Tis the season to be sappy – no, just kidding (sort of).\u00a0 But, this time of year does make me think of my dear friend Carol who (I want to say the word died here, but she was murdered….. so yea, she did die but it wasn’t of like natural causes or and accident or anything like that)……… where was I?\u00a0 Oh yes.\u00a0 Carol.\u00a0 It was around this time 2 years ago that we buried Carol.\u00a0 Because her death was tragic and shocking, I don’t think that the people that knew her remember her or talk about her life like they should.\u00a0 I don’t want people to forget her, she had a wonderful soul and a huge heart.\u00a0 So, here is my story of what I know about Carol.<\/p>\n
Carol was adopted when she was 3 by a very Catholic family in Oxford, PA.\u00a0 Her adopted father was a war hero and a very influential person of the Sacred Heart Church.\u00a0 She was the first of 4 children to be adopted and she was also the oldest.\u00a0 Her adopted parents did not see the need to change her first name when they adopted her – which perhaps was the start of her problems.\u00a0 At the age of 3, she became known as Carol Carroll and was henceforth known as “Carol Carroll stuck in a barrel, must be a pickle.”\u00a0 The things that I am about to say were told to me by Carol at a stage in her life where she was very aware of her own mortality due to her MS and she felt the need to get things off her chest, to have answers and reasons for why things turned out the way they did.\u00a0 Although I could provide very little comfort, I was there to listen and so she told me her story.\u00a0 I cannot say for sure that her accounts are true, but I believed them and still do and I think that was very important to her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Carol’s parents adopted 4 children, 2 boys and 2 girls.\u00a0 But they also were very active foster parents.\u00a0 Due to their involvement with the church, they had alot of children passing through their house.\u00a0 Carol’s opinion was that her parents did this for money – not for the love of children.\u00a0 She says that her parents treated the foster children very poorly.\u00a0 They didn’t spend the money that they received for fostering on the children.\u00a0 They got very little to eat, crappy clothes, and they were beaten often.\u00a0 In later years one of the children even committed suicide.\u00a0 Here is where I asked – Why didn’t anyone notice anything??\u00a0 Surely one of the kids would have spoken out.\u00a0 But, back in the day the foster kids were home-schooled and no one would believe that such a highly decorated Catholic family was capable of such behavior.\u00a0 Carol says that her and her adopted siblings were expected to treat the foster kids the same way that her parents did and\u00a0if they\u00a0complied, they were treated very well.\u00a0 Carol did this for only a short time before something inside her told her it was wrong and so she began refusing to treat the foster kids poorly.\u00a0 Instead she would sneak them food and make them clothes, offering them whatever small condolances that she\u00a0could.\u00a0 Because she refused to participate in the awful behavior of the rest of her family, she was shunned.\u00a0 If she was not going to treat the foster kids the way they wanted her to, then they would treat her as one of the foster children.\u00a0 But to Carol, she didn’t care – she was not going to be a part to the suffering.\u00a0 Eventually when Carol was grown and out of college, some of the foster kids tracked her down and came to her to thank her for what she had done for them.\u00a0 They told her that she was the only light of hope that they had during that terrible time.<\/p>\n
Carol went on to college and became a CPA.\u00a0 Right after college she got a good job and was living in a 2 bedroom apartment in Delaware County.\u00a0 It was then that she began to notice that something was wrong.\u00a0 She went to doctors and was frustratingly misdiagnosed and told that nothing was wrong with her.\u00a0 But Carol knew that something was definitely wrong and whatever it was, was getting worse.\u00a0 Carol decided that she needed to have a roommate.\u00a0 She didn’t think that it was a good idea for her to be alone anymore as her mental state was becoming “loose”.\u00a0 Carol put an ad on the local college campus bulletin advertising that she needed a roommate, just that and no more.\u00a0 What she got was Bill.\u00a0 Carol said that immediately Bill responded to her ad, and when she told him that she knew she was sick but didn’t know with what, he was ok with that.\u00a0 So the saga of Bill & Carol began.<\/p>\n
