Cathrine
A memoir
Written by
Cathrine J. Lata
Contents
Preface 3
1. My family’s background 4
2. Life after Ronnie 7
3. My Early School years 9
4. Third grade through fifth grade 12
5. The final year at Dick’s house 15
6. Leaving Dick’s and the court trial 20
7. Dick is released and my world crumbles 23
8. College and drinking 27
9. Sobering up and marriage 29
10. Life takes another turn at 24 31
11. Living with others and myself after the accident 40
12. Why I want to share my life with you 44
13. Living victoriously and successfully 47
Preface
Many of us are born into difficult situations and circumstances that require us to struggle against great odds in order to be successful. Whether the strife is dressed with color, poverty, disabilities, or abuse it doesn’t change the fact that we face challenges that try to restrain us and keep us down.
Although my story is filled with details that may be shocking to you, even unbelievable, I am provoked by a drive within me to make a difference in the lives of others. I refuse to let the things that have taken place in my life be in vain. Furthermore, I will not let people shut me up, just because they are uncomfortable with what I have to say. I lived under tyranny for too many years to allow someone to quench the fire that burns in me. I will tell my story and my successes in order to help others overcome their circumstances.
Most importantly, I want to show how I overcame the bondages that encompassed me and how those who were once significant figures in my life, are now distant memories. Their once taunting voices that echoed through my being have grown fainter as time has passed.
1
My family’s Background
“A father to the fatherless… is God in his holy dwelling.” Psalm 67: 5
The first several years of my life were spent in fear, isolation, and addictions. It is because of those years, I have come to believe that it isn’t how a person begins life that matters, it is how one finishes. One may ask, “At her age, what could she know about the end of life?” Well, let me explain with my story. The following details of our family’s history are based on information I received from my mother while she was still living and from my perspective growing up.
From the moment I was conceived, I began a desperate fight for life and sanity. Humanistically speaking, I was just a by-product of an affair that my mother had in her first marriage. My biological father, Ronald Lee Baldwin, abandoned us by the time I was six months old; both of my parents were married to other individuals.
According to my understanding, my father was a man who played the field. No one has put it in those terms, except me. I have come to this conclusion by the facts I have about him. I am not going to get into them, because the specifics about his life, and the other players involved, are not mine to tell. I am sure that I could not give a truly accurate account of their lives.
My mother’s marriage to her first husband Lacy, had been strained by many problems, but seemingly the biggest struggle was the birth of my brother Ronnie. I have to backtrack a year before his birth to describe the situation.
My mother had a physical defect that made it extremely dangerous for her to deliver babies. The doctors found this out during the delivery of her first child, my brother Rick. My mother and brother almost died because of the many complications in his birth.
After she and the baby recovered, the doctors’ advice to my mother and her husband Lacy, was for one of them to have surgery to prevent a second pregnancy. Their concern was that she would die in childbirth. In1960, husbands still had the lawful authority to make these types of decisions. I was never given the details as to why Lacy decided against either of them having surgery, but consequently, within four months, my mother was pregnant with her second child, my brother Ronnie. Throughout her pregnancy the doctor who had delivered Rick, told her that she was going to die during labor.
On November 1, 1961 my mother went into labor. Her doctor rode with her in the ambulance to the hospital. My family lived in a rural area, so the closest hospital was an hour from where they lived. When they arrived at the hospital, the doctor informed the medical staff that my mother had to have a cesarean section or she would die. The staff waited until her doctor left and then proceeded to make her deliver vaginally.
Needless to say, she was not able to have the baby just like her doctor had warned, and because of the complications they had to take the baby with forceps. They damaged the baby’s head so badly they kept him from my mother for three or four days after he was born. She told me that when she was finally able to see him he was still in terrible shape. He had cuts and bruises all over his head.
While Ronnie was still a newborn he started having gran mal seizures. My mother was out of the room during the first one. My brother Rick, who must have been around two years old, was in the room with him when it happened. When he saw that the baby was in trouble, he went to my mother, and told her that the baby had fallen off the couch.
It was during this time that my grandmother suspected something was wrong with Ron’s vision. She told my mother she thought the baby was blind. She was a mother of nine, so obviously she understood the development of babies. Sure enough, years later the doctors confirmed my grandmother’s assessment. With the advancement of medicine they determined that he was legally blind. Throughout the first six years of Ronnie’s life the doctor who delivered him, and was his pediatrician, would continually lie to my mother about his health.
The hardships that this young couple faced must have been tremendous. Evidently, Lacy started struggling with life, because he would come and go from their household. During Ronnie’s birth, my mother’s pelvic bones had expanded, which permitted her to have more children. Of course, they wouldn’t know that until two years later when she gave birth to her third child, my brother Dan. I can’t imagine the stress she must have been under during this pregnancy. From what I understand, she didn’t have any complications with his delivery. A year later she gave birth to a fourth child, my sister Barbie.
When Ronnie was around four years old, Lacy had an affair with his best friend’s wife, Ginger. My mother told me that she didn’t know that he was cheating with her, so it’s ironic that she had an affair with Ginger’s husband Ron at the same time. This is where I come in. I was conceived during the affair, however, I grew up thinking that Lacy was my father, and I had his last name. My mother didn’t tell me the truth about my biological father until a couple of weeks before I turned twenty.
My brother Ronnie continued to have many health issues. Although his body grew, he did not grow in his mental, or physical development. Ron’s health problems prevented him from ever attending school. As a toddler, he had managed to get around in a walker, but as he grew my mother had to carry him on her hip. When I was born, he was still wearing a diaper, and his language skills had never progressed beyond that of a toddler.
When Ron was six years old, some specialized doctors came to my mother’s home from Pittsburgh, PA. They performed a series of tests on him. Ronnie’s pediatrician had been telling my mother that he was just delayed in his development, and that he would eventually catch up with the other children. However, the test results showed that his health problems were not biological. They doctors concluded that his condition was caused during his birth, and they sent my mother back to the pediatrician for his records.
