Freckles

I don’t speak of my sister all too often, and I think it’s because there aren’t too many fond memories between her and me. But I am now. To understand her sickness and her death, one must know about her life. This is her story, her life and her death, seen through my eyes.

I was a few years old when Beth was born, and as my parents tell me, when they brought her home from the hospital I told them to take her back. I didn’t want her. That was only the beginning of our love/hate relationship.

I don’t remember too much of the younger years of our childhood, but when I look at pictures, it seems as though we got along. We played together and did stuff with each other, or maybe it was just my mom playing photographer and posed us that way. Either way, we always had smiles on our faces and it did seem that there was love between us.

It wasn’t until she started school that my parents found out that she wasn’t too bright, which was complete opposite of me because I was extremely accelerated in everything I did. But Beth was not. She had problems doing the most simple things. The easiest task was difficult for her.

I don’t know if that was the reason, or because she was the baby, or both, but my parents soon started to really baby her. They sheltered her in a way that was different from me. I was more free and dependent and I didn’t rely on them for everything like she did. And I must have been jealous of that because I soon despised her. She got a lot of the attention that I yearned for and didn’t receive.

She played this to her favor as she knew that she could get anything, ask for anything and get away with everything. She soon became the worst narc, the tattletale, even things that were her fault, I started to get in trouble for. And my parents believed anything and everything that child ever said.

If I said that the sky was blue and she said it was red, they’d believe her. I don’t know where the mistrust came about with me, but they must have put all the trust into her because by now, by the time I was 12 or so, my word was shit to them. And Beth knew it. And she played on it, almost like she got off on watching me suffer, because back then, spankings were still okay. It was okay if your parents beat you. And mine did. Rather, my mother did.

I remember this one time Beth wouldn’t leave me alone and she was relentlessly bothering me. I was trying to sleep and she just kept on and on and anything I did or said, she just wouldn’t leave me alone. I remember kicking my legs up in the air, not trying to kick her, but to block her, and I kicked her in the face.

This started a shit storm that I could predict, but the force of it was completely out of the left field. As soon as she started crying, my mother was in my room so quick it made our heads turn. And she beat me. And I tried to get away from her, but she beat me down the hall and through the house, and she finally backed me into a corner in the furthest room in the house, and beat me until I couldn’t stand up any longer.

She used her fists and open-handed slaps and she didn’t aim. No, that wasn’t the way she did things. She would swing her arms and her fists and wherever they hit you, that’s where you got it. I was in so much pain from that beating that I couldn’t even cry any longer. The tears ceased and all I could do was scream from the torture.

My dad had to pull her off of me and in that corner, I slept for the night. I never got an apology for that beating. It was just forgotten about, like it never happened. And soon, the bruises left my body, but they never left my mind.

The older Beth got, the more my parents were made aware of her learning disabilities. She had been kept back a few years in school and she had numerous tests done to see where she was compared to kids her own age. She was severely lacking in that area. She was not book smart at all, and even her maturity level was not up with the other girls.

She was treated like a baby, so she acted like one as well. I still think my parents had something to do with her not wanting to ever grow up. She had the Peter Pan complex, but it was much more than that. She really did want to stay a child, a young child, forever. If she had been given the option to breast-feed, she probably would have.

I resented her for this because I didn’t understand why she would want to be treated like a kid when growing up and being older, and acting older was the way to go as far as I was concerned. I was gearing up to be a teenager and life couldn’t get any better than that in my eyes. And yet, she wanted to watch cartoons all weekend and be attached to my mom’s hip at every waking hour.

But even though I had mad dislike for this girl, I also defended her and watched her back when she needed it because Lord knows, she needed it. I had the mentality, as most siblings do I would suppose, that if anyone fucks with her, they fuck with me. And that was proven one day when we came to Kentucky to visit family.

At the age of 13, I had no idea what a bottle rocket was. I didn’t, and neither did Beth. But my cousin Shane, who was 12, was going to show us how to play with light them. He put one in a milk jug and covered it, and little Miss Green that I was, didn’t know you weren’t supposed to do that. So he lights it and the bottle rocket takes off, goes straight into the air and turns sharply, and it starts to head for Beth.