Bill & Carol eventually married and moved to the Oxford area because Carol was from the area and she had a job at the local University.\u00a0 Bill was from a well-to-do family that lived in Delaware County and he had a very good job when they moved to Oxford.\u00a0\u00a0It was at the University\u00a0where Carol worked\u00a0that she and my mother met.\u00a0 They became\u00a0fast friends and as my parents were going through a divorce at the time, I think Carol was a great shoulder for my Mom.\u00a0 She also helped my mom find a house, which is how we ended up moving to Oxford and living across the alley from Bill and Carol.\u00a0 It was the year that we moved to Oxford, 1989, that Carol was finally diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.\u00a0 She continuted to work at the University for as long as she could, but she finally had to give in to the MS and quit.\u00a0 I know that this very much broke Carol’s heart.\u00a0 She was smart and loved to work, especially with numbers, and hated that a sickness made it impossible for her to work.\u00a0 This was to be the beginning of the downward spiral, one that ended in death,\u00a0for Bill and Carol.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With Carol not being able to work, she had to apply for disablity – which was rejected 3 times before it was approved (people tell me this is the norm).\u00a0 They had a mortgage on their house and they needed both incomes to pay it.\u00a0 While Carol was waiting for disablity to be approved, they got behind in some payments.\u00a0 Bill still had a good paying job, but it was becoming evident that he was jealous of Carol.\u00a0 Jealous of the fact that he had to work while Carol could stay home all day and collect money from the government.\u00a0 They both had alot of friends, but mostly Carol did because she was from the area.\u00a0 During the day, friends would stop by to party and just hang out.\u00a0 I think that is what made Bill really jealous.\u00a0 Forget that Carol had an illness, she could stay home all day and party while he had to go to work and miss all the good times.\u00a0 Carol told me that Bill got fired from his job becuase he knew of some embezzlement going on and when given the choice to participate, he refused and was thusly fired.\u00a0 Only after Carol died did I find out that this was what he told Carol.\u00a0 What he told his employers was that he had to quit because he needed to stay home and care for his ill wife.\u00a0 That would have been most honerable, had it been true at the time.\u00a0 The truth was, Carol wouldn’t need someone to care for her every day for another 10 years.\u00a0 You see, Carol’s MS affected her neurologically more than it did physically.\u00a0 She was able to live on the first floor of their house and she even drove for a long time after she was diagnosed.\u00a0 One of the many battles between Bill and Carol was that she was frustrated at him for not working.\u00a0 She urged him to go and work so they could pay the bills.\u00a0 But Bill would get job after job and lose them because he didn’t really want to work.\u00a0 That was the heart of it, Bill was just one of those people that didn’t want to work.\u00a0 So as the years passed they became more and more in debt because they couldn’t pay the bills.<\/p>\n
I first met Bill and Carol when I was ten and all I knew about them was they were nice people that were friends of my moms.\u00a0 We had to hang out there sometimes after school to wait for mom to get home becuase we were too young to be on our own.\u00a0 And, they had alot of cats.\u00a0 I wouldn’t really get to know Bill and Carol until I was around 19 or 20.\u00a0 I ended up living with them for a short time when I was 22 or 23.. can’t really remember.\u00a0 They were always taking in strays; people and cats so when I lived there I think there were 3 other people around my age living there besides B&C.\u00a0 It was like a commune at times, but there were always people around, people to laugh and cheer you up and there was always someone playing some kind of music or musical instrument at one time or another.<\/p>\n