Conveniently, neither the hospital, nor the pediatrician had any records of his birth. My mother had dropped out of school in the eighth grade to help support her mother’s family and although her husband was an intelligent man, he was illiterate. Ultimately, their lack of education, and poverty left them vulnerable to the system.
2
Life after Ronnie
and my toddler years
“You hear, O Lord, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry; defending the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is on the earth, may terrify no more.” Psalm 10:17 (NIV)
Shortly after my birth, my mother’s marriage deteriorated even more rapidly. By the time Ronnie was seven, the state persuaded my mother to put him into the Altoona hospital. It is located in Southwestern Pennsylvania. It broke my mother’s heart to give Ronnie over to them. She only let him go, because they told her that he would return to her someday. He never did.
Her marriage to Lacy ended legally during this time. Soon afterward, she married her second husband, Dick Earle. This man was not my father, nor was he ever a father to me. He was a very cruel and evil man. Almost immediately, he began to abuse me physically, sexually and psychologically.
According to my mother, I was not a happy toddler. I was a very nervous, angry child who shook all the time. The various stories about me that come from my family members contain details of how I acted out in anger toward people. For example, I would bite people so hard that I would draw blood. Also, my uncle Alfred told me several years ago about an incident where I was hiding on a staircase. Evidently, I threw something at him, and hit him in the head. This story surprised me, because I had only ever remembered him as being one of my favorite uncles.
When I was in my twenties, my cousin Penny spoke to me about how mean I was as a small child. At that point, I was increasingly telling more people of the abuse I had suffered at Dick’s hand. I told her that I had been molested and physically abused by Dick until I was ten. Because of the secrets that my family kept, she was totally unaware of any of these facts.
Some of the psychological abuse occurred when Dick took moments that should have been a blessing to me and orchestrated them to be condescending and cruel. To exemplify, when I was a preschooler he brought two gifts home, one for my sister and one for me. I remember how excited we were holding those packages in our hands. The gifts were wrapped in plain brown paper. It was the type of wrapping paper that stores often used in those days.
My sister unwrapped her package faster than me. It was a doll with blond hair. It was flat, and made out of thick cardboard that stood about her height. When I opened mine the little girl had black, curly hair. At this point, the back of the girl was facing me. I was so happy. While I was laughing and hugging it, Dick started to laugh; it was a laugh I knew well. It was a domineering and mean laugh. I stopped smiling and became very somber. I turned the doll around to see what he was laughing at. Instantly, I saw the doll was a different color than Barbie’s; mine was black. I looked at the doll, then I looked at him, and I screamed in anger, “I hate you, I hate you!” I threw the doll down, and ran away from him.
My family had always lived in very remote towns in Pennsylvania. I had not been exposed to any other race except my own white race. While I didn’t understand that it was the color of the doll he was making fun of, I did understand that it had something in common with me; it was something that he hated.
Years later, when my son David was about six months old, I had a chance to talk with my mom about the doll. She told me that the doll had become my favorite toy, and that I played with it all the time. When she thought about it, she couldn’t remember what happened to it.
Today as I write about it, I think it is ironic that I would love that doll. And I wonder how it made Dick feel about my taking an object, that he obviously detested, and making it a cherished possession. Here I was only a preschooler, yet, I made the choice to love that doll despite him.
Another incident that occurred when I was very young, involved a gun. Although, I wouldn’t remember it consciously, I relived it in my dreams. The whole time I was growing up, I had this repetitive dream. It always had the same details in it, except sometimes, the pace of the dream would slow down, and Dick’s laughter would be more looming.
The fine points of the dream... Dick and I were alone in a dark room that appeared to be a basement. The only thing I was wearing was a diaper. He stood in front of me pointing a black handgun at me. He would laugh at me, and then fire the pistol. The bullet would hit me in the stomach. At that point, everything went black.
As I previously stated, I had this dream throughout my childhood. Then one day, after I had graduated from high school, my brother Rick and I were talking about recurring dreams. I mentioned to him that I had one, and told him about it. His response to me was that he couldn’t remember the details, but when I was little, Dick had shot me with some sort of gun. He thought that it might have been a BB gun.
Obviously, he didn’t shoot me with a real pistol, because I am still living. And I do not have any scars that resemble a bullet hole on my body. However, related to this incident or not, I do have a scar that measures roughly a quarter inch long, and about an eighth of an inch wide near my left rib cage. It has been there as long as I can remember. I haven’t had the dream since I spoke with Rick. However, I have had many dreams that involved a handgun and being shot.
3
My Early School Years
“I will be glad and rejoice in your love, for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul.” Psalm 31:7
When I was five years old, Dick persuaded me that I had killed Santa. Yes, that’s right, I killed Santa when I was only five years old. There are many details about my childhood that I can’t remember. And bearing on the fact that I was only a small child, some of the abuse that happened to me is hard for me to narrow down to a definite time. However, I am pretty positive that I must have been five, and that the incident happened on the last Christmas before I started first grade. I base my calculation on where we were living at the time. We lived in a white house on the edge of town in Austin, Pennsylvania.
When I was about thirty-seven years old, I went around to several of the towns where my family lived while I was growing up. When I arrived at this house, I had a difficult time remembering if it was the last house in that section of houses, or the next - to - last one. Later when I sat and thought about it quietly, I came to the conclusion that it had to be the last one.
Nevertheless, in this particular house, Dick had taken Santa hostage in a bedroom. He had threatened to shoot him if anyone came into the room. Well, I didn’t understand the repercussions of what I was about to do, because I was young and very curious to see Santa. The doorknob hovered over my head, as I peeked through the open door. I could see Santa lying on the bed. I had only begun to scan the length of Santa’s body, when my eyes shifted over to where Dick sat. He was holding his rifle and looking out the window. He looked very distraught. It was a windy, and rainy night. Through the open window, I could see tree limbs swaying.
I had just finished looking out the window, when Dick whirled around and saw me. He rose from his seat, and came at me. Immediately I ran and headed for the stairway. He followed after me in a rage. I can’t remember what happened in the next few moments, but eventually he returned to the room and shot Santa. My disobedience had killed Santa; it was a lesson I never forgot.
