Life on the Ramona Coaster (6 page)

“But, Mom,” I say crying. “Why do you stay with Daddy? Can’t you just leave him?”

“I have no choice. I have no education, no money of my own. How would I support four children on my own? It’s impossible.”

“What about a divorce? Couldn’t you get child support?” I’m not even sure I know what this means, but I ask anyway.

“It’s not that simple, Ramona. Your father said if I ever divorced him, he’d quit his job at IBM and then we would have no money. And I have no way to earn enough money to support four children. And even if I could get a divorce, you’ve heard your father. He swore that if I left him, he would find me and kill me. I can’t have my children be without a mother.” Her voice cracks, “I can’t.”

She takes a deep breath and continues, “Ramona, I pray to God every night that you go to college. I pray that you get an education, so you can have a career and never have to depend on a man. I pray you that you will be able to support yourself so you can marry for love, not for money or stability. I pray for you to become a strong independent woman, so you will never feel trapped like me.”

“Okay, Mom,” I say, trying to calm her down. “I promise. I will go to college and make money and have my own career.” As the words come out of my mouth, I am not even sure what it is that I am saying. I am fourteen-years-old and it’s the 1970s, for God’s sake. All I know is that I am making a promise to my mother and I am going to keep it. After all, I do want a better life and if going to college and making money is what is going to grant me my wish, then that is exactly what I am going to do.

Finally, my mother gives in to the tears she has been fighting back, “And, no matter what, you must keep your faith. You must always ask for God’s help, mercy, and forgiveness. You must have faith in God, Ramona, and you must have faith in yourself. Always know that if you have faith,
true
faith
, you can accomplish anything.”

Finally, I understand. My mother is able to endure her life because she has faith, faith that her children’s lives will be better than hers.

For the next three years, I sit at that window every day. I stare out into the distance and think about my mother’s advice. I will have true faith. I no longer just daydream of a better life; I have faith it will happen. I will make it happen. I ask God to help me, “Please God, I know there is a better life out there for me. Please God, save me from this life. Please God, give me the strength I need to build a better life for myself. Please, God, help me find a better life. Please. Please.
Please
.”

W
HEN MY MOTHER
was diagnosed with leukemia in 2003, she was given only three months to live. It was a huge blow for all of us, but especially for my father. As he got older my father had softened and, by the time they were in their fifties, he and my mother had actually settled into a nice relationship. Maybe it was the stress that raising four kids put on them, but once all of us were out of the house my father stopped drinking as much. He became less aggressive and he and my mother actually got along fairly well. They really did love each other, but they had a very volatile relationship. He could still be very antagonistic at times and go for the verbal jugular, but I guess my mother learned not to let it bother her.

After she was diagnosed, my mother went through chemotherapy and began doing protocol experimental treatments at Sloan-Kettering. She deteriorated quickly and within a few months she weighed only ninety-five pounds and was bedridden. I would cook for her every day and bring her special food in the hospital, but within a week she was so weak she couldn’t even pick her head up from the pillow. I was devastated. I remember Mario saying to me, “Ramona, face it. Your mother’s going to die. You just have to accept it.”

My mother and father with Avery, 1996

I looked at him and I said, “My mother is not dying in this hospital. If she’s going to die anywhere she’s going to die at home. I am not going to allow this to happen.”

I could see how hard my mom was struggling to hang on and I decided I wasn’t going to let her go without a fight. I looked at her chart, wrote down every medication she was on, and went to my local pharmacy. I showed them the list and they said they couldn’t understand why she was on one of the medications because it was so powerful it would lay out a two-hundred-pound man. I told my father what I had learned, but he didn’t have the courage to do anything about it. So I went back to the hospital and told the doctors myself that they had to take my mother off that medication. I remember them saying she would die if they did, but I told them, “This medicine is killing her anyway. Take her off it now.” They agreed to wean her off it gradually. Four days later my mother was smiling and sitting up in bed, looking perky and happy.

It took six months for her just to recover from the chemo and that medication. When she was strong enough, I found a doctor who worked with alternative medicines. Using coenzymes and shark cartilage treatments, he restored her to near perfect health. For a full year, she was almost like her old self, but then she got sick again. Eventually, she was admitted to her local hospital in Kingston, New York, and we were told there was nothing more they could for her. My father wanted to put her into hospice, but I remember my mother crying, “I don’t want to die. I’m not ready to die. Please help me, Ramona.” I contacted the head oncologist at New York Presbyterian Hospital and told him about my mom.