Of course, we all just stand there in amazement, and the whole ordeal only took a mere second or two, but we stood there, cemented to the ground, and watch this firework head toward my sister as it explodes on her bare leg. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” That’s all my cousin could say, as I run to her and make sure she’s okay, before giving Shane an ass kicking. I beat the living shit out of that boy and because of that incident, our visit was actually cut short a few days. To this day, Shane and I laugh about that story.

But that’s how Beth and I were. I hated her guts, I couldn’t stand the child, but I wasn’t going to let someone hurt her in any way.

For the next few years, Beth and I didn’t have a relationship whatsoever. We lived in the same house, but as I entered high school, I was in a whole new world and I didn’t want her in it. I was mature and I had a job and responsibilities. She had nothing. She had school and her cartoons.

The only time we actually conversed was when we fought or screamed at each other. Anything that said between us had extreme sarcastic undertones and we didn’t sugar coat anything. The hate was very apparent between us. And even though we weren’t friends, we were barely sisters, my parents would still try to get us to get along.

To punish us my mother would have us hug each other and that was the worst thing she could possibly do. And she knew it. Touching my sister was like touching the plague, I would have rather gotten a beating than touch her. And I did. On occasion, I told my mom, “Just give me a beating and get it over with.” The last beating I got was when I was 15. I stood up to her, I backed her down, I hit her in response to the wailing she was doing on me. And she never did it again.

We moved to Kentucky when I was 16, and Beth was 13. She had started to develop and although she was rather short at only 5 foot three, she was nothing but legs. She was still immature in the sense that she was a mama’s girl and still a thumb-sucker but she began to like the attention she got from the boys.

And yes, the boys were very different from the ones in California, and she knew that. She didn’t get their attention when we lived on the west coast, but by golly, once we moved to Kentucky, they were all over her. And like me, she got introduced to the wrong crowd.

I was all ready to graduate high school and start my adult life. I was ready for college and gaining the responsibilities that a young adult achieves, while Beth was just about to enter high school. She was very naive and green, and she trusted everyone. That’s where she went wrong, and even though I tried to warn her, she thought that I was just trying to keep her down. She thought that I was trying to shelter her, much like our parents did. But, no. I had already gone through the drugs and the sex and the heartbreak that high school brings to some kids. I had already cleaned up my life and was walking the straight and narrow. She didn’t need to go down that road, but yet it interested her.

And she moved rather quickly down that road, you could say she sprinted down that road, and nothing anyone said or did could stop her. She was also very manipulative because she was a sweet girl. People looked at her as though she did no wrong, when in fact she was a thief and a liar.

She was a terrible thief but an even worse liar. She made this sly grimace when she was lying and that was one face I will never forget because I saw it so often. Money and jewelry started to disappear around the house, and at first, my mother blamed me for it. But really, why would I have to steal anything when I had a job. I made my own money, I bought my own things, I didn’t need to steal anything. But, Beth didn’t have an income, she didn’t get an allowance so my mother’s silver was soon missing. Many diamond cluster rings soon became “lost” and at the same time, Beth started to lose weight.

The people she was hanging around were bad news. They were drug dealers and growers and they were known to be violent. They caused a lot of trouble around town, but were able to do so without getting caught. She brought a few of her friends home and I knew who they were. She didn’t care that they broke the law repeatedly. She didn’t care that those types of things could really get a person in a heap of trouble. She even told me one day, I believe she was about 15 or so, “I fucked Charlie last night and I plan to do it again.” I knew exactly who Charlie was and warned her about him. Did she listen? Of course not.

It even got so bad that my aunt had heard stories of Beth doing sexual favors for drugs. The stories flew all over town and I believed them. Her attitude was shit with everyone, her weight was out of control at only 80 pounds, and she started to disappear for several days at a time. She was still a minor but yet she dealt with people much older than she was. Older than I was really.