This is one of my earliest memories, and when I look back on that evening, I am filled with horror that anyone could do this to a child. The night of Santa’s death paralyzed me emotionally. I became even more angry and hateful. I was faced with this terrible sin of my past for the first few Christmases after I started school. The other children were so excited that Santa was coming to their houses, but I knew better. Santa was dead, and I had killed him. I felt sad for them.
I don’t know how old I was before I found out there was no Santa, but that knowledge never truly resolved the death of the man on the bed. In my mind, Dick had killed someone that evening and I was to blame.
While I was in high school talking with a friend’s mother about the shooting, she raised a very important question I had never considered. It went something like, “If there is no Santa, who was the man on the bed?” At the time, I simply didn’t know. Later, I came to the conclusion that the Santa on the bed must have been a stuffed outfit.
For years, I lived with guilt. I struggled emotionally to rise above this horrific event. With guilt as a foundation of my development, I blamed myself for almost everything that went wrong in my family, and in life in general. It was a heavy load for a small child.
In the fall of 1971 my mother was pregnant with her eighth child, and she had two little ones in diapers. Therefore, she decided to send me to school when I was five. Kindergarten wasn’t offered in the area we lived in, so she had me tested by the school to see if I was ready for first grade. I passed the test they give to children, so I started school a week or two before I turned six. I might have been ready mentally, but I certainly wasn’t prepared emotionally.
I don’t remember ever having a sense of purity and innocence. My imagination during my early years was always filled with sexual images and acts. I don’t have any specific memory that involved Dick to back up what I am about to say, but I am pretty positive that he had already been having sex with me before I entered grade school. I base this not on my interaction with him, but with other children, and my thought processes.
Periodically, my mother would leave Dick, because he’d go crazy and beat her up. He was a very unpredictable man. He would be perfectly fine one moment, and the next a raging lunatic. Somewhere in the winter months of my first grade year we left Dick and moved to Bradford, PA to live with my grandparents. It was only for a short period of time, because I finished first grade in Austin. During our stay, I went to the West Branch Elementary School on Washington Street. I only have four memories of living there; two of them have always stood out in my mind as clear as day.
The first one happened at the school. The desks in my classroom were long enough to fit two people. I sat next to a cute, dark haired, brown - eyed boy. I remember I had a crush on him. We used to rub our pencils together and pretend that our erasers were kissing. The thing that disturbs me about the situation is that my imagination took me further than simple, innocent kissing. I would envision the two of us performing sexual acts.
This was non - typical imagination for young children in the early 1970s. Most children at that age still had a pure and undefiled mind. Kids didn’t have a clue about sex, unless someone exposed them to something they shouldn’t have.
A second memory that I want to talk about took place on a school bus. One morning my cousin Bernice and I were sitting next to each other. She was telling me stories about her and her friends playing in their clubhouse. The whole time she was telling me the story, I kept picturing them doing sexual things as part of their play. As she spoke, I pictured the little boys with hair on their genitals. Now, if I hadn’t been exposed to an older man’s body parts, how would I have had that kind of information? Someone must have introduced something to me that was not healthy for a six - year - old girl. Also, another basis for my suspicions that Dick was abusing me during my early years is that I can’t remember the first time he raped me. The abuse had always been apart of my life. I had been conditioned to go with him, to wherever he’d take me, and submit to whatever he decided to do to me.
Another example of the psychological abuse he inflicted on me, happened during my first two years of school. Dick would take my mother, and us kids on road trips. Often the trips would last so long that eventually I would have to go to the bathroom. Although I would tell him that I had to go, he would just keep driving, and tell me to wait. Eventually, I would end up scrunched up on the floor in the back in agony. I would often hold it to the point of tears. Finally, my body would just release the urine, and I would end up wet, and embarrassed.
When we returned to our house, he would take pictures of me in nothing, but a diaper. Later, when he had company, he would get the photo album out to show his guests the pictures of me. I remember watching their reactions and hearing the laughter. Those moments of sheer humiliation created so much anger in me, that when someone would laugh, and make fun of me, I was easily infuriated.
4
Third grade
through Fifth grade
“Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the enemy.” Psalm 107: 2
When I was in third grade, we left Dick’s house on foot in the middle of the night with only the clothes on our backs. My mother had seven of her eight children with her. The road was dark and long. The only lights we saw were the headlights of Dick’s car vacillating back and forth across the width of the road as he approached us. Repeatedly, he drove by us during the mile walk to town. When he was within our range of hearing, he would swerve the car in our direction, and yell out his window, “Next time, I am going to hit you.” I believed him wholeheartedly. With each passing, I was gripped with fear as his headlights came nearer to us. When we reached the Laundromat, my mother used the pay phone to call my grandparents for help. Time seemed to stand still as we sat there waiting for their arrival.
We lived apart from him for about a year and a half during this period. While we were searching for a place to live, we stayed with my aunt Joyce. One evening, after the adults left, Dick decided to terrorize us. We ran frantically throughout the house unable to escape him. Even on the top floor, we weren’t safe. He climbed onto the roof of the porch, and stood in the window pointing his gun at us.
Somehow he always knew where we were hiding. Although he never actually entered the house, his taunting was very effective. I remember running for safety from room to room, and my heart pounding hard and loud. My breathing was amplified in the dark closets. Numerous times during my childhood, I found myself hiding in closets. By the time I was in sixth grade, it was routine to scope out every bedroom I slept in for a place to hide. Overtime, the reasons for this behavior moved into my subconscious and lodged in my dream world.
Eventually, we were able to move out of my aunt’s home. The eight of us settled into a singlewide trailer on the outskirts of Roulette, a tiny, rural town in Pennsylvania. The only things that rested in between the little villages where we lived were a few scattered homes, and miles of pine trees.
The trailer was small. We had more people than we had rooms. Even though there were many negative and even tragic events that happened during our stay there, this time period holds the bulk of my happy childhood memories.
The abuse from my stepfather continued during his visitations. He would take one of his children and me to his place in Austin, PA for the weekend. His reason for taking me was that I could help with the child or children. As soon as we were in the car pulling away, he’d pull me to his side, and place his hand between my legs. I am not sure where the other children would go once we arrived there, but I remember that we were often alone in his home.
