First she said to talk one on one with the person(s) involved. I have tried that numerous times but have either gotten back no response or told flat out "I don't want to discuss it." This from a child half my age. My daughter suggested if one on one didn't work to go together as a group. So that is why I decided to publish now. I plan a trip to Texas and hopefully certain family members will be able, after reading this, to go with me to "talk" with other members.

The final course of action would be to go the legal road. I have already made inquiries and there is a case. But it would be long, drawn out, and expensive. However, something has been in the back recesses of my mind since I first found out about the incident. Several years ago friends I knew from church were sentenced to jail for doing pretty much the same as my cousins did. And at the time they also thought they were doing the right thing for an older relative.

The case in point is abuse of the elderly. Not the kind that leaves marks and bruises, but the kind that takes away all their worldly possessions, leaving them dependent and without the will to live. Several weeks ago I visited with the relative in question, my aunt. In talking with her, suspicions of neglet were confirmed in my mind.

If I firmly believe this why am I hesitant to file charges? I tried. The online form I was filling out with the seven page story timed out on me. That made me step back and re-think my actions. My aunt is the most forgiving person in the world. She even went back and forgave the murderer of her child. She would rather die than to be in the middle of a family dispute. This is my one last plea for the cousins to speak with me civilally and find a solution.

The road to this decision has been an angry and rocky one. The cousins are not my aunts children, and what was taken from her was given to her from my mother forty years ago. What brought me to the conclusion of elder abuse was, not once, but twice, in the past eight months I have read articles in senior publications on such tactics. And, it was as the articles came to me in casual reading, rather than seeking them out for myself. The timing of my cousins actions, their secrecy in doing them, and their stubborness to discuss the event fit the profile.

I have tried to walk away from this many times. Somehow I keep getting drawn back in. I am not doing this for personal gain. I would like the entire extended family to benefit from what was left behind. I am doing it in the memory of my mother. That an act of kindness almost half a decade ago could become such an ugly legacy today tears at the very core of my heart and the hearts of all the people who loved MOM.

Watch for the story to be published. Read it. Spread the word. Print it out for those who don't compute. Pray for a peaceful solution. Love to all, Carolyn at www.carolcells.com.

My daughter and her family are a firm believers in trust in God and the power of prayer. In fact, many of my friends are in that group. As a child I had a strong religious background. Mass was availabe to me each and every morning, not just on Sundays. I was taught by nuns from first grade through high school graduation. In fact I even considered joining the order. I had all the paper work done to attend a prepatory school my sohpmore year and planned my packing. But the convent found out I had an aunt in a mental hospital and dismissed my application. This is probably when I started questioning my faith.

I attempted to remain faithful to the beliefs my parents provided for the first decade or so of my marriage. My kids even attended a private school, but more for the reason that they were bored in public school than the religious instruction they received there. When the number of offspring to take with us to service reached four, and at the time there was no nursery available, my husband's attendance with me dwindled. Coupled with the fact that my new job required me to work weekends, my chuch going days became limited to special occasions. And in the last few years those occasions seem to have been mainly funerals.

I have never lost my belief in God, but I have not always made Him the main focus of my life either. Somehow my last few posts have led me back to Him, and I am finding an inner peace that has been missing. He is guiding me in what I say here and that is why some days I can write and others I can't. Airing dirty laundry and playing the blame game, which I have attempted to do earlier, is not the answer. Putting the problem in the hands of a higher power is.

I mentioned the aunt with mental illness for a reason. Mental illness is a true disease and can tear a family's life apart worse than any cancer with it's poisons. Throw addiction into the mix and you have an epidemic. It touches everyone you know and love. The gene runs in my family and has destroyed aunts, uncles, and cousins. But it has also provided warriors in the fight against these demons.

Maybe it is good that I married young and moved away from some of the temptations. Had my husband not been there to support me in good as well as bad times, I would not be the person I am today. Unfortunatly my younger sister never got to the point where she could accept unconditional love. Or perhaps she did. About two years ago the cancer that before was mental illness and addiction became the real thing, attacking her lungs and liver. She had less than a year to make peace with those who's lives she had infected. There was one final act that I feel she regrets today. A plan she harbored for awhile was written down on a napkin in the hospice.

