Why was my mother the way she was?

I sometimes wonder if looking back, she was not placed there as my persecutor.

But this sounds crazy, I know, it's just that she’s gone now and after been around her for so long and everything has been so quite.

I miss her, and her conversation, her sober conversation, not the stuff she would spew out from her mouth when she was drunk, and that was just painful.

Back home in Ballymun on a rain soaked day was depressing enough, you would look out your window only to see staring right back at you, more grey buildings, each one with its stone splashed wall which gave it its grey black look.

They would stare right back at you as if to say, never, you’re never ever getting out of here.

Its no wonder there was so much escapism going on up there, with addiction after addiction, drink and drugs and gambling.

You only had to look out you’re window to feel bad.

Yes this place could be the most depressing place in the World.

"dad, dad"

"Yes Leah, love?"

"There is something over there, under the bancoly"She says as she mispronounces that last word.

My firstborn child, she draws my attention to something just underneath my mother’s balcony.

"Dad, Dad, I think its a man" she states mater of factly with a bravery most uncommon for a six year old, well, after all, she is my daughter, and she's got a thought skin.

"Okay Love" I tell her "Yes Leah, I think it is"

"C'mon sweetheart lets go back and tell Nana.

A Crowd gathers round the body of yet another victim of the 80s drug culture.

He had been fired out the window, there was no real blood, as if he had been dead for hours, and then thrown out.

"Nana, Nana"

"Yes" my mother, answers her little six year old.

"Nana there is a dead man out there"

Is there?" she says.

"Out where?"

"Out there, Nana".

I proceed to tell my mother what we had seen , my little child and I.

They shouldn't have to see it, this was Ballymun and this kind of thing happened on a regular basis up here, but hardly got into the papers and if it did, then it would only be a small caption.

A small tiny caption, lost among the rest of the bigger stories of the world.

It was only one of us, sure it didn't matter, we were expendable.

My name is DAMIEN DAVIS my number ******, just apart of the system, but I want no part of it.

I was born in Dublin, in the summer of sixty-six, July the 6th 66 in James’s hospital, Dublin Ireland.

I was brought up in many different areas as if I was in exile since childbirth.

Glasnevin, Coolock, Ballymun, Finglan, and back again to Ballymun with a rest inbetween with my granmother.

I remember nothing except fear growing up, with the occasional good feeling that was thrown in for the sake of my sanity.

I remember as a child, been terrified on and everyday basis.

As long as I am alive I cannot ever conceive of a time when I wont suffer flashbacks from these periods of my life growing up in Ballymun and Finglas.

These were the terrible times that no child should any were in the World should ever have to experience.

Hearing your own mother speak to you as if she were possessed by a demon or even Satan him self, does something to the young mind of a child, it paralyses and drenches it in fear.

I have tasted and been forced to drink this fear down without spilling a drop.

"Drink it down Damien Davis, it's good for you it will make you as strong as an ox, it will harden your heart and make your forehead as hard as stone, you'll be a man and while your at it, take these valuim too.

I have tasted fear without having a place to run, i have tasted humiliation and shame till i could feel it no more.

Do I Blame her?

Do I blame him?

Do I blame them?

They were alcoholics who were given valuim, mogodon and dalmaine and Librium, which only set them going around in circles, round and round they would go.

No I don’t blame them, I blame the system.

I know that both my parents were sick and I knew that there were others who were responsible for the way they were, however there is another side to the blame game, and it is called responsibility.

but for now, there sickness was brought on by those who enjoy testing things on people as if they were guinea pigs.

they all did these people a great disservice.

Take a good look around the city at the wino’s the alcoholics on the street and ask the question if you are brave enough. How did all of these people get like this?

and the answer, they were destroyed by those who were sent into help.

The ones who gave my parents these pills were not helping but hindering these people from becoming well, for it is a fact that the pills they gave to my parents were the root to their destruction.

The fact that they were new drugs on the market was "the perfect alibi" for the monster society, to test and to test to their hearts content, for these people are the true aliens of the universe, who love to poke and prod at the human body and brain in order to see how it works, and still they do not have a clue.

What were the long-term effects of taking these barbarian drugs?

Death, a slow and miserable death, this was the sentence handed out to my parents by the monster that is society.

Because they were on this concoction of pills, it meant only one simple thing, they could not stop ever.