During our visits, he continued his deranged behavior, as if there was never any lapse of time. He always seemed to integrate something new into his scheme of abuse. For example, he began to watch me shower through the little bathroom window. It didn’t bother him when I would catch him; he would just stand there smiling at me, as if this kind of thing was natural.
Sometimes he would run my bath water. He would sit there, staring, and smiling at me while playing with the water as it poured from the faucet. I can’t tell you from a specific memory of an actual incident, but I know that he did things to me while I was in the tub. I know this to be true, because of certain behaviors and moodiness I have with regard to bathing. I seemed to get through junior high school okay with taking showers. However, when I hit high school, I would go through periods of depression. I would sit around our house for two or three days without bathing. To this day, I go through times where I find it difficult to get into a tub.
I had my first experience with suicide during our stay in Roulette. My uncle had broken up with his girlfriend. She apparently had some emotional problems that were triggered by the break-up. One night, after being released from a halfway house she came to our trailer. She pleaded with my uncle to take her back. When all her efforts failed, she became suicidal. She drew a lot of attention to herself out on the highway in front of our trailer. She threatened to commit suicide by lying down in the middle of the road. My mother and some other people tried to keep her from following through with it.
Unfortunately, they became so preoccupied in their conversations, they lost track of her. She had walked away from the group and lay down in the lane of the oncoming traffic. No one in the crowd realized she wasn’t with them until it was too late. An innocent married couple was traveling along the highway minding their own business when they hit her. She was dressed in dark clothes and the lighting was very poor on the highway.
I watched the entire scene as I stood at the window that was down the hall from the living room. Even though it was dark out, the headlights allowed me to see their movements. I remember a police car and an ambulance arriving at the scene. I could hear screaming and wailing.
My mother was frantic when she came into the house for a blanket to cover the body. I overheard her out in the living room as she questioned the older children on what the younger ones had seen. No one knew that I had been watching the whole time.
The next day, I saw a bloody blanket lying in the back of our station wagon. When my mother opened the door in my presence, she was taken aback at the sight of it. As she removed it, she tried to cover up its purpose. But I knew the truth of the matter, because I remembered her coming in for it on the previous evening.
In the days that followed, my uncle cried for long periods of time. I remember seeing him, and feeling bad for him, but I felt helpless. At this juncture, I began to question people about death. Someone told me that when people died they went to sleep, and dreamed dreams. Upon learning this, I reasoned that even though I had bad dreams they were not as bad as my reality.
From then on, I began my pursuit of death. I tried everything from pills to suffocation to drowning myself. I attempted these methods often. I believe I was in fourth grade when I overdosed on something that I had taken from the medicine cabinet. I don’t know what it was, but it made me extremely ill. I ran a fever of 104 degrees.
On the way to the doctor’s office, I suffered hallucinations. It was actually kind of funny when I think about it. The story goes something like this…My mother sat in the front passenger seat as my uncle Eddie drove the car. I was lying flat on my back in the back seat of the station wagon when suddenly the driver’s side of the car went up in the air, and rested on the tires, on the passenger’s side. I remember my head sliding up and touching the door. Through the window located directly behind Eddie, I gazed at the stars that spread across the clear, midnight sky. I could feel the car turn as it followed the curves of the road. This experience seemed to go on for a long time before the car went back down on all four tires. When this happened, I started pleading with my uncle to put the car back up on its side.
The longer I pleaded, and explained what I saw as they questioned me, the more it made them laugh. He and my mother had no idea what I was talking about. When we got out of the car at the office, I asked if we could do it again on the way home. The two of them insisted that Eddie had never put the car on its side.
Unfortunately, their relentless denial and laughter, made me think that they were lying to me. I was young and had never heard about hallucinations before. So consequently, I decided that they must be part of my stepfather’s scheme to drive me crazy. It wasn’t until I was older and learned about how fevers can cause hallucinations that I believed any differently than what I had experienced that night.
To my knowledge, no one knew why I was sick, except me. It took days for the fever to break. I was bedridden for about two weeks before I was able to stand up and walk to the bathroom.
That year I missed out on Easter completely, but don’t worry, my siblings did me the favor of eating all my candy. My mother promised to buy me more, but the season was already over, so I never received any.
Broken promises... Why do people make promises they can’t keep? I received so many promises as a child that I stopped trusting anyone who vowed anything. I came to believe that people who made promises were not trustworthy; they just want to appease you for the moment.
On another occasion at Dick’s home, he and another man were playing cards, and drinking alcohol. Obviously, I was used to drinking too, because I remember him allowing me to have some beer. While I was drunk they spun me around and laughed at me. I can’t remember anything else about the rest of the evening. And even though I can’t recall any other specific times where I drank, I developed a bond to alcohol by the time I was ten years old.
5
The final year
at Dick’s house
4 “The cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. 5 The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me. 6 In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears.” Psalm 18: 4-6 (NIV)
During one of my visits in Austin in 1976 or 77, Dick brought a man into his trailer through the back door. I was standing in the kitchen listening to them move about in the hallway. After a few moments, Dick came in. He started asking me to do him a favor. He wanted me to come to the bathroom. He said he wasn’t going to do anything to me. I am not sure why I felt I had the power to say no to him, but I did. He started bargaining with me. He promised that if I went into the bathroom, he would give me enough money to throw a party and that I could invite my friends. Quite honestly, I didn’t really know too many people in that area anymore.
He took eight brand new quarters out of his pocket, and offered them to me as part of the deal. I am not certain as to why I agreed to go with him. It was probably because I knew that sooner or later his smooth talking would turn to anger. As I approached the bathroom door, he put a handkerchief around my eyes, and knotted it at the back. He guided me into the bathroom, and closed the door behind us. He said something to me, spun me around several times and then stopped. He took my hands and placed them on something smooth. Naturally, I moved my hands around and over the object, trying to figure out what it was. It didn’t take long before I realized that it was a man’s private parts. Just as I was making sense of what was happening he told me to stop, and led me out of the room. I wasn’t sure what the involvement of another man was all about; I could only conjecture. Regardless of Dick’s intent, the whole ordeal with the stranger, and the money left me feeling like a prostitute for a long time.
