Hi, my fellow fans of this thing that we call “sports entertainment”. I assure you that a special installment of “Wrestling with Lenny” for the next volume, but for now I need to address a more depressing subject: the death of my mother.
We four Mouse Brothers don’t speak of it much, because it is far too traumatizing, and – in many ways -, it made us who we all are today. Tragically, as you all saw this past Monday, I sincerely fear that the same fate is befalling my dear brother, Vinny. Let me take you back to the scene which saw all of us for the final time as a seemingly united family.
Growing up through the 1970s, we were a very famous nuclear family. The Disney Empire had been bestowed onto my father after his father’s partnership with Walt Disney made the success of the corporate juggernaut of entertainment possible. With five children – yes, I said five, and we will get into that later -, my father and mother took pride in raising the next generation to not only take the reins of this business, but to take it to greater heights than we had ever seen before.
You see, my father had learned everything he knew about this industry – meaning entertainment, as a whole – from Walt and my grandfather, and it is a sad fact of life that such included a ruthlessness which was apparently required in order to thrive. The lives of employees were seen as mere cannon fodder in a war for box office and television supremacy. This thought process was instilled in our father, and he made it a point to teach us kids – primarily Mickey (obviously meaning my brother, for simplicity sake) – the ways of corporate dominance.
The success enjoyed by the company produced a life of privilege which very few in existence will ever experience, and we were taught that we weren’t merely lucky, but rather that we were miles above everyone else in our destiny to walk as gods among men. My father had eaten up this affluent propaganda and had regurgitated it into our impressionable souls in attempt to mold us to be relentlessly ambitious upon growing up.
Much of this part of the story is well known, though, as it has been told and retold countless times throughout the last 30 years. What hasn’t been told has been the story from my mother’s perspective, or at least one which centers more on Minnie Maude Mouse.
Minnie was a quiet partner to my more camera-friendly father. Sure, she enjoyed the many joys of a life of luxury – I mean, who wouldn’t? -, but she also often kept to herself her disagreement with my father’s desire to breed selfishness through their offspring. She was the best of us, our heart and soul, our balance, our guiding light.
Father took more to Mickey and Vinnie than myself or Benny, because he saw in them greater potential for whatever reason. Mickey was his first student, and therefore got to go on many business trips with him. Vinnie, who had come to idolize Mickey and Father for a number of reasons, would tag along (often times undetected).
Benny and I, though, would spend more time with our mother during these trips. While we were with her, she would make it clear to us that she wanted us to be more compassionate than our teachings under father’s guidance would have us be. She would do the same with Mickey and Vinnie as well when she got the chance, but they were less receptive. Sadly, Mickey even once reported her actions to father one time, and after one very uncomfortable and even somewhat traumatizing argument, those lessons of compassion became fewer and farther in between.
As an apparent punishment for her “insolence”, father sent our mother on a month-long “vacation” to “set her straight”. We were never told where she went, but we do know that the woman who came back was less lively than the one who departed. She smiled less, laughed rarely, and conveyed less emotion overall. One very noticeable detail about her as well was that she wasn’t as healthy as she had once been.
I have always – in the years before and since – heard of the effects of a “broken heart”, and I can tell you first hand that this was the likely culprit of her then-new condition. This change was so obvious that it altered the entire atmosphere of our household, and that includes the decision by the fifth yet-unnamed child to leave.
I know that you are probably thinking that I am talking about Scott Nash, but you must remember two things: 1. we had no idea that Scott Nash was my father’s son, and 2. Scott was father’s illegitimate child with another woman
The sibling that no biography of our family has EVER talked about was Mickey’s twin: Mickie. Identical to Mickey in almost every way, Mickie was different from Mickey in one way other than the anatomical; she was actually very kind.
I understand that Vinnie, Mickey, and Benny will be utterly confused reading this. Reason being, that our father did everything he could to conceal the fact that Mickey wasn’t an only child. He told all of us – and forced our mother to follow suit – that Mickie was actually a cousin of ours who had to live with us because her parents had been killed in a tragic accident.
Mickie even had no idea who she really was for most of her life, as she was told since her toddler years that she was adopted by father because it is what his late-half-brother Vincent would have wanted. Does this manipulation sound familiar? Well, it definitely should, because Benny didn’t learn this shit overnight, but more on that in a little bit.