They were destined to die from either drink or drugs, or in my fathers case, both drink and drugs.

Many times I have seen my Dad in a hospital bed with tears in his eyes, why?

Because he could not stop.

He would be there on the bed, ashamed to look at us, riddled with guilt and remorse, all from the previous nights drinking.

He would lament that he couldn’t stop.

They the Beast, they knew this, they had him trapped in a matrix that they designed, a prison and a hell for those they hated.

I can see no other reason for it except hatred because he had something that they did not and could not have, a heart and a belief.

They tried desperately to take both of them away from him  but you could see that he wasn’t given either away, because he had this light within his eyes.

They tried desperately to take both of these away from him.

You could see that he was not given it away either, because he had the light with in his eye’s.

He had the light within his eye's, which if had been used properly as the weapon they were intended to be, then he could have turned away many people from the drudgery and the daily slavery that they have become so used to.

He was a man of truth, with a belief that could not be perfected, because they had him within their grasp.

He was a non-conformist that believed in Love.

But the belief that they wanted, that they worked so hard to take from him, was, not his belief in Love, but in a story about a man who would come back to save humanity.

His belief was in the Christ.

This was the belief they tried to take from him.

But he would not give it; he died tryna hold on to it.

Because he knew that with it came "The Love" that he craved from the Father of creation, and now the World is in exile, in a spiritual sense.

Their plan?

To kill everyone’s belief and to grief them sorely.

To strip them bare of a belief that holds them together, both mentally and spiritually.

                                                        Chapter two

We Loved our Dad with an insane Love, but unfortunately this wasn't enough to save him.

He continued to fall and it was this that increased his pain and distrust in the possibility of ever getting free of his addiction which eat in to his soul.

He had one respite, when in 1976 he stopped drinking for two and a half years, he kept h is drug intake down to a bare minimum, just valuim.

Before I continue with this book, I must begin with some kind of introduction.

My Dad was a kind man with a multitude of troubles, he was born in Dublin.                                  

Both my Parents were from Dublin, My Dad, from Glasnevin and my Mother from Old Cabra.

They both met one another and fell madly in Love.

They courted in their own inimitable way before marrying.

The arrangement was far from been a happy one as they both happened to be fond of the drink.

My Dads Mother was from Meath while my granddad was from Sligo, she was a nurse and he was a policeman. [Garda]

They had two daughters and one Son, My Dad.

My Grandparents doted on this one and only Son who was eventually to bring then much grief and much worry.

My Granddad's name was Bill and his wife, to me was just known as Nana.

My mother's parents, I never got to know, as they were long gone before I was even born.

But of course there were a few negative story’s that circulated about them, Particularly my mothers mother.

She too it would appear was an alcoholic and would constantly humiliate the older of the two daughters that she had brought into the World.

My Mothers sister Betty Quinn, had either a little more sense or a little less heart, but she made up her mind that she wasn't going to stay around to put up with the ups and downs of an obvious alcoholic.

She ran when she could, at the first chance she got and she was blessed to find the kindest man she could meet.

He doted on this Woman, my mum’s sister, and the both of them were happy, and they are still together this very day, they must have done something right.

It was the absolute opposite with my own mother and all of the damage might have been caused, all because she insisted staying with her alcoholic mother.

She finally came out and told me of the heartbreak she had caused her, bringing all kinds of men home in order for her to meet and to marry.

She was obviously quite crazy because of drink.

My Mother had been claiming that most of her life was like living in a rose garden, and that her mother never did anyone any harm, in her own words "She was a living saint, my Mother was".

"She never did anyone any harm" and them to the top of her voice she would yell out, "Mammy".

My Dads parents were trwo secure People, with a secure basic life, well quite secure.

My Grandmother could be a little bit obsessed with discipline and good timekeeping, such as been on time for breakfast dinner and tea.

This is the way they were, this was their way, at least he got the security I never had.

But then again maybe his troubles and hang-ups were as serious as what I went through, although I doubt it.

I was grateful for her been the way that she was, but my Dad complained about his overbearing smothering mothering as she chased him around Glasnevin, supposedly with a stick, and embarrassing him in front of who ever happened to be there, friends and even girl friends, it didn't matter to my Grandmother, this was after all her only Son, and only the right Woman would do for him.

But me, I personally think that she did some damage to his personality, by this humiliation phase.