Later, during my fifth grade year, we moved back into my stepfather’s house. By this time, I had grown accustomed to being restrained with rope, tape, and handcuffs. To make sure I wouldn’t scream, he’d tie a handkerchief over my mouth, and knot it at the back of my neck. I have scars on my wrists from the tight handcuffs. I also have a scar on the back of my neck, because he tied the handkerchiefs too tightly. I grew to despise those red and blue-checkered cloth handkerchiefs.
Often he took me into the bathroom to abuse me. He would take my clothes off, have me lie down on the floor, and then proceed to rape me. Defenseless, I lay there letting my thoughts drift off into oblivion. The only part of my body that seemed to feel anything was my head. I could feel it hitting the side of the bathtub as he moved up and down.
Sometimes he would take me in there to perform oral sex on him. I would stand there like a robot until he finished. Then I would start gagging and throwing up in the sink. He would act like a nurse to me. He would run the water, get me a drink, and say to me, “If you don’t like that, I promise I won’t make you do it anymore.” I knew better though, he was lying to me to calm me down.
Other times, he would tell my mother that he had to go to the store to purchase something, and that I was going with him. He would take us to a remote road. Once, as we sat in the car, he pulled out some tape. He talked about how this tape was supposed to be strong, and he wanted to experiment with me to see if I could get out of it. Then he proceeded to tape up my hands and feet, so that he could do whatever it was that he wanted to do. For the most part, I have blocked out any other substantial memories about those rides.
One evening, we arrived home late; my sisters were already in bed. The four of us slept in the same full - size bed; two of us would sleep at the top of the bed and the other two at the bottom. As I crawled in under the covers, Barbie asked me if he had done anything to me while we were out. I got very angry with her, and adamantly responded back in denial. At this point, I think she knew that something was going on between Dick and me. Yet, I had no clue that it was happening to her too.
Dick was a perfectionist. Everything had to be done right, and on the first try. There wasn’t any such thing as grace or mercy under his watch. For instance, when Barbie and I would do the dishes, he would always make his presence known by walking behind us periodically. If the washer missed food on a plate and the rinser didn’t report it, then both people were given so many whacks per piece of food with a belt. We tried to hide it from him, but he could always tell that we were feeling guilty.
For years, I struggled with giving myself grace, not only when washing dishes, but in life as a whole. Even later in life after I was married, I would become angry with myself when I pulled a dirty dish out of the cupboard. Sometimes, I would just start bawling when I was alone. After a couple of years of running my own household, I trained myself to deal with this sort of thing with less care. Presently, when I find a dirty dish, I am usually able to just put it in the sink and resist thinking about it.
One time during the sexual abuse, I complained about being cold instead of addressing what was actually happening to me. I was spread out naked on the top bunk. My hands were handcuffed to the posts at the bottom of the bed, and my feet were tied with rope to the posts at the head of the bed. To placate me, he twisted up a blanket lengthwise, and placed it in a snake-like pattern along my body. This didn’t help the way I was feeling, it only increased the uncomfortable feeling of being stretched out nude.
As he worked his way up the length of my body with his lips, I became fearful as he touched my breasts with them. I don’t know what came over me, but suddenly, I spoke up again and said, “I’m going to tell my mom.” He jerked his head up and looked at me. Without delay, he started to apologize with some kind of rambling. He took the blanket off me, and proceeded to remove the handcuffs from the posts and my wrists.
The consequences for making such a statement came soon afterward. One evening after he had finished taking a shower, he called out to me to get his pajamas from his dresser. I didn’t know what his pajamas looked like, so I didn’t recognize them when I saw them. I proceeded to tell him that I couldn’t find them. A few seconds later, he stormed out of the bathroom. He yelled threats at me, as he hurriedly moved passed me to his bedroom. Upon finding them, he began to give me a severe beating. After his rage heightened, he got out his handgun. At that moment, a couple of dogs started fighting behind our trailer, and it made him more upset. Angrily, he spoke of his intent to kill them, and he went outside in a rage.
The next thing I heard were the sounds of two gunshots coming from the backyard. When he came back indoors, he told me that he had killed the dogs. Then he knelt down beside me at the end of the couch. Pressing the hot pistol against my temple he said to me, “I swear to God, I’ll kill you if you ever tell anyone what I have been doing to you!”
Considering that I had just gone through the worst beating of my life, I believed his threats. I reasoned that if he could kill Santa, and two little dogs, surely he would kill me. After all, what was I? I was nothing, but a waif to him.
The police came to the house that evening to check out a complaint from our neighbors, concerning the sound of the gunshots. The conversation between Dick and the officer was pretty lengthy, but somehow he persuaded the officer that the neighbor had heard my little brother shooting his BB gun. During their conversation, the officer glanced over at me several times with concern. I was still frozen in the corner of the couch where I had been beaten. I am sure physically, I must have been in shambles.
Shortly after this incident, my sister confided in our mother about being molested by Dick and told her she suspected I was being abused too. When my mother came to me, she took me into the bathroom for privacy to ask me about it. This was an awkward place for me to answer such a question, taking into account I had been raped in that very room numerous times.
Initially, I said that he had never touched me. However, when I returned to my bedroom, I heard this internal voice speak to me, “If you do not tell the truth, this will continue to go on for a long time.” I’ve often wondered if it was God who spoke those words to me. Wherever that reasoning came from, the word’s impacted me greatly. Immediately, I went back to my mother, and told her the truth. I also showed her the bruises and strap marks on my body from the recent beating that occurred on the night the dogs were shot.
My sister’s timing was a real intervention in my life, because I had been contemplating killing Dick. Vividly, I can recall a specific day when I was in our kitchen watching my mother work around the sink. I stood there fantasizing about how easy it would be to stab him with one of the knives from the drawer, while he slept. He would never know what happened. The fear of his waking up, and catching me, prevented me from following through with it. I didn’t regard it as being right or wrong. In fact, I didn’t even realize it would be murder. I only thought about the outcome of being free from his captivity.