Anyway, Carol was a bit “Aunt Clara” like……. I think it was because of being part hippie and the other part was the MS.\u00a0 She would put her shirts on backwards and insideout (and not know it).\u00a0 She wore shorts in the winter with knee high socks and sandals.\u00a0 She always had 3 pairs of glasses at one time, but they were all broken in one way or another.\u00a0 She would put chicken or turkey bones in a pot and cook them for days straight and then eat the soup.\u00a0 She loved to drink vodka and milk.\u00a0 In the middle of a conversation she would leave the room and come back 15 or 20 minutes later with whatever object you were talking about.\u00a0 She loved to play, listen, and sing music.\u00a0 She watched the Simpsons and Oprah religiously – you weren’t allowed to speak while they were on.\u00a0 She always wanted a fire in the woodstove – even in the summer.\u00a0 She hated to take showers and wash her hair.\u00a0 She laughed alot – sometimes so hard she cried.\u00a0 She was always changing the furniture around and trying to recover a chair or put a 4th leg on a 3 legged table.\u00a0 She always took apart the Tiffany chandeliers to “clean the crystals”.\u00a0 She loved cats and would take them in and feed them in\u00a0a heartbeat.\u00a0 She went into debt and ran up a huge vet bill trying to get them all spayed and neutered.\u00a0 She kept up on current events and loved a good political debate.\u00a0 She was always trying to hand out books and get us younger people to read.\u00a0 She loved to be outside and did so whenever she could.\u00a0 She always had a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers because she was always digging “tiny shards of glass” from her feet – even though no one else could see them.\u00a0 She listened and offered very good advice and a neutral point of view on alot of things.\u00a0 She was a wonderful person to talk to.\u00a0 She had and told the best stories.\u00a0 She taught me that it was ok to express my feelings when I felt them and I would be better off for it.\u00a0 She taught me to stand up for myself using my words without losing my point.\u00a0 She wouldn’t let anyone come around when her sister visited because she didn’t want anyone to see how she was treated by her sister.\u00a0 Even though her family treated her like shit, she defended them and was by her father’s side on his deathbed – playing his favorite music as he lay dying.\u00a0 She hated liars, theives and cheaters (Bill cheated on her once and she found out about it when she got a veneral disease).<\/p>\n
I have been composing this post for a week now and so I am going to finish up.\u00a0 Carol cried to me once and asked me how come if she sacrificed so much in her younger years to help the foster children, then why did she end up with MS and have to live the rest of her life sick and in poverty?\u00a0 I cried with her as I didn’t have any answers.\u00a0 I just told her that I thought she was fortunate to have known her purpose in life.\u00a0 She was there to help those children, as no one else would.\u00a0 And she was fortunate enough to live long enough to know that she did have an impact on their lives.\u00a0 Although she had MS, she didn’t have it as bad as most where she suffered terribly.\u00a0 Her suffering was at the hands of her twisted husband.\u00a0<\/p>\n
2 years ago, 2 days before Carol’s 50th birthday and 1 day after her brother died, Bill flipped out and killed Carol.\u00a0 He knocked her over the head with something and then strangled her to death as she lay on the floor.\u00a0 Bill said he did it out of mercy – Carol was suffering and he wanted to end it.\u00a0 That is the biggest load of self-serving bullshit that I have ever heard in my life.\u00a0 Bill wanted to end his suffering.\u00a0 I admit that Carol became more neurotic and bitchy as the MS progressed, but certainly she didn’t deserve to die the way she did for it.\u00a0 There were always more than enough people to care for Carol if Bill had left her.\u00a0 She did so much for so many people, we would have made sure that she was well taken care of and she didn’t have to go into a home where she wouldn’t have been able to live out her life as she wanted.\u00a0 Didn’t she deserve that, at least?\u00a0<\/p>\n
I miss Carol.\u00a0 She gave me my first snow globe, with an old-fashioned\u00a0santa inside.\u00a0 I look at it now and think about her and what she did for me.\u00a0 Some people judged her because she lived life the way she wanted to and didn’t care what people thought.\u00a0 She drank when she wanted to and smoked pot when she wanted to….. who cares?\u00a0 Who’s to say that if you were diagnosed with a terminal illness that you wouldn’t do the same?\u00a0 So, I remember the good things about Carol and hopefully after reading this, someone else will know or remember what a generous, wonderful, giving person she was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tis the season to be sappy – no, just kidding (sort of).\u00a0 But, this time of year does make me think of my dear friend Carol who (I want to say the word died here, but she was murdered….. so … Continue reading