He would lament about it years later over the Phone years later, usually when he was sloshed drink.

My Grand dad was a huge man and a genteel character and at eighty-three years of age he had a beautiful head of undiminished hair, no grey or anything, only the tiniest of flecks around the edges.

He was a fine and gentleman, who was very spiritually minded, Mass twice a day for the both of them. They were both Roman Catholic to the bone and believed and trusted in the Priest, even to the extent that when my brother had his first Son out of wedlock, they abandoned him and their babe for maybe an entire year, claiming that what they had done was wrong.

I remember the occasion vividly as if it were only yesterday It was painful, as my Brother, her favourite grandson begged them to accept their Son.

She would not budge, they both would not budge on the matter and no more could be said, as he walked out the door with his Son., with my sister and I traipsing behind, looking back, hoping she would break and see the Love she was refusing to show.

It wasn't to be, not for that year anyhow, this was Catholicism, she was only following orders that she believed was right and proper, handed down from God to the Priest.

But the Priest as we all know too well had his own Sin to deal with.

I truly wonder what my grandmother would, a devout believer in the Christ would make of it all now.

She would always run down after me and say, now don’t forget to say sacred heart of Jesus I place all my trust in thee.

She was preaching to the converted anyway I would nip of down the road, happy to be alive, happy to be with my gran mom.

Chapter three

When my dad was fifteen he got a job as a coach builder; but within a very short time he fell ill to T.B

He was shipped off to a sanatorium in Blanchard town were he would be a guest for many many weeks, even months.

This sickness of course was the black plague of the times and killed many people, young and old alike.

The Illness would leave my Dad with a big problem with his lings for the rest of his days and every now and then he would loose his breath due to his lung collapsing.

At that particular time, my Granddad did surly enjoy his drink and was well known for scooting off down the boozer for a tipple, sometimes three times a day and sometimes he would get pissed.

Now when his Son Tom took ill with this dreaded illness, he was terrified he was going to loose his only Son, as any one would.

So afraid was he that he would make a pledge to his God.

The deal?

If God would spare his one and only Son then he would take the pledge and stop drinking for twenty-five years.

Within weeks his Son returned to his former health although it would not be a hundred percent, due to the damage the bug had done to his lung, it had caused a great little hole in the surrounding tissue.

My granddad kept as far as I know his part of the deal for 25 years, he didn't drink a drop, that’s how the story went.

I have a sneaky suspicion that something might have gone very wrong down the line, or maybe the agreement was broken or my dad was not supposed to be alive, because the grief that both my grandparents received at the hands of their Son, would, at times shatter their lives.

I don’t say with certain guarantee that he did break his pledge.

My Grandmother bought a shop, a flower shop, fruit and veg shop, that she handed down to her Son when he came out of Hospital.

He ran the business-blindfolded and charmed the young and the old with his beautiful eyes and wonderfully tanned skin that would go almost black during the summer months, he inherited this trait from his mother who would also go black in the sun.

One of the reasons that we, as small children suffered abuse from the kids, as they would scowl at us for having slightly foreign looks.

My Gran even at that age, you could see the beauty that was there, she had it in her eyes.

My Dad ran the shop there on hearts corner and usually had a ball with his drinking buddies.

The storeys that would circulate about this man were wild and wonderful and not good.

He had a reputation as a ladies man, and he most surly had a passion for Women, and I, certain he had many in his formative years, as he was a charmer indeed.

Now around about the time that he had the little shop; he met my mother, Rita Quinn, Presumably they had known each other on and off for some years, from a distance.

She was Old Cabra and he was Glasnevin, not too far from one another, both North side of Dublin.

She at one stage, asked if she fancied him, said "No his nose is too big and his ears stick out".

He wanted her, big time and he was going to have her, and so began the courtship that was Rita and Tom Davis.

It wasn't hard to see why he fell in love with her as she was indeed lovely, she had these deep set eyes and high cheek bones, a milky complexion, brown hair and bluey green eye's.

She was a stunner; really, later on she would bleech blond her hair.

He was determined to be with her.

My Dad as I have said had a dark complexion, dark brown eyes, dimple in his chin, a wonderfully cararacteristic nose, like a young Clark Gable.

They met, fell in love, and so began the days of wine and Roses' for the both of them.