I said, “All I want is for my mother to have a good quality of life. Can you extend her life so that she has that?”

He told me, “Yes, I think we can do that.”

My father was upset that I was stepping in. It was hard for him to deal with the fact that my mother was sick and dying. We all knew, especially my mother, that he wouldn’t last long without her. I said to him, “You know what, Dad? If you were sick and you needed help, wouldn’t you want me to help you? How can you not let me help Mom?”

Finally, he relented and they transported my mother by ambulance to New York Presbyterian Hospital in the city. She had another good month, but then she was in and out of hospitals for the next year until she was so sick my father was too afraid take her home. She refused to go into hospice, so her doctor agreed to keep her in the hospital as long as possible.

I sat by her side for days, watching her get weaker and weaker. For the first time since that conversation we had when I was fourteen, my mother and I spoke about her life before she met my father. I knew she and her mother were refugees, but I learned that even after they got to this country she still had very little stability because my grandmother moved them around so much. One afternoon in the hospital, as I held her hand and tried to encourage her to eat, my mother said to me, “Once, my mother worked as a cook for a woman who lived in a big, beautiful house in the country. I loved that house. I wanted to stay there, but my mother was lonely and decided to move us to Poughkeepsie to find work closer to the Hungarian church. I was so sad to leave, Ramona. I really loved that house.”

By this point, my mother was deteriorating so rapidly her doctor decided it was finally time to move her into hospice. She died at four o’clock the following morning. It was New Year’s Day. Earlier that evening I had been with my family celebrating New Year’s Eve and we didn’t get home until late. I was in a very deep sleep and I suddenly jolted awake, which is very unusual for me. My mother’s image came to me and I knew in that moment that she was gone. I looked at the clock and it was 4:00 a.m. My father died three years and two weeks later. Those last three years we had with my mother were a miracle. She was a fighter. She never gave up. I get my strength and resilience from her; it is the greatest gift a mother can give to her children.

To this day, I still believe she should have left my father. As much as I love and admire my mother, I can’t understand her decision to stay with an abusive husband. Even though things got better between them as they got older, what my siblings and I witnessed as children left us emotionally scarred and altered our perception of relationships and marriage. But, I don’t blame my mother. I understand now that she was too afraid to leave. Not only because she was worried about supporting us, but also because she was too broken to walk away from the only real home she ever had. To her, our house represented the stability she never had as a young girl.

A
S SOON AS
I turned seventeen and graduated from high school, I left home and never looked back. I moved to New York City to study fashion and earned a B.S. Degree in Business from FIT. I started out as a buyer for Macy’s, created my own successful fashion business by the age of twenty-nine, married for love, and had a beautiful daughter in my thirties. I had everything my mother ever dreamed I would have.

Once I moved out, I never wanted to go back home because I couldn’t stand to be around my father. Sometimes, in an effort to entice me to come home, my mother would call me up and say, “Ramona, the dogwood is blooming. You love when it blooms. Come home so you can see it.” Because we lived in the woods, the only type of blooms that would flower in the spring were the beautiful white blossoms of the dogwood trees. It grows so thick it looks like snow between the trees. I can still close my eyes and see it through the big picture window in the living room, where I sat for years patiently praying for a better life.

Looking back, I still cannot believe that my mother told me I was an unplanned baby when I was just fourteen-years-old. I am glad she did, though, because it brought us closer together. It was the longest one-on-one conversation I would have with my mother until just before she died. It was the first time she spoke openly about her relationship with my father—how they met, why they got married, and why she put up with his abuse. Prior to this conversation, my father’s behavior was always a massive elephant in the room that we pretended didn’t exist. She must have felt so trapped, so alone, so scared. In her mind, she only had one option; she had to stay in her marriage forever and just pray that the lives of her children would be better than hers.

As a mother of a twenty-year-old daughter, I can only imagine the courage it took for my mother to confide in me that she had failed to realize her dreams. Although she was a petite woman who was bullied by my father on a daily basis, she was—and always will be—my hero, my inspiration, and my source of strength. That day, she taught me an important lesson that has become a defining principle in my life. I will always have true faith.

Me, age 15