My daughter Emma Katherine Roey, now Emma Buchheim, lied about a friend being raped and attempting suicide, claimed to have been molested by a priest, and then, just as her attorneys were about to file a law suit, Emma accused her mother (me) of physically abusing her and later of poisoning her with DDT. Emma claimed to have a toxicology report to confirm that her mother (me, again!) poisoned her, but would never turn over this report to my attorney. If you read through the blog, you will find many other examples of Emma’s lying. At one point, she even complained about the way her dad touched her and that he called her a “bitch” and a “slut” everyday. (I refused to listen to her when she talked about her dad like that.) As long as Emma continues with the lies, I will tell her story.  Emma and her current husband, Tyler Buchheim live in Frisco, Texas where Tyler, who has put architecture on hold, is studying to be a Full Stack Developer at the Flatiron School in an effort to avoid a midlife crisis (according to Tyler).  Emma works showing and leasing swanky apartments in Frisco.   Emma and Tyler are the parents to two little dogs, Arya and Sansa.  (Emma is a huge Game of Thrones fan.)  Love and thanks to all of you who read and have written to me. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me at: losingemma@gmail.com Please continue to share the blog with others.

Parental Unit Days

Goodness, I had wanted to share my thoughts for Mother’s day, but have been so busy, I didn’t get to it, and now it’s almost Father’s Day!

I can now share from the perspective of surviving my 8^th Mother’s Day without my daughter. This was the first time in 8 years that I could actually say, “Happy Mother’s Day” and mean it. I didn’t want to hide from or ignore the day. Of course, I still miss my Emma, and I’m still hoping she’ll grow up, but she is what she is, and I didn’t fall into the pits of despair just because it was Mother’s Day. I wasn’t expecting a card, a call or an e-mail, so Emma didn’t disappoint me, but actually, I had a pretty nice day. I did have to work, but then came home and went to a cook out with some friends, and had some good food and good company on a beautiful, albeit warm, day, and I even got a couple of Mother’s Day cards from my very thoughtful sister and brother-in-law (and my dog) who were thinking of me.

When you’re a mother, everyday is Mother’s Day, but it is nice to have one day to be acknowledged for all you do for your child/children. The cooking, cleaning, diapers, runny noses, vomit, tears, boo boos, sickness, homework, school projects, chauffeuring and then sitting around, bored, while your child gets to do whatever fun activity they are involved in like swimming, kayaking, softball, karate, soccer, art class, choir, youth group, brownies, piano lessons, drama, therapy….. For mom, so much of that stuff is pure boredom and a lot of waiting around, but then when you get to see some of those moments, like when your child catches the fly ball, or breaks a board in karate, or just has a fun, silly time at play group, it is pure joy. To see them grow and learn and accomplish a task or grasp a concept, those are the moments we moms love, just watching our babies thrive in life.

As a child, Emma got to do so many more activities than Phill and I ever got to do as children, but as her mom, I just wanted to open her eyes to new experiences. I wasn’t expecting her to become a great black belt in karate, or a classical pianist, but I wanted Emma to get to try different things, and to be able to appreciate the effort that goes into them. Maybe Emma would never be a black belt, but by taking karate for a while, hopefully if she met someone who was, she would understand how much work went into earning that black belt. If she took a pottery class, maybe she would see a beautiful piece of pottery one day and understand and appreciate what goes into the making, the glazing, the firing of the piece.

Like most kids, I don’t think Emma appreciated how lucky she was that any extracurricular she was interested in, Phill and I would try to work out her being able to do. And, like a lot of kids, Emma never found anything she really loved. She never stuck with anything too long, but that’s ok. I always hoped she would find something she loved and could put some time and energy into, but Emma seemed to get bored with a lot of things, so we’d finish that activity and try something else. Or, if Emma didn’t excel at something right away, she wanted to quit whatever activity it was. (Smart child problems.) She didn’t seem to grasp that you didn’t become the best at something the first time you tried it. For a while, I was a glass bead maker, until Phill threw me out of our home and kept all my supplies. I took a beadmaking class (working on a torch) on a whim because a friend wanted to do it, and I was the absolute worst one in the class. I’m not very coordinated anyway, and I dropped things, and spilled things and really didn’t do great at all, but I loved it and it just made me want to try harder to “get it.” I practiced and took more classes and later began selling my work. I found that through hard work and maybe some natural talent, I was actually pretty good, better than a lot of people who’d been doing torch work longer than I had. I don’t do it anymore, and as I said, Phill has or had all my supplies (I would guess that he probably sold all my stuff.) Just before Emma got Phill to throw me out of our home, Emma had asked me to teach her to work on the torch, so we were planning on, that summer, when she was out of school and had some time, me teaching her my craft. In any event, I hope Emma enjoyed all the things she got to do.