With this new information regarding my sister and me, my mother understood that we had to leave for good. However, there was no way she was going to leave empty handed like all the other times. She knew that it would only be a matter of time before he would go on another construction job.
As it turned out, he wanted us to follow him to his work site in the Chautauqua Lake area in New York. He, his dad, and his brother all had homes on the lake. Therefore, we left school a couple days early that year, and lived on the lake for the duration of the summer.
One evening around suppertime, I did something that made Dick extremely angry with me. He sent me to my bedroom, and then followed behind me. I was on the lower bunk when he started pounding me with his fists. When he was done, I had such a tremendous headache that it was almost unbearable.
After everything calmed down, my mother made an excuse to go to the store for Miracle Whip. She took me along with her. She told me in the car that she didn’t really need anything. She simply wanted to get me out of there and apologize for the fact that she hadn’t been able to get us away from him. I remember that I felt safe with her caring for me like that. Besides the fact, that there was so much stress in our house, she was always busy. It was a rare occurrence for me to spend time with her.
Unfortunately, my mother wasn’t innocent of beating me. I was in the fifth grade when her beatings began. I was seated on a couch in the living room, arguing with my brother Rick. Dick and my mother were in their bedroom. Their door was positioned next to where I was sitting. At one point in our argument, I told Rick that I hated him. My mother thought I was talking to her, and came out of the bedroom in a fury. She started screaming at me, and then proceeded to punch me repeatedly in the head and all over my body. Rick tried to defend me by telling her that I was talking to him, but it didn’t matter. She continued to wail on me. This was the first of many beatings I would receive from her.
After that day, whenever she would be highly stressed out with life, or with me, she would get me down on my bed, and start punching my head into the wall until all her rage was gone. Afterward, I would sit staring off into space for what seemed like hours. The beatings continued until I graduated from high school.
Up until I had my son, I thought the beatings were my fault. But as a mother, I realized that this was abuse and not a healthy way for a mother to treat her children. It was rather shocking to me to think of it in those terms. For me, the time line for my abuse had always ended when we left my stepfather. I must have compartmentalized the beatings I received from her, as something I deserved, as opposed to the times when Dick would beat me for no good reason.
I think these thrashings from my mother, correlated with memory lapses that I would experience at school. I would be walking through the halls on my way to a class, when I would forget where I was going. I wouldn’t know what grade I was in, or any of my teachers. If I saw a teacher walk by me, I couldn’t remember if they were a teacher I had presently, or in a past year. I would just wander the halls until my memory returned.
To this day, I dream about wandering the halls of a school with no idea what class I am supposed to be in. Occasionally, I will dream that I am in the wrong classroom, or that I don’t have the right books, or that I am not prepared for the lesson. I usually panic in the dream, and it becomes more of a nightmare than just a simple dream about being lost.
6
Leaving Dick’s
and the court trial
“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” Psalm 46:1 (NIV)
When we returned to Dick’s house in Austin, we waited again for him to leave for another construction job. Within days of our arrival, I was surprised to see a father and his daughter show up at our house. Her name was Charlie. I had met her at the lake. The grownups talked about how she and Dick were such good friends and that she would hang out with him without her parents around. Their visits to the house really upset me.
Although I hated him, I felt possessive of him. The thought of him touching another little girl felt uncomfortable to me. I was scared for her, and yet, jealous at the same time about the attention he was giving her. I knew he was buying her things. I vaguely remember asking my mom if something was going on between the two of them. She told me everything was okay and that it wasn’t like that.
I think my mother might have been in denial about the whole idea of Dick being mentally ill. I say this, because when I was in ninth grade she made a comment to me. She told me that she believed that he had only hurt us girls in order to get back at her for taking his kids from him so many times. But seriously, what man will violate little girls in spite? She didn’t know that the things he had done, had gone on for years, not just a few months.
After Dick’s departure for another job, we packed up all of our belongings and found a safe place to stay. I remember that whenever we went out, Barbie and I had to lie down in the back of the pick up truck, so that no one would see us. While filling out the report at the local police station, my mother was informed about the other women who had come to file complaints against him. My mother had no idea that there were others who had been hurt by Dick. The other women never followed through with the charges, because of threats and intimidation from his mother and him. When they arrested Dick, he volunteered to take a polygraph test. Even though he passed, they knew he was lying.
Previously, when my mother had questioned me about the abuse, she had kept it simple. She never asked me any details. No one ever told me that it wasn’t my fault, or that it was safe for me to tell what had happened. Therefore, the first time I told someone what he had done to me, I was scared to death. When the police officer interviewed me, he asked me some difficult questions. I panicked. I only told him minor details about what had been happening to me. I can’t remember what I actually did admit to.
The next time I was questioned, it was by the lawyers during the trial, at the courthouse in Coudersport, PA. And they did it front of twelve jury members, along with some of my family members. Dick was sitting in the same room as well. I had to place my hand on the Bible and swear to tell the truth. The idea of lying to God was frightening. I didn’t know much about him, but what I did know was enough. I had watched movies on television where God struck people down with lightning. So, as I sat there on the stand, I pictured him up in heaven in a judge’s robe with a gavel in his hand, just waiting for me to lie.
At this point, my immediate fear was of God, rather than Dick. I tried to tell the truth, but his lawyer started to accuse me of lying. Dick would laugh at me from his seat. His laughter was overbearing and controlling. Just his presence in the same room with me caused me intense stress. I was so scared, that I began to have mental blocks, and couldn’t remember anything that he had done to me.
His lawyer started to refer to my private parts by their real terms. So, when he would use words like buttocks, vagina, or penis I had no idea what he was talking about. I can’t even remember the exact words that he was using, because I wasn’t familiar with them. I just know that he was referring to my body parts. It was 1977 for crying out loud!
Sure some kids may have been familiar with the term buttocks, but how many knew the technical terms for their other private parts? I had never heard those terms before, so I just sat there. The lawyer became so agitated with me, that he asked me in a very cruel manner, “What are you, a retard?” At this point, I couldn’t take anymore and I broke down crying.
