A Stolen Life (21 page)

Kelly Clarkson: Behind These Hazel Eyes, Miss Independent, Walk Away

3 Doors Down: Superman Kryptonite, Close to Home

KT Tunstal: Black Horse & the Cherry Tree

Maroon 5

Matchbox 20

Dido: White Flag

Nickleback

Green Day: Boulevard of Broken Dreams

One Republic

5 for Fighting

Jason Mraz: The Remedy

SEPTEMBER 18, 2006

Had a breakdown today. They [the angels] used him to hurt me. Unacceptable! He cut me deep inside, deep damage done will take time to repair. At first all the anger was directed at both of them [Phillip and Nancy], but time makes things clear and blame is in the right place now. I know I will get over it. Love will prevail. I will win!

SEPTEMBER 20, 2006

Found out that he took money from us again. He says the angels made him do it. He never takes responsibility for anything. Even though last time he said it wouldn’t happen again. He still did it. They [the angels] want me to hate him [Phillip] for doing this to us again. I know I shouldn’t blame him, but it’s hard not to. He wants me to believe the angels made him do it and it’s not his fault. I know in his mind he took the money for a good reason, not intentionally to hurt us but still. I wanted to scream and yell at him like he did to me. I didn’t! I can’t count on him for anything. It’s hard to not be angry with him. I need to work on that. He also yelled at A and made her cry, which he also blamed on the angels.

SEPTEMBER 21, 2006

All Phillip and Nancy do is sleep all day. They want me to think it’s the angels doing it, but when will they start trying to help themselves? I work all day and they sleep. It ridiculous!
They were going to tell the psychiatrist about the angels today and how Phillip hears voices, but Phillip says the angels made both him and Nancy so sleepy that they couldn’t drive and tell the doctor. They still went today and all seemed to go okay. Maybe he will get the help he needs now from the psychiatrist.

SEPTEMBER 27, 2006

Felt sad all day today. I feel like everything is hopeless.

NOVEMBER
5, 2006

The angels gave Nancy suicidal thoughts today. Very hard to hear her talking like that. Gives me feelings of hopelessness.

FEBRUARY
21, 2007

I have feelings of hopelessness. I feel like nobody cares. This year has been extremely hard. First, it feels like we aren’t getting anywhere. One of our clients that witnessed Phillip doing his “Can you hear me?” backed out today and took back her signature. Phillip says it’s because the angels worked with her husband and that made her take back her witness. It makes me feel like everyone who believes is going to abandon us. Recently Phillip told us he has been untruthful about the money we make again and he was using it to buy stuff. He wouldn’t tell me what. It makes me feel like I can’t trust him. He says that’s what the angels want. To turn us against each other. It’s so confusing.

I’ve had a few bad dreams lately, too … nothing like before,
though. One was about a serial killer coming and killing us all and nobody would ever know.

Phillip says the angels give him terrible dreams, too, he says they make him feel dirty. Nancy has been having a terrible time, too. Lots of bad dreams that Phillip says the angels torture her with.

Sometimes I don’t want to live on a planet that lets such horrible things happen. I will not give up, though.

MARCH 16, 2007

I’ve been feeling very pressured lately. It feels like everything is riding on me doing something. Like when “Can you hear me?” was riding on me hearing it and I could never hear it. Now it’s either send the emails to people who hear voices and people of the church or nothing is going to happen. Why does he put so much pressure on me? Why can’t he make his project happen? I have enough work to do just to keep us surviving.

Affirmation to counteract the negative feelings I have inside.

1. I am a creative, positive, successful, and happy person.

2. I can achieve anything I set my mind on.

3. We will succeed in everything we are trying to accomplish.

4. I am a strong and capable person.

5. We will succeed.

6. I will have a strong and healthy body and mind.

7. Anything and everything is possible with love.

8. Our goals are attainable.

9. It’s easy for me to get up every day and exercise.

10. It’s easy for me to eat healthy.

11. I make it a habit to be happy.

12. I will be more assertive.

13. Today is a glorious day.

14. Every day I work toward my goals.

15. I make every day a positive day.

Favorite Quotes: May 1, 2007

The world turns and the world changes, but one thing does not change. However you disguise it, this thing does not change: the perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.

—T. S. Eliot

What will happen will happen. There is time for miracles until there is no more time, but time has no end.

—Dean Koontz

Hope, love, and faith are all in the waiting.

—Dean Koontz

I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope; for hope would be hope for the wrong thing.