About this time, I was married to my first husband and I didn’t live with my parents. That’s the only reason I got married - so that I could move out of the house and get away from her. I knew that would be the only way out so I did it. I married him, got pregnant and was back in the house as a divorcee four months later.

Her drug problems only escalated and her reputation was mud. School was a disaster for her and when she actually did go, she got into fights, which she couldn’t win because she was so small and frail. I don’t know if my parents just wanted to deny her having problems or what, but they pretty much just turned the other cheek.

I was pregnant when I moved back in with them, and she got so violent, so mean and extremely moody when she ran out of drugs that she occasionally kicked and hit my pregnant stomach. She didn’t care and she even told me so. She hated me with every part of her being at this time because I was actually getting some of the attention. I was due any day and the attention was put on me instead of her. So what does she do? She’s acted out, bad attention is better than none.

Fast forward about a year. Lots of drugs. Many lovers. Constant fighting. She ended up dropping out of school the day after she turned 18. She was still a sophomore. Our relationship was at an all time low. We fought constantly. There was never a civil word said between us. And instead of only verbal fights, we were now physically fighting each other.

She ran away from home for about a week and finally we got a tip from one of her friends as to where she was at. My dad and I went to pick her up, and she looked like complete shit. She was a poster child for crack and speed. She looked terrible. And she was in tears. She knew that it was time to stop. Stop the madness.

My parents took her to a rehab that was roughly two months long I believe. And she stayed. And she got clean, as well as my dad. She finally did come home and her perspective was a bit different, she had gained some weight back and she wasn’t as mean as she was prior to going in. She was a bit humbled, but I still didn’t trust her. No, that was something that would have to take some time to gain back.

Throughout the next couple years, she stayed clean for the most part, only to relapse a few times. And every time she would relapse, she would feel completely awful and down on herself for not being strong enough. She was doing okay, but her will power was struggling a little.

Through the help of NA and AA, she did manage to go a year of being completely sober and drug free. I had met Mister and she totally loved him. She was ready to have a brother-in-law and she told him that he was perfect for me. And the main reason was because he treated her well. He didn’t treat her like shit like many of the guys she knew.

And that’s when the demons came out.

Mister and I had been dating each other for a few weeks and we were hanging out at my parents’ house one evening watching television with Beth and my mom. BabyDoll was about 20 months old at the time, and we were all having a good time that night. All of a sudden Beth jumped up and started to strangle my mom. She was choking her and making strange gargling noises. Her eyes were sort of glazed over and blank. She showed no emotion whatsoever but there’s was hate in her eyes. They were evil and down right scary.

Now Beth was only about 5′3 and 100 pounds. She wasn’t a big girl at all and physically, she wasn’t strong. Mister had tried to release her hands from my mom’s neck, and he was having a hard time doing so. He stood at 6 foot, 400 pounds and it took all that he had to get Beth off of my mom. He did everything but sit on her to keep her down. Her adrenaline was pumping so hard that she was almost stronger than a big man. And it was scary.

After about 10 minutes of this, Beth calmed down. It was almost instant that she was over it. She was possessed one second, and the next, she wasn’t. And she was crying and apologizing to mom as if she knew exactly what had happened. She apologized like mad, but mom and dad still took her to the hospital that night. They had to find out what had gone wrong. That night was the first of many where things were crazy in that house.

The doctors first blamed it on the drugs. It was the use of drugs that had possessed her to lash out toward my mom, but Beth was clean and sober. There were no drugs in her body and tests proved that.

Throughout the next couple weeks, Beth would lash out just about every day. And it was usually geared toward my mom, but occasionally she would choke the cat as well. While she did this all I thought was what I had heard numerous times about serial killers: they normally start off with animals. But then she threatened to hurt BabyDoll. And that’s when things got a bit more heated.

Beth became suicidal and homicidal. She had tendencies and my folks were continuously taking her to different doctors, both medical and head shrinks. Noone could figure out why she was doing what she was doing. She jumped in and out of hospitals, both medical and mental. Each time she would go to the hospital, she’d come out like a zombie because all they did was drug her up.