Emma with Johnathan and Derek McCravy, helping with the church camp at Sunrise Baptist Church, Lawrenceville, Ga.

I have a friend, who when I joke about being the world’s worst mom, or being a child abuser, this friend jumps in and says, “You were an awesome mom!” and then she reminds me of how I was saying all the time, “Oh Emma would enjoy that, I should take her to do that….” and how I was always thinking of Emma and if an opportunity came up, I would drop everything for Emma to have the opportunity to do something. Thank goodness for friends!

Before Mother’s day, I kept seeing articles about when Mother’s day is a disappointment. One article was about women wanting to be mothers, struggling with infertility. Another article was about “when you didn’t get the mother you deserved” and I figure that one had to be written by a millennial, maybe even Emma! I started thinking of all the people I know who’ve had some pretty horrible mother’s days. I know people who have lost a child to death, divorce, drugs, and mental illness. I know other parents who are estranged from their children for one reason or another, and some of them don’t even know why they are estranged. I think my own situation is so horrible, but all I have to do is look around, and I can find someone worse off than me.

Those of us that have survived something so horrible as mothers can tell you the one thing we have that no one can take is our memories. My dear, sweet husband wouldn’t let me have any of my things other than clothes and books, and a couple of odds and ends, and what hurt the most was that Phill wouldn’t let me have any of Emma’s baby photos (99% of which were taken by me). I’ve wondered what Phill did will all the little things around the house that were gifts to me from my sisters or from friends. The cross stitch switch plate cover that a friend made me, the little tree on the mantle and the fake asparagus plant in the kitchen that my sister gave me, the glass vase hanging on the wall in our bedroom that a friend gave me one birthday, the dream catcher that hung from the ceiling fan in our bedroom along with some other dangles that Emma had made for me, and the fan pulls in the living room that I traded some glass work that I did for. I had asked Phill for the full bed in the spare room, figuring he and his girlfriend would need our queen bed, and he never gave it to me. Many of you know I was living in a furnished house, so when I bought my home, I brought my mattress and box springs, and I am proud to say after living her a year, with a mattress on the floor, I finally bought a bed. Lol. There are so many things I need, a bed just wasn’t at the top of the list.

Anyway, sometimes I’ll think of things and wonder what Phill did with my ________ (fill in the blank), but having survived Emma, I can honestly say things aren’t that important to me. I don’t even think much about all the wonderful baby photos anymore. I learned a lot more about my husband than I ever wanted to know and found out he wasn’t quite the good man he took pride in believing he was. Emma liked to joke that Phill was weak and pathetic, controlled by us girls (and then controlled just by Emma) and a dumb truck driver…. Phill couldn’t stand up for me or to me, and I had to be the disciplinarian and be the bad guy, but I still always thought we were a team, and I confused my husbands work ethic with his morals. I knew he was a hard worker, and thought he would work just as hard at his family, but I was wrong. Early on, in the middle of all the drama, I was seeing a therapist and said something about being 50 and having to start my life over, and she reminded me that I would be 70 and starting my life over, so there is that. At 50+ I’ve done a lot of things I probably should have learned to do before I got married, so I wouldn’t have been so dependent on my husband, and I’m still learning. It does make me wish Emma had grown up before she got married, because she will probably end up in the same boat, but I’m her mom and there’s not much I can do about that.

I was fortunate enough to be a stay-at-home mom, and when I did work, it was just a little part time job. In a lot of ways, that will hurt me financially in the long run, but I have something that no one can take away, and that’s all the memories of raising Emma. From Emma’s poopy face when she’d turn all red and you’d ask, “Emma are you pooping?” (in her diaper) and she would deny, deny, deny, which we thought was hilarious, to all the conversations about life in general, and how up until a couple of months before Phill had me thrown out of our home, Emma would come in my bedroom every night before she went to bed and want to snuggle and have “girl talk” with me before she went to bed, no matter how bad it got, I was blessed to be a mom. The hours and hours of magical reading time, to playing in the inflatable pool, or blowing bubbles out on the driveway, there are so many moments that are such treasures. Yes, the later years were horrible, and Emma turned into a pretty crummy human being, but she was a wonderful baby, toddler, and child for a while, and I got to be her mom and see it all. Kids are a crap shoot, but even with all the horrible things Emma’s done, if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t know what being a mom was like.

I love you, Emma.

P.S.  Is Tyler done with the Flat Iron School yet?