I am dedicating this column in memory of Molly, a woman I barely knew who lived across the street from me. I was likely 11 or so when I first met her, months after we moved on the block. Women in the neighborhood would visit her elderly mother on a regular basis and help take care of her. I accompanied my mother once and met Molly, who was then middle-aged.
When I first entered the home, I noticed that the floors were covered with newspapers. They were also strewn all over the place – on the furniture, on the steps, everywhere. Not knowing any better, I assumed that Molly and her mother must be voracious readers. Later I came to realize that Molly’s mother was a hoarder and that trait was just one aspect of a person I now view as a dysfunctional, mentally-ill individual.
Molly rarely spoke; she just smiled shyly from time to time. One Pesach, my mother invited her and her mother to a Seder and I learned Molly worked and came home – that was the sum of her life. She had no friends, no activities and no social outlets. She did have a brother who had married and moved to another city.
I became aware of this when Molly’s mother told the women who came to take care of her that she had become a great-grandmother, and then proceeded to loudly curse the baby with an early death as well as its parents and grandfather, her own son.
Being young and clueless about mental illness, I couldn’t fathom why Molly’s mother was enraged at the birth. Decades later I concluded (rightly or wrongly) that this woman could not forgive her son for “abandoning” her, for “rejecting” her. I am not a therapist, but I have come across people who are so twisted and who have such fragile, impaired egos that they truly believe that love means cleaving to them to the exclusion of everyone and everything else.
In this newspaper’s “A Dating Primer” column for the week of August 29, Rosie Einhorn and Shery Zimmerman wrote about a young man headed into a nightmarish situation. “Chanan” is thrilled that “Ayelet,” a “beautiful, smart, young woman” wants to marry him! When he wants the wedding date to be set two weeks later than Ayelet’s preferred date so his father and his siblings would no longer be in aveilus, Ayelet does not see this as a reasonable request, and inexplicably accuses Chanan’s parents of being manipulative and interfering. She tells him, “After this wedding, I don’t want us to have anything to do with your family.” Later she spells it out in detail. “No telephone calls, no visiting, and I don’t want them involved with our children.”
Somewhat concerned, Chanan goes to his rav, who states that without therapy, the marriage has no future. Ayelet, non-surprisingly, rejects the idea of therapy and accuses Chanan of “not loving her enough.”
Chanan is in denial (after all, Ayelet is beautiful and smart) and cluelessly believes love will conquer all and refuses to see that his bride is seriously krimm. She has no care or thought at all of how Chanan would feel if he and his children were cut off from his side of the family. Ayelet justifies this horrific demand by projecting her own flaws, insisting his parents are manipulative and overbearing. In her twisted eyes, everyone else is wrong, or bad or crazy and she is always in the right. (I believe her true agenda is to isolate Chanan and her future children. So terrified is she of being rejected since deep down she believes she is worthless and unlovable. She must nullify any competition for Chanan’s love or attention.)