Pulled Under: power of love, navigating darkness, & an imperfect woman’s discoveries

By Kath DeLorme

"I cannot breathe, I claw upward towards a flicker of light, creating the resistance that pulls me deeper. I am drowning in a swirling, angry sea. I struggle, intensely fighting the powerful pull that drags me deeper into the abyss, until… I am pulled under."

For anyone who's been tasked with caregiving for another, or anyone who's beside someone struggling with dementia, this book is for you. When Kath DeLorme assumed the role as caregiver for her husband who had dementia, resources about the internal struggles of loss and grief were sparse. Places of darkness and hope, feeling competent yet helpless, converged. Through this book, DeLorme shares her story in hopes of offering wisdom, inspiration, and companionship.

In a book about love, loss, navigating dementia, and self-discovery, Kath DeLorme takes readers on a journey about courage and resilience. It is Kath's dream that writing this book becomes a "Gift" to all those who venture in; especially those who are, or who've been, in a caregiving role for a loved one. Her hope is that sharing her story empowers you, or someone you know, to caress and become acquainted with the pain held within your own heart.

These stories are an honest account of an abusive childhood, finding true love, building a career, and eventually learning the emotional and logistical aspects of caregiving for her husband and his struggles with dementia. This book's insights allow readers to traverse the sometimes lonely yet unpredictable process of grief in order to honor the love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 10, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350953022

Kath DeLorme

For anyone who's been tasked with caregiving for another, or anyone who's beside someone struggling with dementia, this book is for you. When Kath DeLorme assumed the role as caregiver for her husband who had dementia, resources about the internal struggles of loss and grief were sparse. Places of darkness and hope, feeling competent yet helpless, converged. Through this book, DeLorme shares her story in hopes of offering wisdom, inspiration, and companionship. Kath DeLorme's dream for writing this book was to create a "Gift" for those who venture in. Her hope is that sharing her story will empower you, or someone you know, to become acquainted with, and caress the pain held within the heart. It is the dance with pain that guides us to wholeness. IMAGINE…the beauty and release, as we catch glimpses of the gifts that await on the other side of darkness. Kath DeLorme grew up in southeast Florida. She began life in a chaotic, abusive environment which set her on a path to cultivate strength, courage, and ultimately, enough vulnerability to surrender to the flow of life. She enjoyed a 45-year career as a Respiratory Therapist. This professional path allowed her self-confidence to grow, as she cared for those whose bodies were in need of repair, and souls in need of nurturing. She has tenaciously fought against the tide of changes presented by her life, and been victorious in reshaping her soul. Kath has tasted the authenticity of her innermost landscape and continues to seek its unfolding.

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Copyright © 2024 Kath DeLorme.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

ISBN: 979-8-35095-302-2

Printed by BookBaby, Inc. in the United States of America

First printing edition 2023. Kath DeLorme [e-mail]

Contents

Dedication

Introduction

A Tenuous Beginning

Missing You So Much

Enough Love

Anticipatory Grief

This Love We Share

The Cover-Up

The Turmoil Within

Invisible Scars

She Escapes to the Sea

Waves of Grief

His Choice

Rapidly Declining

Surrendering

My Sister – My Soulmate

Balancing Act

Immeasurable Loss

Pulled Under

Transitioning

Without You

A Precious Gem

Stretched Thin

A New Year

Closing Door

Stripped Bare

Home

Unthinkable

World Crisis

I Am Your Resistance

The Gift

Gratitude & Acknowledgements

Noted Resources

Become like a cork on the ocean,

Even when you are pulled under,

Rest easy,

You cannot help but rise to the surface.

-Randi

Dedication

Dedicated to my Franko.

Through the power of your love, you rescued me.

For you, I was ENOUGH!

Introduction

I cannot breathe, I claw upward towards a flicker of light, creating the resistance that pulls me deeper. I am drowning in a swirling, angry sea. I struggle, intensely fighting the powerful pull that drags me deeper into the abyss, until… I am pulled under.

I settle in the darkness, into a cold stillness that I never imagined existed. Pain sears through every fiber of my being, I scream out loud, beg to be taken away, there is no escape.

This is the abyss of grief, of loss… of losing all that one cherishes and holds close. I am pulled under and dropped into the raw, ravishing darkness, totally alone, and empty. It strips me bare, and leaves my heart exposed and shredded.

I ask you to journey with me through my struggle to hold on, to allow life’s circumstances to shape me, and as I stumble, fall, rise stronger, and do it over and over again.