Forced to work as a sort of servant girl and told from birth that she would have no claim to the inheritance, Mickie was often the target for a great deal of cruelty by my father and Mickey. Vinnie, to his credit, held off for quite some time. However, he too would join in during a night of rough housing wherein he would trick Mickie into joining in on the childish play only to turn around and get really rough with her. I’m sure that you can see the building blocks for Vinnie’s particular brand of cruelty which would come to play later in life.
Was I perfect? No. Benny and I – falling victim to the immense peer pressure from our brothers – would assign back-breaking tasks to the sister that we never knew we had. For several years, he and I never did a single chore, as we would always compel her to do them for us. We were ultimately just as bad as Mickey and father at our very core. I will get to how I discovered the truth about her momentarily.
Back to the moment my mother returned from her vacation. When she returned, she had lost a lot of the life in her eyes to which we kids were accustomed. I would later find out that part of what she was subjected to during her time away was a series of intense therapy sessions by a young therapist from Belgium. This therapist was a former favored intern of father’s who had been trained in medicine with education financed by my father, so he was deeply loyal and would eventually be turned on us kids. More on him soon, I promise.
During her time away, Minnie took up the use of certain substances to deaden the pain of her heart, or so that’s what we were told at the time. She became distant from us for lengthy periods of time. No longer the beacon of hope and love in a grand mansion built on greed, she was a shell of what she once was.
Unfortunately, as she was gone, my father took it upon himself to explore other women and his own love of illegal substances. Leaving us with a nanny for days at a time, Mickey Senior abandoned any and all illusions of being the “father of the year”. No, this is not when Scott Nash was conceived, as that took place about a decade before this excursion.
By the time my saint of a mother had returned, father was different person as well. Well, sort of. Recall that he was always a bit of an asshole, but now he had had a taste of what unbridled financial power could offer, and he had concluded that my mother was nothing more than his baby-making property.
At the behest of my father, that therapist came to our home more and more frequently. At first, it was to “help” my mother, but then it soon became his objective to psychologically prepare us kids to step up when father’s time had passed.
To say that this doctor was manipulative is a massive understatement. His process included use of various forms of psychological torture; which itself involved getting siblings to gang up on one another to “create an atmosphere of ruthless competitiveness”.
It was as part of this manipulative approach to grooming monsters that Mickey conceived the lie that Benny “eats paint chips”. At first, it started as what looked (at least at that time) like innocent teasing when Mickey saw Benny pretending to be a monster bursting through drywall in a room that was being constructed. Benny was chasing Mickie around and pretending to eat the wall to add to the illusion of being an out of control beast, and it was while Benny held the piece of drywall close to his mouth that Mickey came in the room and started laughing out loud.
Mickey was so relentless in this teasing that the therapist encouraged him to use it as a tactic in our “games of business conquest”. Our older brother would get the whole household in on the fun, making jokes at Benny’s expense, and even once using food coloring to turn a bowl of Benny’s corn flakes white while Benny went to the restroom.
Benny was mortified and nearly killed himself once as a result of the torment brought about by Mickey, at the direction of the Doctor, on father’s dime. This sinister so-called therapist once had even twisted Benny’s mind into thinking for quite some time that he was adopted…just like Mickie.
When the Doctor saw that our unknown sister was attempting to comfort Benny one day, he decided to turn us on her. We were told to take all of her favorite possessions and put it on top of a pyre as she was helplessly watching. The contest was set up to reward the first of us boys to get to a match first, at any costs. Benny refused and was “grounded” for a week as result – which meant that he had to follow the orders of the winner of the contest, that being Mickey -, and Mickie lost it. Mickie had had enough, and showed herself out the door. Saying she couldn’t live in such a twisted place, she packed her bags, and we haven’t seen her since.
This brings me to the moment that I found out that Mickie was our sister. It was later that night after she moved out. I could hear my mother screaming at father. He kept trying to calm her down, but she blurted it out: “YOU SENT MY ONLY DAUGHTER AWAY! HOW COULD YOU TREAT HER LIKE SHE WAS ADOPTED?!”
I then heard a loud slap…and then nothing, except wimpers. No, Mickey, you were not the only one who heard it; just the only one who saw the abuse with your own eyes.
I tried to hide, but moments later my mother came out of the room in a hurry and stumbled into me. The look of fear in her eyes for what she knew I overheard told me that I was most definitely not supposed to hear it. She quickly pushed me into the adjacent closet and knelt down with me. I was only able to utter the words “I have a sister?” At that moment, she lost all color in her face and quickly covered my mother. She asked me to never tell a soul what I had heard until my father, the doctor, and my oldest brother were dead.