—T. S. Eliot

Places I will go one day

1. Egypt

2. Victoria Falls in Africa

3. Alaska to see the northern lights

4. Norway to see Aurora Borealis

5. Italy

6. Greece

7. Ireland

8. Galapagos Islands

P
at has become very ill. Phillip lets the girls stay in the house with her to keep her company. The other night she fell and the girls called Phillip and he called an ambulance. She was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with Parkinson’s and low-grade dementia. Nancy, myself, and the girls are pitching in to take care of her, which is turning out to not be easy. She is losing her ability to walk and cannot go to the bathroom by herself. I am allowed in the main front house to take my shift with her. Nancy has started sleeping in the house to be near her at night, and the girls are sleeping in the blue building which I have always called “next door.” I am sleeping in my tent out back.

Every few years I get a new tent because tents don’t last forever. This one is going to last me a little longer than the others because a month prior to putting it up, Phillip had built an
elevated floor for it and it helps to keep it dry. Phillip is sleeping in the house on the couch or in the spare room with Nancy. A new law has been enacted and he is being seen quite a bit by his parole officer. It makes it harder to go on outings now.

A few months later, Phillip was suddenly informed that he has another new parole officer and needs to report in. When his parole agent would come over in the beginning, Phillip would tell us that we needed to stay in the back. Eventually he started to get mad at the system and didn’t care if we were in the house or not. He now lets the kids sleep in the house. One time a parole agent paid a surprise visit on Phillip and saw one of the girls sleeping in one of the spare rooms. I was told of this later by the girls because they were scared. Phillip told me the next time a parole agent came to the house, I was to ask if he was the one that went into my daughter’s room.

After that Phillip was informed he was getting yet another new parole officer. One day when I was in the house taking care of his mother, this new parole agent came and I asked him if he was the agent who walked into my daughter’s bedroom. He answered no and I proceeded to wheel Pat back to her room. He took Phillip’s urine sample and left. More and more frequent visits are occurring at the house, and Phillip is becoming more and more frustrated and paranoid. In his mind he is doing nothing wrong. It’s preventing him from doing this effectively with all the monitoring. He wants to get a lawyer and get off of parole.

There is a washer and dryer in the house, but the dryer doesn’t work and neither does the washer, but we desperately need a washer. The printing business is not doing so well and we don’t have a lot of money, especially for going to the Laundromat
and washing clothes. Phillip has finally fixed the washer. In order to use it, though, it has to be outside because the drainage in the house is not working. So we moved the washer outside. It was incredibly heavy and took all of our strength to move it out to the middle of the yard under a pine tree. Once he got it all hooked up, it was so nice being able to do the laundry and not waiting for it to pile up on us. Especially since Pat has gotten sick and has had a lot of bed wetting and pooping accidents and we would have to wash her sheets a lot.

It seems like the house has started to fall apart since Pat got sick. Nancy found a huge water puddle in the middle of the house and when Phillip went under to check it out discovered the pipes were rotting. The downstairs porch sink was always backed up with water and Phillip has showed us how to drain it with a siphon hose. It has to be done at least three times a day or the sink tub will overflow and then we’d have to clean up the floor. It’s already happened a few times and is a pain to soak up all the water on the floor. The water that backs up from the drain is black and gray—it’s so disgusting! I hate the job of draining. But I hate my shift with his mom even more. She is getting really demented and the only one she is nice to is her darling son who could never do anything wrong. She says really mean things when I have to take her to the bathroom or walk her or exercise her. She hates everything except Phillip. Nancy has a hard time with her, too, but sometimes can get her to listen. I feel like she deep down hates me, though, and knows what I represent even though we have never told her, I think she knows I represent a side of her son that she doesn’t want to acknowledge exists.

Before she fell I had only seen her a couple of times. She knew me as Allissa, the sister of the girls that Nancy brought over from down the street, which was the story that Phillip told her. Sometimes I think he would say these are your grandkids, too. I’m not sure what she thought. She didn’t do much after she retired; just watched TV all day and sometimes went shopping with her sister Celia, the one Phillip gave my cat to. After Pat’s fall, Celia died and Nancy had to tell her. Some days she remembered and others she didn’t. The Parkinson’s was eating her body and the dementia was eating her mind. It’s a sad thing. Maybe it’s better that she will never truly know that her son did such an evil thing.

O
n August 24th, Phillip took the girls to the FBI office in San Francisco. He said that he liked to take the girls with him because he thought that people were more apt to listen when they were with him. I thought that at least it gave the girls a chance to get out of the house for a little bit. We had not been able to go anywhere during that year because we had to take care of Pat and she couldn’t be left home alone for long. The advanced stages of Parkinson’s and dementia were taking a toll on her.