Still Life

Journey to Me: Entry #10

Entry #10 (Click here to read Entry #9)

My mom died February 18, 1988…she was 38 years old. I was 15 years old when my mother passed away. It had been exactly 2 weeks since my 15^th birthday when she died. Devastated. Heartbroken. Lost, Confused. Depressed…these were all the emotions that I was constantly experiencing when I lost my mom. It seemed so sudden. A week earlier we were home doing what we normally do and mom got sick…she couldn’t breath & she was having chest pains. She called to tell my aunt that lived in the same apartment complex as we did & she rushed over. Within the hour, the paramedics were in our apartment loading mom onto the stretcher and wheeling her off. On her way of the door, she told my brother and me to be good and that she would be home soon. By this time my cousin who normally came to take care of us when mom went to the hospital had made it to our house…we were so accustomed to mom being in and out of the hospital that this occasion was no different….we said our good byes to our mother and carried on with our youthful activities.

Three days had passed since my mother was admitted into the hospital. She called everyday to check on us as she always did…but on day 4 her call and tone were different than normal. As she and I were talking, she told me to always be a good girl and that she knew that I would grow up to be a decent young lady…she went on to say that I should always look out for my brother no matter what and that she knew that she could depend on me and most importantly of all she loved me more than I could ever know. Being a 15 year old kid, it didn’t register in my mind that she knew that she wasn’t coming home anymore. I just said yes maam to her requests and never thought twice about it. 12 hours later at about 3am, there came a knock at the front door.

It was my mom’s older sister and her brother…her face was swollen and her eyes were red. She walked over to my bed and told me that my mama wouldn’t be coming home…she said “baby…your mama has died. The devastation and heartbrokenness griped me like a pair of needle-nose pliers. I remember crying out in this loud voice of despair…my aunt grabbed me and hugged for what seemed to be forever.

My brother was 7 years old when mama died….they were closer than close. When my aunt told my brother it hurt him to his core. He was 8, but he was ahead of his time. He understood exactly what my aunt was telling him & he wailed in despair. He slid out of my aunt’s lap and ran to my mother’s bedroom and into her closet….he pulled down all of her clothes and lay on top of them crying his little heart out.

February 18, 1988 was by far the worst day of my life.

Aquarius.Soul © 2010

Journey to Me: Entry #4

Entry #4 (Click here to read entry #3)

My parents broke up midway through my 10th year of life. As a kid, I always thought that my parents were married. After they split, I found out that they had never been married. Back in those days’ people would use the terms shacking and common law marriage as a way to describe couples who had lived together for a while and had kids. This is what my mom and dad were: common law married. When my parents split, my mother, brother and I moved in with my saved, sanctified, Holy Ghost filled church grandmother. Needless to say that this was a major culture shock. To go from having your own room and space to sleeping on the floor with a pallet was a major change. In addition to the three of us living there, my mothers 3 dead beat brothers lived there too. So in a 3 bedroom; 1 bathroom house there were 2 kids and 5 adults. Needless to say we were stuffed in there like sardines. I recall my mom and grandmother arguing very often about various things: one of the main things being my mom’s lack of church attendance and her habit of smoking. As I mentioned previously, this grandma was a church matriarch…spent 4-6 days at church for prayer meetings, revivals, and other church functions and she of course wanted us right there by her side. My mom grew up in these circumstances, but once she became and adult she vowed that she would not force her children to endure what she had endured when it came to church.

After this major change in my life, I realized that my dad was a major deadbeat, but I still loved him. I can recall my mom struggling to make ends meet. Dad hardly ever came around and when he did, he had the gall to hand out $5 to my brother and I like that would erase all the other crap that he did, but I still loved him. We eventually moved out of my grandma’s house once my mom had been approved for government housing assistance. We moved into a yellow 2 bedroom wood-frame house in a marginal neighborhood, I hated that house. It never really felt like home, but there was nothing I could do about that. As a kid I believed that things were ok. I had a lot of friends in the neighborhood and we would run and play without a care in the world. Looking back, I can see that my mom was a total rock through all of the things she endured raising my brother and I. My dad sucked for the entire decade of the 80’s. He came around when he felt like it. He never really contributed to the well being of his kids. He believed that dropping by on the weekend and taking my brother and I for a burger was acceptable. He would give my mom a hard time when she would ask him for help on bills…it was a total mess. I can recall many times where our lights got disconnected and we would have to sit in the dark with candles until mom found a way to get them reconnected. Our gas got disconnected from time to time as well…and my so called father never stepped up to help unless it was convenient for him. To this day I think that they only way he would help my mom out was if she slept with him. I recall him coming by the house and the two of them would be sitting in the living room talking about stuff and he would say to my mom: “come step into my office” meaning the bedroom…they would be in there for hours and then of course, the next day the lights would be back on.