The judge stopped the proceedings, and took me into his chambers. As soon as I stepped into the room, and he shut the door behind us, a smile came across my face. He allowed me to sit there for a few minutes, so I could calm down, and then asked me if I was ready to go back in. He was a compassionate person.
When I was done, I was dismissed, and my sister took the stand. I sat in my seat and listened to Barbie give her testimony. As she described what he had done to her, my memory started to come back. As soon as she brought up the handcuffs and the tape, I spoke up excitedly and said something like, “Oh, yeah he did that to me too…” Some of my family members looked at me, as well as some of the members of the jury. I remember specifically a woman looking over at me.
I am not aware of the pressures my mother endured during the trials. I’m sure those days were appalling and painful for her. Regardless of the circumstances, my mother never backed down. We went to every single court appearance right up to the end. On the day of the sentencing, my mother, my aunt and uncle – Janet and Larry, and Barbie and I sat together to hear the verdict.
The jurors found him guilty, and he was sentenced to two years in prison, during which time he was to go through psychiatric counseling. Following the trial, Rick picked us up. While he and my mother were talking in the front seat, I interjected my opinion of something that happened in the courtroom. My mother silenced me right away. Instantly, I became conscious of the fact that it wasn’t my story to tell. My mother would be the sole speaker of the whole ordeal. More than two years passed, before I discussed it with anyone again.
The court trial consumed a good portion of my first month in sixth grade. Therefore, I fell behind academically, and out of favor with some of my teachers. As far as school, it was a rough year for me, but emotionally, I started to come alive. While living in Shinglehouse, PA my aunt Janet took me to church. It was through my new relationship with God, that I started to heal from my brokenness. I finally felt at peace with life and myself.
7
Dick is released
and my world crumbles
“Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; be merciful to me and hear my prayer.” Psalm 4: 1 (NIV)
For the next few years, I did fairly well, considering what I had been through. I grew tremendously in my faith, and God became my all in all. Of course, I was still a teenager and a scoundrel at times. I had become a Christian, not an angel. Then a huge crisis came when I was in eighth grade.
It was in the early part of March 1980 when I learned that my stepfather had been released from prison. He’d been seen in a town only twenty minutes from where we lived. I began having nightmares night after night. I didn’t know how to go to God with this issue. I don’t think I’d even spoken to him about what had happened to me. The subject was taboo.
Toward the end of that month, I had a huge fight with my mother at my twin cousins’ birthday party, and I stormed home alone. That evening while lying on my bed, with a tear-stained face, I devised a plan to commit suicide. I would get up in the middle of the night while everyone slept, and take a large dose of pills. I was through with life. My internal struggles were starting to overwhelm me.
At this point, I hadn’t been taught any of the presupposed Biblical stances on suicide. I was totally unaware that I could be tempting God. However, I know now that suicide is a huge topic, and it’s not covered in depth in the scriptures.
As for me, on the eve of my planned demise, I slept through the entire night. When I awoke in the morning, I was disappointed and angry that I had messed up my plans. So, with no other option, but to take the pills before I went to school, I went to the medicine cabinet. Weighing a whole one hundred and ten pounds, I subjected my body to twenty-five aspirin. I had planned to take all of the pills that were in the bottle, but because I had an empty stomach, the water made me sick.
As far as I am aware, all my suicide endeavors up to this point had been concealed from the knowledge of those around me. I had always gotten away with them without any confrontation. Not this time however, everyone would find out.
Later that morning, a group of us were sitting at my desk in homeroom, when some of them started discussing what they had eaten for breakfast. Being a bold and sassy person, I piped in to say what I had eaten. “I took twenty-five pills for breakfast.” I blurted out loud. At first, I think they were shocked at what I had said, but then after a moment or two, they started laughing. That was a great joke. I smiled along with them and sat there quietly. Everyone went back to the conversation and carried on as if nothing was wrong.
Ironically, my second period was science. We watched a movie on volcanoes. During class, I started running a fever and passed out several
times. I remember comparing my body temperature with the temps of the volcanoes. I was sure there couldn’t be too much difference between the two of us.
After class, I could hardly get up from my seat and out the door. My friends couldn’t understand what was wrong with me. They tried to help me, as they questioned me. Angrily I responded, “I told you earlier that I took twenty-five pills this morning!” My best friend Joann helped me to our gym class, and urged me to tell the teacher what I had done.
I started to panic that she was going to tell. If she did, I wouldn’t be able to finish what I had started. I promised her that I would go to the nurse, if she wouldn’t notify the teacher. I went to the teacher, and told her that I wasn’t feeling well. I asked if I could go to the nurse’s office. When I arrived, I found out that she was performing physicals and didn’t want to be interrupted. She sent me to the main office. The secretary was busy too, so I sat down.
In the meantime, my friend opted to go to the teacher to tell her what was going on. The teacher sent her to the secretary’s office, and warned her not to listen to me, no matter what I said. Shortly after I entered the office, my friend Joann arrived. I was surprised to see her, and began to question her subtly as to why she was there. When she refused to give in to my pleading for her not to tell. I tried to coax her into leaving by promising her that I would tell my mom when I got home. Truthfully, I had no intention of going home.
However, there was no persuading her. She went straight to the front desk, and told the secretary the situation. This caused a chain reaction of phone calls from one office to another. No one seemed to know what to do with me. At one point, I realized that I could leave the room unnoticed. If I hadn’t been so sick, I think I would have. Finally, after quite a long time of waiting, the nurse came to the office, and took me to the hospital in her car.
On the way, she interrogated me about why I would do such a thing. I didn’t respond, and sat quietly. Then she asked me if I was pregnant. It never occurred to me that anyone would think such a thing. I just shook my head no, and replied that I didn’t know why I had taken the pills. I sat in silence for the rest of the ride. At this stage of the game, nothing seemed reasonable enough for me to admit. On the one hand, I felt like a fool, because everyone was going to find out what I had done. On the other hand, I no longer cared about anything. What was done was done, and there was no turning back the clock.