This is not a book about grief, but rather, the journey offered by grief. It is my intention to share the transformative power of loss as it broke me open and exposed my long-held stubbornness and resistance. These were shown to be a double-edged sword, they protected me, while at the same time, sliced me raw. Through much self-induced suffering, I gradually learned to be still, and allowed the pain. I slowly learned to tap into the small voice within which guided me to a place of surrender.

I share my journey to offer hope, and perhaps comfort, from the devastating fear and pain that life often presents. I learned that each day of life is a gift to cherish; even the gifts that deeply wound us, for those are the gifts that often become our teachers.

A Tenuous Beginning

My life began in the absence of love as a mistake. I was the product of alcoholic parents. I was the fifth child of an already-declining marriage which produced twin boys, two daughters, and then myself on the way.

I was an unwanted pregnancy. My mother was intent on aborting me. She used alcohol, drugs, and physically beat her stomach in an attempt to rid herself of her embedded burden. It was the early 1950’s, abortion was not yet legal. I survived the assaults. On April 17th, 1953, I stubbornly came to be.

I remember not my mother’s arms, it was my dad’s that were always there. I imagined that at some point, my mother must have held me, if for no other reason than to perform the necessary tasks of a mother burdened with a child. There were no pictures of her holding me, no stories of a mother’s love. No one can tell me that they ever saw her hold me. Early on, I came to believe that it was I that became my parents’ last straw; the final assault that ended their marriage and disintegrated the family. Those early-planted seeds of perception shaped the narrative of my life.

Several years after my birth we moved from my birthplace of Patterson, New Jersey, to the edge of the everglades in Miami, Florida. Dad had converted a couple of chicken coops into modest living quarters. My parents barely had enough to feed us. Years later, I viewed that period of my life as my white trash era.

After moving to Florida, it didn’t take long before my mother found a way out of her miserable life. When she was clean and sober, my mother was a beautiful woman. I am told she often left dad to go to bars at night, where she freely drank with men who nestled up to her.

During one of those outings she met a man named Lee. They fell in love. He was hardworking and offered her a life of love and comfort. Who could turn that down? She didn’t have the strength nor the tools to navigate the destructive, chaotic minefield of her life. She wanted out.

My Mother and Dad often violently fought. They physically assaulted each other, as we kids cowered and feared that one would go too far and kill the other. She finally made the choice to walk away. My mother turned to Lee, though she knew she couldn’t burden her new love with five kids, so she chose. She kept her boys. The twins were in their early teens and mostly cared for themselves.

The day she walked out, her three little girls, without an understanding of the finality of what was happening, stood terrified and cried after her. My sister Pat pleaded with our mother not to leave her behind, promised to be good, and begged to be wanted. My mother simply turned and shouted to Dad, I will keep my boys, you take the girls...and with that, she was gone.

Dad was left with his three little girls. Peggy was the oldest at nine, yet she was the most emotionally fragile. Pat, the middle child, was seven years – old, and was a strong-willed child who did her best to protect us. Lastly, myself, the youngest. I was six years old and quickly learned to please at any cost so as to not be discarded.

Dad was a severe alcoholic and could not take care of us on his own. His parents, our grandparents, owned a restaurant with a house attached. They lived a couple of hours north in Palm Beach County. Dad turned to his parents for help. Our grandmother insisted that Dad relinquish his custody of us. In return, she provided a home and raised us; eventually she gained full control of us by adopting us. After adopting us, she insisted we call her Mother.

We were groomed to become a useful commodity for the restaurant’s functioning. She allowed Dad to live with us and work as the cook, with no salary, since his mother was ‘raising his kids.’ She was the matriarch; a tyrant who ruled everyone with ironclad authority, even her husband. Thus began our new life–a life of emotional and physical cruelty under our grandparents’ rule. Our childhood and adolescent years were tumultuous and had been built upon intimidation and fear. That story, perhaps, is for another book.

The sister I was closest to, Pat, was one year older than I. She was my protector and confidant. We shared a bedroom and late at night, when the fear and sadness became overwhelming, she reached over and firmly held my hand to calm me. We were often slapped, beaten and bruised, and Pat endured the brunt of abuse. She resembled our mother the most. That, along with her willfulness, enraged our grandmother who frequently left Pat crumpled and bloodied on the floor, unable to move. Rarely did a day go by that we were not physically and verbally assaulted.

Peggy found ways to please the old lady. She managed to find favor and was spared the bulk of beatings, although once Peggy’s eardrum ruptured as the physical assaults were often targeted across the face and ears. As soon as Peggy graduated high school she devised a plan that found favor with our grandmother. She joined a catholic convent to train as a novice to eventually become a nun. That was her great escape plan. It afforded her living quarters and meals until she found a way to survive on her own. A short time after entering the convent, Peggy met a man at a halfway house for drug addicts where the nuns worked to convert the sinners. She had finally found her escape with the man and left the convent to live with him. The last picture of her at the convent was of her dressed in her nun’s habit, sitting on his lap, with rosary beads wrapped around a beer bottle. (Tempting the hand of God!)