She ended up in one mental hospital, one that was fairly well known around these parts. If someone talked about this facility, folks would cringe because they knew what sort of people was there and the stories about them were completely outrageous. And that’s where my sister went to for a couple weeks.

I remember visiting her one day. The place was set up like a prison. To get to where the patients were, you had to walk down numerous hallways, and they each had bars and doors and locks. And you had to be chaperoned because everything was locked down fairly well. It was scary just to walk through it.

And she was severely drugged. She didn’t know who we were or why we were there. It was sad. It was extremely sad to see her, and the other patients as well because they were all in the same state of mind. Their lives were run by chemicals. And no one needed to live like that.

She lasted only a few weeks in that facility, only to come out drugged up and finally diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, bipolar, and mentally retarded. And soon after that, she was diagnosed with having multiple personalties. Oh yes, Suzy soon came to be. And Suzy was quite mean. She was a mean person that liked to physically hurt people, and Beth as well.

Beth was to the point where she could no longer be left alone. She could no longer drive or stay at home by herself. She had to have a babysitter at all times. And that was rough because I worked. My mom worked. And my dad had become quite involved in AA. Our lives revolved around Beth because we had to see that she was taken care of properly, and being in a hospital wasn’t an option. That didn’t work.

She had suicidal tendencies as well and we had to hide all the knives in the house. She had threatened many times to kill herself so we had to get all the knives, ice picks, anything sharp and put them away to where she would never find them. And one day, she did find them. Why my parents put them in a plastic grocery store bag, I haven’t a clue. But they did. Knives plus a Wal-Mart sack, not good.

The house we all lived in was an old farm house, and all the rooms connected in one big circle with the kitchen being in the middle of everything. And she had the bag full of knives. And she was running. Mister went one way. Dad went the other way. And I stayed in the kitchen to try and catch her. Do you realize how hard it is to grab a plastic bag full of sharp items and not get sliced open? It isn’t easy. We all managed to get diced up with that incident. But she didn’t kill herself and that’s what mattered most.

She was slowly getting worse by the day and soon became just unbearable. She was continuously lashing out toward my mom and she would even try to sneak up on BabyDoll, but I made sure to always have BabyDoll in my sight. She never tried to hurt me or my dad but we still didn’t let our guard down. No, we had to be ready for anything at all times.

Beth was seeing several different doctors and they were slowly but surely getting her medication at the right dosages, to keep her sane and tolerable without making her into a zombie which was a difficult task. She was still very mean and evil at times, and when she wasn’t possessed, she was very meek and childlike.

The doctors claimed that she had basically fried her brain with the drug use and that she had very little brain cells left. They had diagnosed her as mentally retarded with the mentality of a 4-year-old. She wouldn’t even bathe herself at this point. She wouldn’t take care of herself, wouldn’t feed herself. She wouldn’t write or read or do anything that a normal 20 year old would do. And when we would try to push her to do things, she would cry and act out. She would throw temper tantrums and occasionally she’d try to kill herself or my mom.

After several months of living with her like this, my folks decided that they couldn’t handle it any longer. They couldn’t physically or mentally do it and they had decided to get her hospitalized for good. They searched and called and interviewed many different facilities and finally found one that dealt with people like this without the overuse of drugs and chemicals.

The facility was like a nursing home. The patients were free to roam around town, they were able to leave when they wanted to but they did have curfews. They were able to go to their families homes when they wanted to. They weren’t confined to the grounds and that’s why my folks liked it so much. If they wanted to get Beth and go out to eat one day, they could. If they wanted to bring her home for the weekend, they could.

I don’t remember the day that she was admitted, because I wasn’t there. That was something my parents wanted to do on their own, and they did. I know my parents were upset but relieved as well because she would be taken care of properly. The nurses and doctors were more aware and more able to deal with her and her issues. My folks weren’t able to do it and after she was admitted, they got divorced. The previous years took such a toll on them that they couldn’t do it any longer and my dad filed for divorce shortly after Beth went to live at the facility.

