, I realize that my father is the one I inherited it from. In retrospect it is extremely obvious that my father had AS as well, and so do three of my brothers and my sister.
I understand now why my father couldn't handle having another baby when Norbert was born. I didn't understand until now, that there was a limit to what he could endure, and Norbert was a normal, noisy kid (one of the ones without AS), completely unlike him.
| Site Tools |
|
|
|
|
|
Verse of the Day |
|
|
