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Saturday, January 26, 2008

Violence in the Home-Patricia's Story



The Nightmare







This is a story about Patricia and Danny. These are not their real names as indeed this is an account of several troubled households. It is particularly hoped that people who abuse their families will read this cautionary tale.

“My husband Danny is dead now. He died in 2004 as a result of a massive stroke. It was not his first stroke. The first time was in 2000, and the result was he went from being a burly, healthy, violent bastard of a man to being a cripple who needed everything done for him.

“Our story began when we were both in high school. We fell in love and as a result of our sexual experimentation I fell pregnant. Our families went wild and we were forced into getting married. I was nineteen when I became pregant and he was twenty. It was clear from the start that he didn’t want to be married with a family. He blamed me and accused me of trapping him. The violence came straight away, even while I was pregnant. We were both Catholic, so contraception was out of the question. Consequently, when we had sex, I became pregnant.

“Finally, at child number five we simply stopped having sex. He got his gratification from prostitutes and made no secret about it. I cannot imagine a man who did not want the cards that life had dealt him more than our Danny. He absolutely detested his family, and to him I was the one to blame for all his troubles.

“I will say right here that he was partly right. I was actually very happy on finding out I was pregnant on that first occasion. I had not deliberately done anything behind his back to make it happen. He was as enthusiastic for us to have sex, and he took no precautions of his own to avoid pregnancy. The difference was that I wanted us to be a family. He simply felt trapped.

“The irony is that instead of abandoning us, he stayed and made for him a bad situation worse with yet more mouths to feed. His reaction was to strike out at us. He did not need any specific reason to do so. He would explode at us when he was stone cold sober as well as when he was drunk.

“He beat us all from the time he thought the children were old enough to take it, with me as his favourite punching bag. You hear of men who do things like this, then apologize afterward. Danny never apologized once while the beatings were taking place. He used his vocal power to call me everything derogatory in the book.

“Then came March, 2000. It was a Saturday night when he came back from the pub. I made certain that all the children were out of harm’s way, as usual, and braced myself to take my beating by having had several whiskies. I had found that to be an acceptable anaesthetic. He came in the house like a charging lion and came straight for me. He was fully engaged in knocking me around when suddenly he seemed to become disoriented and started bumping into things on his own. And then, he went crashing down, just like a lion brought down by a shotgun. And then, all was quiet. I could not believe what I was seeing.

“After a while I called for an ambulance. At the hospital I was told he had suffered a major stroke and that he would probably need to be institutionalised, as he would be virtually helpless. Although he would retain much of his mental faculties, his motor functions were kaput. I said that I would take him home to be with his family. We would cope somehow. If he could have heard those words he should have been terrified.

“The next four years were pay-back time, and I took every opportunity to extract my due, and that of my children from the beast. I say this without shame that he got what he had given, multiplied ten-fold. The children hated him and never let him forget it. I had come to regard him as the most evil man that walked the faced of the earth. The neighbours even said how much they enjoyed hearing him crying.

“I shall spare you the details because I am not proud of what we did. Indeed, you may ask how does what we did make us any better? Well, it didn’t make us any better, but hopefully, in his sick mind it made us his worst nightmare.

“Finally, in 2004 he had another killer stroke. We wanted him to live on to fully reap the whirlwind that he had created. One thing is very certain; that the countless times he said he was sorry was sincere. He was sorry he had been reduced to the helpless pathetic person he was; he was sorry he was no longer capable of harming his family; and he was sorry he was at our mercy. I will not believe that he was sorry to have been such a swine to us.

“We didn’t kill him, we only made him wish he was dead.”

The moral of the story is:

If you are an abuser, (male or female) remember you are only temporarily able-bodied to hurt the ones you are supposed to love and protect. While you have your health and strength, you would do better to build up credits with your family so that when you need to rely on them the support will be there, and it will be given without reservation and with love. If nothing else, you are getting older with every passing day. Old age itself brings less independence. In other words, be nice!





Copyright © 2008 Eugene Carmichael