For a few weeks, she was extremely sad and homesick. She would constantly call and ask to be brought home, and my parents declined. How was she to get used to her new home if she wasn’t there? She needed to stay and stick it out. It was tough love but it had to be done. And after awhile, she got used to it. She made friends and eventually she called the place home.

Mister and I would occasionally visit her and take her to lunch. She loved going out to eat, and sometimes we would even bring her to out house to spend the night. I know she thoroughly enjoyed those nights, but they were sleepless nights because I was on edge the entire time she was with us.

She became very likeable and was rarely argumentative or mean. She became someone I actually liked and I enjoyed being around her. It was a shame though that her issues mixed with the medication made her into someone that I liked. And I would think to myself, why didn’t I like her before all this. Why didn’t I treat her with the respect that I do now? Why didn’t I act like a sister toward her instead of an enemy? I had no answers. I still don’t. I will never have the answers to any of those questions.

She was even my maid of honor when I married Mister.

Beth was also a hypochondriac and was sent to the hospital quite often for stomach pains or headaches or whathaveyou. The facility did not deal with the medical issues as much as the mental ones, so the patients were sent to the hospital if they were complaining about something quite a bit. When she would get sent to the hospital, she would call my mom to come and get her. Eventually my mom would stop going because she didn’t see anything wrong with Beth. She cried wolf and mom finally picked up on that.

My mom had gotten Beth one weekend and was on her way to take her back to the facility and they had decided to stop by my house. I lived between mom’s house and Beth’s facility and they would usually stop and visit while going back and forth. Beth had been complaining of a stomachache that evening so mom took her back a little early.

We have an inside joke within my family that if something is ailing one of us, it’s because they had to poop. If BabyDoll has a headache, I tell her to poop because that’ll make her feel better. If someone breaks their foot, I tell them to poop. It’ll make it feel better. You get the point, yes? So as mom and Beth were leaving my house that night, I yelled out the door, “your stomach will stop hurting if you go and take a poop!” Little did I know that would be the last thing I ever said to her. What a winner, huh. This was on a Sunday.

By Wednesday, a nurse from the facility called mom and told her that Beth was in the hospital with pneumonia. Mom was up and running and at the hospital within an hour. She was extremely upset and worried and I tried to coax her and tell her that everything would be okay. She had pneumonia, and she was a fighter. She’ll get over it.

By the very next day, Beth was no longer speaking. She was in a vegetable state and the doctors pretty much drug induced her into a coma so that she wouldn’t feel the pain that the pneumonia was causing. She had what they called white lung. It had basically set up like cement in her lungs, and she soon had kidney failure.

The doctors could not fix it. They ran brain scans and there was no activity whatsoever. She was gone, mentally. Beth was starting to bloat because of her organs shutting down and she had managed to flat-line a few times. Every time she did, my mom would race up to the hospital and be with her. I never went to the hospital. I have a fear of hospitals, and that fear caused me to never see her in that state.

On Sunday, my mom had been at the hospital all day and I convinced her to come to my house and eat lunch with Mister and me. I only lived about a half hour from the hospital and I assured mom she could come and eat and go back to the hospital and everything would be okay. She needed the nourishment.

She arrived at my house at 2PM, and the moment she stepped out of her car, she got another phone call from the hospital. She had flatlined again. So my mom raced back to the hospital and within an hour, I got the phone call. She had passed away.

At 23 years old, she had entered a hospital on a Wednesday, and died by Sunday. I was in shock. I was literally ice cold and was flabbergasted. I was in denial. I was pissed. I was upset and mentally drained. That week had drained me. And all I could think about was my mother. She had already lost a daughter, which is a whole nother story in itself, and now she lost a second.

Mister started making phone calls and I lied down and tried to gather my thoughts. I was confused and mad at God for doing this. Why would he take her now? Why would he take her at such a young age? She wasn’t ready to go, or maybe she was. He must have had other plans for her. In my eyes, she wasn’t ready.