Well, that is tragically a promise I can keep no longer. I am truly sorry, mom. Please forgive me.
In the years to come, our mother’s condition worsened exponentially. It was clear that there was something more deeply wrong with her than just the drugs and depression. We came to recognize that her pancreas was killing her, and it was beyond our control. Now, this brings me to the hardest part of the story: her death.
For as long as I live I will never forget the day that father and the doctor sat us all down and broke the news to us: Minnie was dying, and there was nothing they could do.
I was the first to visit her in the hospital, and I visited her more than my siblings for those last days of her life. With each of us visiting her, she tried to make the most of it; even through the pain. We were all in denial and pain, but she kept trying to help us see the “silver lining”.
The day she died was the worst of my life. Her last words to me and Benny were simply “don’t forget to show compassion”, but those moments immediately following her passing gave us anything but compassion.
I was devastated by her death; taking to writing my suicidal thoughts in my journal to the point that I had a whole book practically written within a few weeks. Benny shoved his pain deep down inside, but initially tried to be “the reasonable one”. His torment growing up was enough to teach him that showing any signs of weakness in this trying time would be a bad decision. However, we were the most tamed tales.
Vinnie took our mother’s death so hard that it hardened his heart. He felt that Minnie had failed us intentionally so as to undermine our progress under father and the Doctor’s leadership. Yet, the worst of us was Mickey. He showed no emotion outside of growing deeply silent and taking half an hour in his room alone before coming out and asking father to convene all of us with the Doctor. He wanted to know how to move on, how to exploit this, how to further enrich ourselves out of tragedy.
Two hours after our mother passed away, father and the Doctor called us into the main room of the mansion. The Doctor then took leadership over the meeting and directed all of us to share our reactions to the death as well as “what this tragedy taught [us] about how to persevere.” He then instructed us – while our father smirked and nodded, then applauded – to “use this to go to the next step”.
While Mickey was already in a prominent position in father’s company, the Doctor advised Mickey should not only remain in his role but inherit the reins when father stepped down. He stated that Mickey’s reaction and overall handling of the tragedy was the most befitting of what you “want in a leader”, and that such ruthlessness was “exactly what we need”.
The rest of our positioning under Mickey was in accordance both with our reactions and how father as well as the Doctor perceived our strengths…or lack thereof.
In the next few years, while father slipped further into drug abuse as well as physical and especially psychological abuse of us – his growing children -, the Doctor continued to guide us down our paths. He continued to manipulate Benny into thinking that he lacked any of the qualities needed to be a leader, and that he might as well consider himself to not be a member of the family at all. You can imagine what that did to him.
He then looked to me and encouraged me to “use [my] whiny and wimpy preference for journalism” for profit. Honestly, and I hate to admit this: without this guidance I wouldn’t be composing any articles, nor even commentating, as I had before.
With Vinny, he encouraged him to continue distrusting the intentions of women and to follow father’s footsteps in seeing them as little more than sperm receptacles. He praised Vinny for seeing Mickey as the model of what we should all strive to be, and encouraged him to continue down that path.
As for Mickey, the Doctor was and remains extremely fond of him. The two grew very close, even to the point wherein this Doctor helped Mickey justify trying to kill our father and falsifying the will that father never actually composed (at least, as far as Mickey was concerned up until 2008). Mickey made this Doctor a permanent part of his close circle has he launched his hostile takeover first of father’s company, then of the wrestling industry using the money he earned and kept primarily to himself from selling that company.
This Doctor has been with Mickey every step of the way, and he has even manipulated all of you into thinking that he is some kind of smart – sometimes comedic – addition. My brothers and I were raised to recognize him solely as “the Doctor”, but to you, he is the aptly-named Vice President of Mmouse Enterprises, Dr. Evil.
So, now you know the hardest parts of this story. The reasons why we Mouse Brothers are the way that we are, but I don’t want you to cast all of the blame at Benny, Vinny, Mickey, myself, or even the twisted Dr. Evil. The fact of the matter is that not even my father was solely at fault, because as much as I love and miss her; my precious mother – Minnie Maude Mouse – shares in an equal part of the blame.
All of us played our part in piecing together this dynasty of evil, and now it is incumbent upon me to serve the will of my possibly-dying brother, Vinny, as well as our beloved late-mother by putting an end to this and compelling everyone to “remember to be compassionate”.
It needs to end here, and it needs to end now.
Rest in Peace, Mother.
World Of Wrestling: Murrey Universe 