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Bettina was the oldest in a family of four children, and the only girl. When she was four years old, her parents moved to a farm in Vermont. Once there, she remembers that her father was always busy with farm work, including raising pigs, while her mother managed the household and did the bookkeeping on the farm. As there was no hot running water in the home, this meant a lot of work. “She did all the cooking, and she always had a little boy in diapers. I mean, she was busy”, says Bettina. When Bettina was nine, mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, and had a radical mastectomy. After mother became ill, Bettina’s relationship with her father changed. “From right around that time, I started to become like an adult to my father. My father started treating me as some kind of substitute for her.” The following spring, mother’s back went bad. During the next few months, Bettina became a caregiver for her mother. “She would ask me to make a milk shake. I’d make the milk shake, and take it in to her. Then, not much later, she’d vomit the thing up. I mean, fill a plastic basin with vomit. And I’d carry it out. I don’t know, it just seemed so futile to me.” Eventually, Mother had to go to a nursing home. On her last visit to the nursing home, her mother did not recognize her. “I’m not even sure she recognized my father”, says Bettina. Bettina was very worried about returning to school after her mother’s death. “I thought I would be treated as an outcast, you know, as an odd ball, by both students and teachers” She didn’t know any other children that I knew at that time who had lost a parent. When Bettina was 12, her father remarried. When her stepmother moved into the home with her children, things went rapidly downhill for Bettina. “She was drunk, and she didn’t like me. We had a fight about something to do with religion. Well, this is as old as Cinderella. She beat me up. I had big welts and bruises on my back.” Bettina was concerned for her brothers as well. She hated to see her stepmother pick on her little brothers, but she felt helpless to stop it. At thirteen, after Bettina’s step mother beat her up in front of her father, he sent her to live with an aunt in Minnesota. She suddenly found herself on a bus, alone, on her way to live with someone she had never met. The “Cinderella story” continued for Bettina for two more years as she was treated very badly while at her aunt’s farm. “They made me do a lot of work. I washed, ironed and did all kinds of heavy farm work.” Bettina felt that her father abandoned her. “He never called up long distance, and he never came out and visited.” When she was 15, Bettina ran away from her aunt’s home, and returned to her home. “I was very strong from working on the farm, and so I was no longer afraid of being beat up by my step-mother”. However, before long, she moved on to college, realizing that she no longer fit in her home. By losing her mother so young, Bettina never had a guide to womanhood. “I just didn’t learn how to behave as a woman. I was clueless on dealing with boyfriends.” Lacking adult supervision in her late teens, Bettina learned to be very self-sufficient. She avoided serious trouble, but she did get into some dangerous situations. As an adult she married, but it didn’t work out and she is now divorced and lives alone. Recently, Bettina found some old pictures of her mother and a few household items (like dishes) that once belonged to her mother. She treasures these mementos. “They are very meaningful to me.” Other cases of young adolescents who lost their mothers to breast cancer. In the book Breast Cancer: Daughters tell their Stories, you can learn more about Bettina’s story, in her own words. Other young adolescents in the book include Kara, who was nine when mother was diagnosed, and 12 at her death. Kara was from a loving African-American family. Unlike some of the other cases in the book, Kara was able to reconcile with her father after his remarriage. This may be because he married a woman who had been a family friend. She relied on her aunt (mother’s sister) who sustained her throughout her journey. Today, Kara is married and looking forward to having children of her own. Another case written up in the book is Cathy, who was only five at mother’s diagnosis, and 13 at the time of her death. Cathy is haunted by memories of her mother during her treatments, when she lost her hair. She remains grateful that her father did not remarry until after she left home. Today, she attributes many of her problems to her mother’s death. She has trouble with intimate relationships, fearing the pain that occurs when relationships end. |