A few hours later, my mom and uncle stopped by my house and I forced them to eat what I had cooked. They had to get something in their bellies and they finally agreed to. I packed me and Mister a bag of clothes because I was damned determined to stay with my mom for a few days. I figured she would need some help, physically, mentally, whatever. I just knew I didn’t want to leave her by herself.

I called my dad later that night and spoke with him for the first time after Beth’s death. He was absolutely shook up, he was devastated. He was also there when she died and it was heartbreaking to hear my dad crying on the other end of the phone. All he could say was that he still had me. He still had one baby left. And to think of his voice, how he sounded that evening, I still remember it to this day, makes me cry.

The following few days were an absolute daze. I remember going with my parents to make the arrangements, and they were so devastated that I stood up and made the actual arrangements. They were just there to agree with them.

Mister and I stayed with mom and those few days were touch and go. There were highs and lows, and the phone was constantly ringing. Nobody really stopped by, but numerous people called. It was still so surreal, even the night of her wake. I was still in denial as I walked into the funeral home.

She had a closed casket wake and funeral because according to my parents, she didn’t look like herself. She had bloated about double in size and was completely different. They figured that people wouldn’t even recognize her and they wanted everyone to remember her as they knew her. There were hundreds of pictures of Beth scattered throughout the funeral home. It was a beautiful sight.

Before the wake, my parents were allowed to see her one last time before they closed the casket. I refused to look because I didn’t want to remember her by the way they described her. I just knew that that look would haunt me, so Mister supported my mom as she took one last look at my sister.

The evening of the wake was bittersweet. So many people had shown up to support and pay their respect. So many people came and spoke with my mom, and that made her happy. To know that Beth was loved by hundreds of people. That was the longest four hours of my life. People were continuously coming in, people I hadn’t seen in years. People I didn’t know. People that knew Beth from AA or school or church or the facility she lived at.

During that entire evening, I didn’t step close to the casket. I couldn’t. It wasn’t my time yet and I stayed clear of it. When I was ready, I’d go to it. But it took me four hours to get to the place where I was comfortable enough to say my goodbyes. And I did.

And it actually put a smile on my face. I remember smiling as I touched her casket, thinking that she was home now. She was no longer in pain. She could live and be free, and run merrily through the clouds with our older sister. I was happy for those few moments. But then reality set in and the I still had to deal with the funeral the following day.

Mom woke up the next day with tears. We all did. It was expected, but it was something that had to be done and within a few hours, we had met up with everyone else at the funeral home. It was a beautiful ceremony. It was quick and to the point. For the last couple months of Beth’s life, every time you saw that girl, she was either humming or singing Amazing Grace. That was her absolute favorite song and it was always on her mind. Cousin Jimmy sang that song during the ceremony and it brought everyone to tears.

The car ride to the cemetery was a long 20 minutes. We were first in line, as Mister drove mom’s car to Beth’s resting spot. She was buried right next to our Papaw Johnny, which in a sense made me proud. He was a man that neither of us ever met, but the stories of that man amaze me. I would have loved to have known him.

Her burial was quick. The preacher said a few words and then it was over with. I did not witness the pallbearers carrying her to the tent. I did not witness them lowering her or covering her up. That was something I could not deal with. Instead, I stood beside the tent and listened. I dealt with it my way, the only way I knew how without completely losing it. I told one of my mom’s friends, just be with her. Support her through the next 5 minutes. And she did so quite beautifully.

The day ended at my auntie’s house with food and laughter. She had pickles present. Pickles were something that everyone had to have in their fridge if Beth was coming over. The first thing she’d ask for if she visited your house was, “ya got any pickles?” And auntie had a jar setting on the table, just for Beth. And we all had one just for Beth. To this day, pickles are one of BabyDoll’s favorite things to eat. Coincidence?

The next day, mom asked us to go home. She needed to grieve and us being there wouldn’t allow her to properly grieve. Of course we did but it was still so surreal to not have Beth around. It took me months to finally accept the fact that she was gone. I still think of her every day. I still fight the depression that her death brought on. I still love her. And I always will.