The physical and psychological abuse remained a constant for Pat and me. As Pat matured into a teenager, eventually she was targeted by our grandfather who added sexual abuse to the mounting trauma. That was in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when no one spoke of abuse, even though the adults at our school must have seen the marks…They kept silent.

The picture my grandmother presented to the public was that of a loving, spiritual, catholic woman who sacrificed her life to adopt her granddaughters. Though she dressed us in pretty clothes and displayed us obediently praying before meals in the restaurant, it was a facade. Her religion was a religion of resentment and cruelty, and the bible and scripture were used to inflict pain and punishment. Dad was there, he witnessed the abuse and cowered in fear of his mother. He was under the constant threat of her admonishments that if he interfered, she’d put his girls into foster care. He drank heavily throughout the years. I imagine it was to numb his own pain while he allowed the abuse of his kids. He must have thought that his love was enough, and that he’d kept his promise, never to leave us. To him those justifications must have been enough… they were not.

When Pat was sixteen, she feared that she couldn’t survive the beatings much longer. She decided to run away. I begged her to take me with her. She had no idea how she’d care for herself, and though it was excruciating for her, Pat left me behind. She packed a small bag. We hugged and cried, and then she too…was gone from my life. I locked the door behind her as she fearfully ventured into a world she did not know how to survive in. I was the only one left with our grandmother, and with Pat gone, I took her place as the most accessible punching bag.

The morning after I locked the door behind Pat, our grandmother noticed her missing. I endured her beatings and refused to reveal where Pat had gone. Later that morning she called the town’s Police Chief, a close friend of hers. She asked him to the restaurant in an attempt to scare and intimidate me. He interrogated and threatened me, demanding I tell them where Pat went. I insisted I knew nothing about it and finally, after several hours, I was left alone.

I was shattered. Again I felt the pain of rejection and of being discarded. Those feelings burrowed deep within and attached themselves to every aspect of my life. That solidified my belief that I must do all in my power to be acceptable to others.

After Pat had left, every Friday night, at 9:00 p.m. I slipped outside to the phone booth located just outside of the restaurant and awaited her weekly call. She called to tell me what was going on in her life and that she loved me. Pat was struggling to get by, but her life was better. I was happy she had escaped.

Soon after Pat’s departure, Dad also left his mother’s restaurant to work at another local restaurant. Again I was left to fend for myself against the abuse. A few months later I met someone and began to formulate my own plan of escape.

My escape was with a man six years older than I, who was confidently settled into his own home and career. His name was Ken. He was a local police officer. I moved in with Ken a few months after we met. I slowly attempted building a relationship. He was my first date, my first love. Over the four years we lived together, he was honest and often told me that he did not love me. He had said that he liked me, but that it wasn’t love. For Ken, ours was a relationship of convenience. I was 17 years-old, and gave the relationship my all. I worked fervently to change like into love. I cooked, cleaned, and provided sex whenever he desired. These efforts made for a satisfying time…for him.

I had begun an on-the-job training program at a local hospital to become an Inhalation Therapist, (now known as a Respiratory Therapist). For the first time in my life I felt proud that I was building a solid foundation for myself.

One day I was working the midnight shift and came home earlier than expected. I found Ken in bed with another woman. He simply commented, You’re home early, you need to take off for a while, we’ll talk later. I was devastated and aimlessly drove around for a couple of hours. When I returned, he calmly looked at me, and informed me that it was time for me to move on. He stated that he no longer wanted to continue our relationship, that he knew he was using me, and it was not sustainable for either of us.

I was crushed. I refused to leave, and begged him for time to prove that he could love me. For weeks he tried to get me to move out. I’d given every ounce of myself to him. I simply could not accept that he no longer wanted me. One evening, the reality of the relationship became clearer as we argued. He was so enraged that I would not leave, that he shoved me, and slapped me across the face. He gathered my belongings and threw them outside. As he left he said that when he returned, I had better be gone, or he’d have me physically removed by the police. I finally got it: it was over… discarded again.

I lived in my car for a few weeks and would go into work early at the hospital so I could take a shower in the surgical area prior to starting my shift. One day a nurse I worked with asked me why she frequently saw me leave the surgical department so early in the morning? I confided that I had been sleeping in my car and needed to shower before work. I asked her not to say anything as I was working hard to find an apartment. It just so happened that she and her husband