I saw a lot of bad things happen to my mother as I grew up. My father, despite being a hard worker and providing food for the house, he had one particularly bad habit. Gambling. He would gamble a lot and at times he would come home and he had gambled away the money of the whole week. Whenever my parents would have a fight over that, he would twist the conversation and his jealousy would kick in mixed with anger and he would accuse our mother of cheating.
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Dealing with our father must have been the hardest thing for her to do. He would sometimes hit her and one time I even witnessed him point a shotgun at her head. It was so traumatic at the time. And despite all of it, my mom, my angel, my biggest force in the universe held herself strong and stayed, determined enough to raise us to be good kids. My father’s family wanted her out of the house but she went against all of them with the force of love inside of her. She never broke the family apart through all the pain that my father caused her.