Around the age of 13 my mom started to date this dude named John. He was a chef who on the surface seemed to be a good dude. He was nice to my brother and I and he seemed to make my mother happy. After about 6 months of dating, somehow this guy ended up living with us. I couldn’t believe this shit. Why does this dude have to stay here with us in this little ass house? Despite my pleas, he moved in anyway and within 2 months he was standing over my bed in the middle of the night looking down on me. I awakened and he put his finger up to his lips and said shhh as he began to pull my covers back. What John didn’t know was that I wasn’t about to let him crawl his nasty ass up in the bed with me. I began to scream to the top of my lungs and my mom ran to the room and caught his ass standing there with his dick out. He tried to diffuse the situation, but mama wasn’t hearing that. Back in those days, people would raise their windows and would have to put a stick of some sort under the window to keep it up. We kept our stick right in the hallway outside of my room…mama grabbed that stick and whacked John in the back of the head and threw him out in his drawers that night. From that day on, my mom was my HERO.

Aquarius.Soul © 2009

Buck Up!

We have become a society of weaklings. Adults are weak, our children are weak; everybody starts to cry when some bird shit lands on their shoulders. I don’t get it…why can’t we suck it up and continue to live. The whole bullying initiative has its place (physical violence etc), but I think it would be better if we taught our kids to stand up for themselves and not wuss out because someone called them fat, gay or ugly or sends them a nasty email. I was a kid of the 80′s and kids have always been cruel to each other….bullies have always existed. When I ran home and told my mother what so and so said about me: her response was always something along these lines: ” so what! why are you crying over something somebody said? Are you what she said you are? then don’t worry about it.” There was never a time in my young life that I ran home contemplating suicide because someone called me a name.

I’d really like to know what has changed since that time. Why are kids killing themselves because little johnny picks on them? Why are adults in therapy because their coworker called them fat? Why are we so depressed as a society? Where did our backbone go? What happened to standing flat-footed and telling the world where they can stick it? What happened to the days when parents didn’t get involved in the neighborhood kids disagreements, but let them work it out for themselves? What happened to self-confidence and self-esteem? Why can’t we stand up for ourselves anymore?

Now we have bullying initiatives, to combat life problems. Parents don’t teach their kids how to deal with life’s issues and problems anymore and the result is suicide, drug use and god knows what else. I guess it makes sense though; because if the parents are skipping through life on one leg, they don’t have the wherewithal to teach their kids how to deal with life’s issues. We can protest and have forums on bullying all we want…they will still exist. Taking a different approach would probably do us all some good. I personally am sick of the whining from parents and the media about the big kid, teased the little kid for 5 years and the little kid decides to shoot the big kid because he bullied him. GTFOH!

What are we gonna do in 15 years when the same ill-prepared for life kids have their own kids? Be prepared for an onslaught of more bleeding hearts with nothing to contribute but more crying and whining.

She’s Back

Little J is back with us as of October 2010! Needless to say, we are excited to have our newest resident with us again. Without going into much detail, Little J’s mother called and asked if our offer to put J in preschool was still on the table…of course it was, so her mother allowed her to come home again. We don’t know how long she will be here, but we are grateful that God has opened doors where something like this could happen…mainly for the sake of Little J. Our goal is to give her as much love, training, education and discipline (cause u know the kiddos can get outta hand) as possible. Preschool aint cheap either, but I dont mind giving up a pair of shoes here and there in order to give the baby what she needs; and I am happy to do it. If you can provide a child with a better life and overall existence that you had, it is a blessing.

Welcome back Little J! <throws conffetti>