The people who found the paper request saw benefit to themselves from it. They did not question my sister's mental state from her disease, or the effect it would have on her legacy. They acted in secret to carry out the plan. And in their haste to do so bypassed the correct legal actions.

I am not immune to the insanity. In the past year I left my husband of forty years, not once, but twice. I sincerely believed the marriage was over. But it was my sister who eventually brought me back to him. In one of our last phone conversations she called to see if my son would be a paulbearer for her service. We both cried, something she rarely let others see her doing. I told her I had just moved out and asked her "when you have the time, please look over my shoulder." I then called my husband and together we made a last visit to see her. That is when the healing in my marriage started taking place. God saved me through her.

When I put together a tribute video of my sister I chose music with the words "I believe in angels" as the background. We were a family of six. The youngest and oldest are now in heaven with dad who passed in 1968, and mom who left us three years ago. Three of us are married and living comfortably away from our hometown. A younger single brother remains in what is left of the homestead, which has been in the family for more than sixty years. He took care of mom the last few years of her life. Some say he only did it for himself, so he would have a place to live and food to eat. He fights the same demon my younger sister and I do.

And that brings me to the point of this blog entry. I wish to address those of you who still harbor the venom that my sister in her illness spread. Please consider that in her final days while in a coma she did reach that place of forgiveness. Accept her as you "angel" to guide you in doing the right thing. I am not pretending to know what the right thing is, but I hope it would be to stop spreading the hatred. Come together as the family we once were, for my sister, and for my mom, your beloved aunt. Be as kind to my brother as you were to my sister. Work with me in creating a place of peace for our family. Not the family of six, but the family of hundreds that comes together every two years.

And to the readers who do not know what I am talking about, please put us in your prayers. As I will remember you in mine. I am working my way back to HIM. As my sister did.

Love and peace, Carolyn www.carolcells.com

But the all time spring snowstorm in my mind is bitter sweet. It was March 1968 and our family had just experienced a most unbearable tragedy. This story is yet to come, when I feel the time is right. There is another blog that relates the incident, a second generation re-telling that contains inacuracies. But today's message is about March snows and the lessons of God's love I have learned from them.

The aforementioned tradedy had taken from us an innocent six year old child. His mother was in the hospital and his dad in jail. A blizzard hit Texas suspending the state in time with a foot of snow and drifts as high as three feet. The body of the child had to be transported several hundred miles in the midst of this weather. The trip was safely completed and the service for the angel proceeded as planned.

The church was packed. As we walked from the church to the graveyard I looked down. There on the earth, that had been carpeted in white by God in memory of this innocent just hours earlier, flowers were breaking through.....

Yes, it makes my cry too, each time I think of it.

There is one more "picture" in my mind of snow. But this one happened in winter. David, now out of the Air Force, was in college on the GI bill. I was busy with the souvineers from our miltary years, two youngsters under the age of five. Money was tight so I sewed almost all of our clothing. Christmas presents would be light that year and there was hardship in the extended family. A cousin's wife had died, and my older sister was in the hospital with a broken back. Despite the troubles, we packed what we could in our old car, praying it would make the trip from the college town to Grandma's House. We made it there sometimes on Christmas eve and our traditional family gathering before bedding down for the night. The next morning we awoke, not to presents, as we had what we had the night before, but to go to mass.

I can still see in my mind's eye my husband, in those horrible plaid pants that I made him, hustling two small children, also in hand made garments, into mom's car for the celebration of the Infant's birth. And falling on them from out of the sky--snowflakes. A white Christmas in Texas is rare indeed.