He would take her out and when he did he would take her to pubs, most of the time having several shots before he would meet her.

he would sometimes take her to the pictures and this one particular time, he left half way through and made his way to the nearest pub telling her that he was off to the toilet,

He came back pissed a half hour later after consuming more drink.

She left him there and didn't phone or contact him for weeks.

She Threatened to end the relationship, but eventually forgave him.

He could be a bastard to her in front of his friends.

My Mother got on really well with people at this stage of her life and she got on well with his friends too.

They would all have a laugh, except there was this one time, in the van that my Dad owned, he got jealous or he did not get the joke or something simple like this, suddenly, out of the blue, he gave her a back hander across the face.

His Friends just looked at him, unable to do anything at all, they looked at him in disgust and shock, not knowing why he had done such a thing.

And yet they couldn't say a word at all to him, lest he take them to task, or take one of them out side and deal with him.

He was an amateur Boxer, and they knew well that they would be no match for Tom Davis.

My Mother in effect met the wrong man, and he met the wrong Woman, they both caused each other unbelievable pain over and over again.

I can't really imagine what it must have been like for my Mother growing up in the household that she grew up.

Her Dad, I know Loved her very much, he was an ordinary man, who was a doorman in the Gresham Hotel.

Then One Day they decided to sell the company and in the process they sacked him.

She remembers walking through Town, holding his hand, feeling her Dads devastation at having Lost his Job after so many years of been Loyal worker for them, 25 years.

He barley had enough to buy her a communion dress.

She would lament of her schooldays over and over again and the abuse she suffered at the hands of this one Nun who used to humiliate her on a regular basis, making her feel like Fool.

This Nun never let up on her and would mentally abuse her, holding up her writings in front of the class and Mockingly saying things about her handwriting.

This Nun became My Mother's nemeses, day after day she dreaded going into school, all because of this one bully who made her life a misery.

So! Not only did my mother have to deal with an alcoholic woman who probably made her cry every day, but she also had this evil Nun, A Catholic Nun, who didn't like Rita Quinn. [Babylon’s Bitch that is what this Nun was, Babylon’s bitch. Why did she not like Rita Quinn?

Because of the light that I spoke of earlier on, the light was within my Dads eyes.

My Mother also had this light, this belief in something better than this World.

This Nun could obviously see this in my mother and was determined to damage and even put out this light., to make her like one of them, to turn my mother into a woman without light within her soul, and with no belief.

This Catholic Nun was a destroyer of people, just as the ones who had destroyed little boys and girls of this era.

The Christian brothers and Priests and the men at the top that stood by and said nothing about the wreckers of the light.

They destroyed my mum and I lament bitterly over this woman and her persecution on my mum, this was their agenda, this was their mission in life, like fallen angels who realized they were doomed, they went after the children of light in order to devour them.

Because they knew that they themselves were gone, that they couldn't have this light, this inner goodness.

They got to my mother, from school to saint Brendan’s and in-between, each one of them, sent in to destroy the light that was in her eyes and her soul, and they did, they destroyed her, in this life, she was left a ruin.

The Nuns, The Priests, the Doctors, Nurses, the Gardi, I watched as each one of them took their turn in taking her down.

I watched as the Gardi mocked her, laughing at her, I watched with hatred in my heart for all of these institution, who said they were only here to help, ha!.

 Help, that’s a joke, they were destroyers of the human soul.

I watched and came to the conclusion that they were not there to help but to break them, because they were dangerous.

My parents were dangerous, because they didn't believe in what they believed in, they believed in something more, they did not only believe in the base instincts of life, eating drinking working like a slave and then go to bed and get up and do it all over again.

They- We believed in something more, so that they had to break this belief so that it would not spread like a plague and cause an outbreak of believers and individuals that believed in something more important than what they were trying to give to us.

We knew there was something better than what they were trying to offer to us.

We cared little for money and we cared little for sex, what we craved was something of the spirit of goodness because we knew that in this was the answer, but to them it was a hindrance.

My mother and Dad were married and bought a house in Glasnevin, and they had a great big house warming.

The party got off to a perfect start with plenty of booze been bought by everyone who showed up on the doorstep.

The Party and the music were in full swing, when suddenly, one of my Dads closest friends decided to go out with two girls who had come to the party with him, he had decided that they needed more booze, even though they didn't, as the house was stacked with booze.

