I'm on a roll now!!

Rollerfink inspired me to write more. Actually, I was talking to Jeff the other night and I told him how I used to keep a diary and he encouraged me to write here again. He wanted me to write about my childhood and Jenny has been asking me to do the same. I'll write about stuff as I remember it. There is really so much to tell.

I think the most complicated of my siblings was Bonnie. She was the one I was closest to. She died when she was 57 years old and that was 21 years ago. She had been married several times and even spent an entire year in a mental institution when she was in her 30's. Her past haunted her. She had had a couple of abortions during her wild years and spent the rest of her life regretting it. Her husband had her committed because she tried to commit suicide. That's a whole story all by itself. Frankly, it's no wonder she was so depressed. She old me the story of when she was 5 years old. They had a cat and the cat got pregnant and it mad my father so angry when those cats were born. There was barely enough food to feed the family, let alone trying to feed the cats. I guess that is why he did what he did. They lived near a stream that ran behind the house and when the kittens were born, he told Bonnie to take them down to the stream and drown them. What a terrible man he was...so Bonnie did just that and she says that at the time it didn't bother her at all, but after it was over she couldn't get the image of the kittens with their little heads under the water out of her head. She was tormented by that and the fact that she felt like she had killed her unborn babies. I would hear her say many times that when she died she would get to see her babies again.

I think it was when she was in the nursing home that she got religion. We were brought up in the Southern Baptist church and went to church every sunday. All of us except daddy. I never knew him to set foot in the church. But when she got out of the mental institution, it was different...she was truly saved and people could hardly stand to be around her in the beginning because she was so happy about finding Jesus and she wanted everyone to feel what she felt. She carried her bible everywhere and took every single opportunity that she could to "preach".

She was truly having a love affair with Jesus. She even made up her mind that she wanted to be a Nun!! I don't know how she did it but somehow she had her previous marriages annulled, even the one to her current husband. So that she could take the steps to become a Nun. She continued to live with him right until she died, but it was strictly platonic . The love of her life was Jesus. She never did quite become a Nun but she did spend a lot of time down in South America as a Missionary. I believe she went as a representative of her church. She would take clothes down there and preach and save all the souls that she could. She first got introduced to that area when her husband went down to Belize for some sort of sabbatical. He was a Professor at the University of Connecticut and had his Phd. She went with him and I guess she saw a need for God down there. In fact, she went down there several times after he came home and when she would go, she would stay for months at a time. The last time she went, she came home with malaria. She was so sick and nearly died. After that, she was a type I diabetic and had to have insulin shots daily. The malaria destroyed her pancreas.

We were stationed in Connecticut when she died. I am so thankful that I was able to spend the last 3 years of her life seeing her regularly and spending lots of time at her home. Jeff and Jenny got to know her and Uncle Bill. Uncle Bill would play Mr. Wiggly with the kids and battleship. He was a good and kind soul. Bonnie had been telling us off and on for months that she was having chest pains but she wouldn't go to the doctor. Finally, we were spending the weekend with her and she had one of the chest pains. I had never been with her before when she had this. She sort of convinced herself that it was angina and would take Bill's meds when she would get the pain. That night, I convinced her to go to the doctor the next morning. The children and I went with her and this was a Monday morning. The doctor told her it was probably heartburn and even did an ekg. He hooked her up to a heart monitor. One of the ones you wear for 48 hours and take back to the doctor. John was out to sea at the time so while he was gone, the children and I would spend lots of time with her and Bill. We ate at Friendly's that day. Little did I know that would be the last of so many times we had eaten at Friendly's with her. She went back to the doctor a couple of days later and the doctor told her she needed to see a cardiologist ASAP. He even called and made an appointment for her the very next morning. She called me and left a message on my answering machine telling me what the doctor had said. she said she would call back later that night and give me the details. Well, I got a call later that night, but it wasn't from Bonnie....Bill called to tell me that Bonnie had died. She went to have ice cream with some neighbors when she got home from the doctor. This friend of hers had 2 children and they were about 5 and 7 and they only lived a few blocks from the ice cream place, so they asked their mom if they could ride in Aunt Bonnies car back to their house. The mom was going to walk. This lady said that Bonnie pulled out into the traffic and she watched the car barely excellerate and then it just drifted off the road and into a stone wall. When the car hit, the hood flew up and flames started coming out. Can you imagine the terror in that mom as she saw that happening with her 2 children in the car. Someone else apparently saw it too and they called the fire department, and I guess an ambulance came too. Bonnie had died at the wheel. One of the children said that she asked for a bite of their ice cream cone and when she took the bite, she said "oh, that is so cold on my heart"...and then she slumped over the wheel and was dead just as quick as that. The next time I was at their house, it was so sad to see the car sitting in their driveway and in the seat was a completely melted ice cream cone. Jeff was 10 at the time and Jenny was 7. They both drew pictures at the funeral and before they closed the casket, we put the pictures in the casket with her. Her 2 sons were grown then but I can still remember Bill and the 2 boys standing over the casket crying. I miss her!!