Know what? I think that picture actually exist somewhere in my collection. Off to see if I can find it. Love and Preace--Carolyn Sue

Some times I need a sleeping pill to quench my thoughts. Usually a pain pill with a couple of Tylenol will shut Arthur up.  But last night was a good night, because I fell asleep without any medication. Except for the call of mother nature (again seniors know) I slept soundly all night.
And I dreamed. Big dreams. Colorful dreams. Meaningful dreams.

Now I am one who thinks about my dreams and tries to put meaning to them. I have never consulted any book or authority on the subject but seach the recesses of my mind instead. There are the dreams that I have over and over again where I ask myself did this really happen? But in the light of day the answer to that question is generally "no." However one question in particular still eludes me. Did Dr. Brosch (our childhood dentist) really have a fake slot machine in his back office that he allowed us to play on while we were waiting our turn in his dental chair?

When I visited Aunt Helen over the Christmas holidays in the nursing home she asked me about several events. Did she dream them, or were they real? About my sister Mary, and had she really died. Yes. Unfortunately, the answer to most of her questions was yes, real.

I have the epic dreams, that seem like they would make a great movie. But trying to put the pieces together once I have had my morning coffee is the biggest joke of a jigsaw puzzle I have ever seen. I have woken up crying or mad at somebody and the feeling haunts me all day. I have found that in bad dreams I can tell myself this is not real, that I am only dreaming. And it works most of the time.

Then there is the dream that came to me shortly before dawn this morning. The one that stills my troubled mind, that gives me answers on a current problem. One that gives me renewed hope and inspiration. A dream that I must share.

Monday was a down day for me. Sometimes I feel so isolated in the country that I just want to scream. I listen to songs and they make me cry. The lonliness takes over and I cry out for just one friend to tell my troubles to. My family is scattered and busy and I really don't want to talk to anyone on the phone. I need a shoulder to rest my head on and an arm to reach around and steady me.

I remembered a book my daughter had given me about a dozen years ago. "Coffee Break With God." It was written with stories that are only two pages long. And it was published so that when you open the book you can read the entire  passage without turning a page. I don't recall what I read. I could go look, but feel that is unimportant right now. All I know is that when I opened a page, the message hit me like a ton of bricks. Or maybe I should say it lifted a ton of bricks off me.

I went on to the next story, and to the next, reading about a half dozen in all. Each one seemed more revelant than the last. And I found a Friend I could talk to in times I am low. I have always known He was there. But for the past few years one of us has been lost. I have been waiting for my better half to help me find Him again. I have been told that I need to find Him myself, then maybe one day my life partner would follow me.

Back to the dream. I live in Oklahoma and the attractions around are Casinos. They seem to be on every corner. One of the biggest in the state is only twenty minutes from my house. Since they have arrived they have taken a good part of my time, not to mention a bigger part of my money. At times I plan to make a short stop on my way for groceries and such, only to run out of time and money before I get to Wal Mart or Reasors.

So in my nocturnal slumber, I make such a visit. The place I enter is wierd, sort of like a variety store with slot machines. There is even an area for kids with mini "fake" one armed bandits. I go up to the cashier, who really doesn't care if I am there or not, and change my money into my usual stack of five dollar bills. I find a machine that looks interresting and feed it the first five. This is a good machine, as I play for a long time on the same bill, my score going up and down with each win or loss. Finally I am down to the last push on the spin button when lights go off and I hit a payoff. This has actually happened to me more than once. but more often than not, it doesn't.

Still in slumber, by now I discover that the time is gone and I must get to my other errands. In haste, I pull the ticket from the machine, not even looking at the amount on it. Before cashing it I make a run to the ladies room. (This is another thing that happens in my dreams, when mother nature starts calling for real, she gently wakes me up to tend to her urges.) I meet a lady with a little girl who says they had so much fun watching me play that she wants to buy me a cup of coffee and hands me about two dollars and fifty cents.

After the encounter, I start looking for the ticket so I can collect my winnings. I realized that I dropped it and the lady picked it up. Finding her and confronting her would be futile. Instead, I decide to go home. Now in past dreams, I can never find my way to the destination I seek. In fact, my travels always seem to take me further and further away. I cannot slow down to make the u-turn needed to get back on track. Sometimes I end up going up a bridge or steep incline, only to fall off into darkness. These are situations I tell myself it is only a dream.