They left the house somewhere around two in the morning, with Jack Garda at the helm and both girls in back, with a new passenger beside him.

He wasn't too far gone, driving up Mobi Road, when he swerved to avoid, NO! the taxi swerved, because it was Jack who was in the wrong, he was the one all over the road BANG!!!!**##CRASH.

He hit the embankment at a great speed, and the four of them were killed out right, the marks from the impact are still there to this day, the marks from the bumper.

The News got to my dad that night, and while my mother stood at the opposite end of the room, she could see her husband crashing his fist against the table and crying "House warming party turns to tragedy" said the headline in the next days papers.

Maybe they were receiving a warning of some kind, if they were, then they were not listening.

they continued on with their drinking and merriment and on and on they went, days of wine and roses had nothing on this couple, they were the film.

                                                 Chapter five

My parents moved to Coolock from Glasnevin and there they concieved me, the year was 1966 and the month was july.

My Mother was already bringin up my two brothers and one sister, from here on in it would be homes, Goldenbridge, Lynden .

I was born a blond haired child, and have no memories at all of living in Coolock and there are no pictures of me as a babe.

My mother would keep her drinking under control then, she was at this particular time, a quite drinker, and not yet susceptible to the outbursts of uncontrolled fits of violence and drink and lunacy that she would soon fall prey to.

I believe it all really started when she move from Coolock to No; 25 Silogue Road in Ballymun.

I can remember one incident, involving a Priest, I must have been no more or less that six, maybe even seven, when my mother, because of the upsurge in violence within her self, were she would totally loose it, she brought a Local Priest in, I can see it as if it were only yesterday and its only just come to mind right now.

I can see them both talking with the Priest about their new home and as to whether it might actually have some bad spirits in it.

So between them they both arranged to have the flat blessed and cleaned of anything bad.

Well from this day forth, things didn't get better they got worse.

What ever he Priest had done, had not worked, because this place was the true beginning of hell.

Hell is on Earth People, not underground, it's a state of mind that one person can fall into and then they drag the entire family with them.

As I Have said, I don’t remember anything of Coolock and maybe the reason had something to do with the fact that it was so quite there, and it was true that maybe my mother was a quite drinker then, so that maybe things really did start to get worse in NO:25.

25 Sillogue Avenue was just into the left, off the main Ballymun road.

We lived in the four stories back there all those years ago, it feels to me like a long long time ago now.

The inside of the flats were cosy and warm as they were centrally heated, with constant running hot water all of the time.

There was my mam and my dad my sister and two brothers

I slept with my two brothers in the same room, when you would walk in through the main door, you would turn left and just up two steps you would turn right in to the hall.

The hall was quite a stretch for a child, and at the end of the Hall on the right side was the boys room, and then back again some more, on the left side was my parents room, and back just a couple more steps was the room, were my sister slept. Three rooms in all.

It could have been like a little paradise, but instead it became a living hell, a nightmare among nightmares.

I would wake up in the morning and greet the new day, with a bright sunlit sky, happy within myself, except for been aware that soon I would be called for school.

I hated school, from the first day, I can remember it been a day of tears and don’

T leave me mammy and all that stuff, you know!

The usual stuff that children go through., but before long I got into it as best as I could. 

There were many days, I would wake and my mother would have forgotten to call us, due to a nights drinking.

She would usually get us up and send us both over, but soon she would neglect to send us too school on an every day basis, or she would have us go in late.

When this started doing this, my Gran got wind of it and started popping up every morning for awhile, top get us up for school.

She was a stickler for school, my grandmother.

We as kids would be laying there and like children do, we would be hoping that our mother had forgotten to call us for school, but then, the knock on the door would signal grans appearance as she made her way up the hall behind my mum who had just answered the door.

, on those bright summer days.

They would talk for a while in the kitchen and then, we would be called for school.

My Brother and I WOULD GRUMBLE AND WHINE THAT WE WOULD BE LATE IF WE WENT TO SCHOOL NOW, BUT AMIDST THE WHINES AND THE PROTESTS WE WOULD BE told “Look you’re going to school and that’s all there is to it”, my gran would say firmly and sternly.

“But we will be late”.

“I’ll write you a note” My mother would say, so after breakfast, I and a half breakfast and a bit of bread and jam we would toddle over to the blue school, the Holy Spirit, School