But this morning's vision was different. I went though a forest, but a light seemed to show me the way in and out. I arrived at a place I didn't recognize, but everything in me told me it was home. In fact I started singing, "I am home, I am home." The woman and little girl from the casino met me there and she started taunting me about "stealing" my winnings. I told her it didn't matter. I was home and she wasn't. I had fun and it only cost me five dollars.

It was then I woke up. I knew I had to get this story told before I forget it. Maybe to you it seems silly and confusing, but it answered questions for me. The part about the lady and her little girl taking the money has put me at peace on an issue I spoke of in an earlier blog. I want to interpret the part about going to the casino that I can still go as long as I go for fun and nothing more. But most of all I found the Light that shines the way.

I know I will faulter and travel to that dark place from time to time. I only hope and pray that I will not forget again the road back. Love to all my friends who read this. Please come back here when you can. You can get here through www.carolcells.com

Love and Peace, Carolyn Sue

Last night on the Bill O'Reilly show, a trailor at the bottom of the screen listed some of the pork projects receiving funds from the stimulus bill. How appropriate was it that one of the important needs was to study "pig odor". The entire package stinks. What I would like to see is names and addresses of the people getting these grants, so the unemployed can apply for jobs! I can tell them a lot about the smell of pigs.

My father, a retired Air Force Master Sargent, supported his family of six doing odd jobs after his discharge. During my high school years, he was a pig baby-sitter. Our landlord owned some of the biggest chicken and pig farms in the state, not to mention owning a feed store franchise that bears his name. When it became harder and harder for mom and dad to meet the rent, this was the only job offered the former military man.

Pigs have a tendency to birth their oinkers at night, and then roll over on them, crushing to death the young. Our landlord was losing his profit margin and he needed a night watchman to guard his inventory. And since pigs don't have weekends or vacations, neither did dad. He faithfully kissed mom each and every night and went off to work.

At first the odor was only on him as he came home each morning. But it wasn't long before it started to permeate everything. His car, his bed, his clothes, and finally the entire house. Mom tried every detergent and disinfectant she could to make the place livable. I remember her washing and re-washing his clothes in an old fashioned wringer washing machine. So if someone is needed for the afore mentioned study, I hereby volunteer.

However there was a perk to dad's job. A litters of pigs usually produced a runt of the bunch. This pig was then sacrificed for the betterment of the siblings. Many times dad brought the runt home rather than see it slaughtered. Given all his good intentions and persistant bottle feeding, the piglet generally died within a few days. But one day there was that one miracle pig that survived. He grew to adulthood and followed dad in his daily activities. When the time came for the pig to serve his intended purpose, dad was not able to consume even an ounce of the bacon, ham and sausage that came to be.

Even though mom and dad stuggled daily, and took blows to their dignity, they installed in their children a strong work ethic and power to achieve. Four of the six joined the military during the Vietnam era. My older brother tried, but was 4F for medical reasons stemming from high blood pressure. Education was a priority, and as salutorians, valadictorians, and veterans, college became a possiblity.

We became professionals. We physically built our own houses and made them homes. We raised children that have gone on to become doctors, law professionals, engineers, teachers and professors. They are also second generation computer buffs in a world where most of their peers are the pioneers of their families in that field.

And now we are being asked, nay forced, though our taxes, to support the pig farm in Washington. I can no longer remain silent as I am force fed this slop. Please join me in posting your own stories and joining a cause such as Glenn Beck's "we surround them." I'll get off my platform now.

As a side, my two older brothers supplimented their college scholarship by working at a factory run by someone named either Mr. Hogg or Mr. Pigg, I forget. Really, that was his name. At Christmas each one brought home a box of real pork for the table. And this was a meal that dad enjoyed.

After living in coastal areas, Puerto Rico, Myrtle Beach, and Biloxi, dad and mom chose to live in one of the hottest, dryest areas of the US, outside of the desert. I'm sure their decision had much to do with the fact that they were able to purchase part of what was my grandfather's farm. This was one of the last major investments my parents were able to make. Dad received an honorable discharge from the Air Force as a Master Sargent, ending tweny years in service to the country. After that he held a job as airplane mechanic at the nearby air base for several years, followed by an assortment of odd jobs throughout my childhood.

I had heard stories of travel, nice houses, and new cars. We were one of the first families to purchase something called a television, even though we did not have inside plumbing. But raising half a dozen young ones on a military pension consumed my folks during the fifties and sixties. Mom was well known for her sewing and cooking abilities, at talent which sustained us during hard times. Clothes were hand me downs or handmade. We learned to look within ourselves and siblings for our daily activities.

The outdoors was our playground. We had an assortment of farm animals, cows, chickens, rabbits, and pigs. These provided food for the family and some entertainment. In the summer we would pick blackberries and plums that grew wild on the place, and hope for ripe watermelons. A few times we sold these fruits and hand churned butter to neighbors. But for the most part it sustained our growing bodies.

Two houses were on the "farm" we called home. The one we lived in had four rooms, one of which was our kitchen/dining area. Us three girls had one of the bigger rooms. Mom and dad and the boys exchanged rooms with each other almost every year, taking turns sleeping in the living room. The other house on the property was home to my grandpa, Aunt Helen, and Uncle Joe. I always thought grandpa was close to one hundred, but in the past few years have found out that he never saw his nintieth birthday. Joe and Helen were my mom's younger brother and sister. Joe never married, but eventually Helen did, a short marriage that ended in tragedy.

Grandpa's house was built by him and a grandmother I only heard stories about. She died after the birth of her eleventh child, when mom was seven and Helen was two. The child passed with her. Grandpa died when I was six or seven, and Helen and Joe left the house shortly thereafter. It was then that it became "our" house filled with memento but unlivable. We bragged to strangers that it was the oldest house around. In our young eyes that was something to be proud of. With a grown up look back, I now know that the stranger probably picked up on this themselves from the look of the place.

During my school years our family moved to a rented house, (with plumbing!) in Windthorst, but held on to the family farm. Summers were spent in futile effort to fix up the home place and make it livable again. One of the actions taken was moving the two houses next to each other and building a room between them. Dad passed in 1968 before seeing this through, altho he had successfully moved what remained of his family back to the structure under construction. My three older siblings had by then moved on to lives of their own.

Aunt Helen was a fixture of our family as well. I have lots of stories to share about her. But at this time I only find it necessary to say that she has always been, and still is, more like a second mom than an aunt to me. She moved a house onto the property to be near mom, and later as mom's health deterioated, Helen moved into the original house with her sister.

Mom sold off portions of the farm after dad died but held on with all she had to "her home," She despartely wanted to pass it on to her children someday. My younder brother took a job as a home health aid to be with mom day and night, and he remains in the house today. Eventually the decision was made to move mom to a nursing home. She died within two months of the move. Helen went back to living in her own house.

This is getting lengthy, even tho I have left out a lot of detail. What I have tried to do is set the background for "the rest of the story." Aunt Helen has recently been placed in a nursing home and mom's legacy, or at least half interest in it, has been given away. My older sister and I are in the process of trying to help our brother get back full interest. This blog is one of the measures we have taken up for the cause.

But I promised stories, which are to come. And if I figure out how, will be adding pictures to these pages. My dad was an amature photographer, and never missed the chance to "line' us up for a photo opp. So please come back and leave me comments. I will try to remain "reasonable."

Love to All, Carolyn Sue

The problem is knowing where to start. The catalyst that finally drove me to "blogging" was my favorite aunt ending up in a nursing home. Three years ago my mother passed away and last July my younger sister lost her battle to cancer. I have been recording old videos the past few days to send to my aunt. Oh, the thoughts and memories these films evoke. I have a need to pass them on.

So thus begins this adventure.