As I lay in the hospital bed, a nurse came into the room to speak to the doctor regarding the call to my mother. She informed him that the woman who answered the phone, said she didn’t care that I had tried to kill myself, and that she wasn’t coming to the hospital; the doctor insisted they call again.
In the meantime, the doctor began to question me about any other suicide attempts I might have made in the past, and whether I would try again. I told him I had tried several times before, and that I would try again, but not with pills. He inquired about what other method I would use. I responded with a little sarcasm, mixed with truth. I told him that I would try jumping off a building, because the pills took too long and made me sick.
I desperately wanted to die, so my miserable life would be over. Sometime later, the nurse came into the room. I could hear her tell the doctor that they had reached my mother, and that she was on her way. My mother denied ever having said such a thing, and claimed to have received only one phone call.
To support her story, she added that her friend Kathy was visiting her at our house when she received the phone call. She suggested that I could ask her if I wanted to, and that she would confirm her story. At the time, I believed she was telling me the truth. I hadn’t known my mother to be so cold-hearted that she would refuse to visit a child at the hospital. However, later that week after I came home, we got into a fight. She screamed out something like, “If you ever end up in the hospital again, because of a suicide attempt, I am not coming!” Consequently, this left room for doubt about the whole truth of the matter. It didn’t occur to me that perhaps she was only using the incident at the hospital to hurt me.
In view of the fact, that the doctor told me it was against the law to commit suicide, I knew when I left the hospital that something was going to be required of me. A friend from church recommended a counselor they were using for their foster child. I received counseling for the rest of eighth grade, through my freshman year, and into my sophomore year. I would only tell the psychiatrist my history of abuse, but never the counselor who I saw on a regular basis. I had to see the psychiatrist periodically in order to continue the counseling. The first time I met with him, and told him portions of my life, he made the comment that he was surprised that I hadn’t tried suicide sooner. I replied that I had tried several times.
I know that this is going to sound peculiar as to why I didn’t want to tell my counselor, but the truth is, she was too pretty and too friendly to me. I couldn’t possibly tell her about the sexual activities I had been involved in with my stepfather. How could I? I didn’t want her to think badly of me, and that I was dirty. I sincerely believed she would think these awful thoughts about me.
I totally blamed myself for the abuse. I believed there was something innately bad in me. In my mind, that was why Dick and other men looked at me in a sexual way. This seemed to be reinforced as time passed, and as I matured physically. I could see and feel the attraction that older men had for me. They looked at me in the same way Dick had.
There were many occasions when I would be walking home after school or work, when a man would pull his car over, and ask me if I wanted a ride. Because of the way they would flirt with me, I knew there was more to their inquiry than a simple ride. I had been on numerous rides with my stepfather and I recognized that look in their eyes. They had the same bedroom eyes he had.
Also, throughout my high school years, there was a man who would call my house, and ask for me. He must have known our family well, because he could always tell whether or not it was me who answered the phone. He would say very sexually explicit things to me. Finally, instead of listening to any of it, I started hanging up on him as soon as he started talking.
The counseling ended abruptly when I was in tenth grade. One day, as I entered the building, I passed another teenage girl in the stairwell, as she was coming down. She was crying intensely. I continued walking up the steps and down the hall. As I approached the counselor’s door, I overheard people arguing. Their conversation was about a client who no longer needed help. I assumed this argument had to do with me, so I went home. Today when I look back, I realize that they might not have been talking about me. They could have been referring to the other girl who had just left the office, or about someone totally different.
I never heard anything from the counselor about why I wasn’t coming any longer. And because people came in and out of my life unexpectedly all the time, I began to see it as the protocol for my life. For years, I continued to battle with depression, and suicidal tendencies.
Lacy died a couple of weeks after Easter in my junior year of high school. His death was very traumatic for me. He had left our home after the divorce and up until my tenth grade year, I had only seen him for a while when I was in fourth grade. All the years he was away, I missed him tremendously. I cried for him frequently when I was alone throughout Junior High. Once I cried in front of my two cousins, but later on, my mother told me that when she was at their house, they made fun of me for crying about my dad. I realized then that they weren’t loyal and trustworthy friends.
As a result of Lacy’s death, I started having problems with my mother again. Almost the entire first semester of my senior year I drank, and I drank heavily. I could never drink without getting drunk. I didn’t relate it to my childhood experiences until later in life. It was at our New Year’s Eve church service that I gave my life back to Christ and stopped drinking. I stopped drinking out of spiritual conviction; I knew my behavior was Biblically unacceptable.
8
College and drinking
“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Luke 22: 31 (NIV)
A year after my high school graduation in the fall of 1985, I went to Valley Forge Christian College in Pennsylvania. In my first semester, two of my friends from back home died, and my cousin Bonnie was pregnant by one of them. Then the opening of my second semester brought the death of my grandfather. Emotionally, I began to lose my footing. I started to compromise in my walk with God, first with cigarettes, and then wine.
Before I knew it, I was headed into a downward spiral, and I couldn’t get out of it. I dropped out of school, and instead of going home I stayed in the area. I wasn’t up to facing anyone back home and their disappointment of me. This proved to be the first of many foolish decisions I would make in the following three years. That summer my drinking increased, and I exchanged beer for Southern Comfort. I started a completely new lifestyle.
Eventually, by July of 1986 my circumstances forced me to move back home to Northwestern Pennsylvania. I didn’t acknowledge my alcoholism at nineteen; I had passed my behavior off as heavy drinking. After I arrived home, I sobered up for five months. During my sobriety, I fell into a deep depression. I began to suffer physically, and emotionally from the effects of my sudden withdrawal from alcohol.
I was sober from the end of July until January of 1987. At the beginning of January I began to drink again. On February 1, 1987 I moved to the Binghamton, NY area to find full - time employment. While living there my drinking problem increased again from bingeing on weekends to daily usage. I was getting drunk whenever I had free time. Later, in the summer of that same year an acquaintance from work introduced me to drugs.
On the afternoon I was offered pot, a few of us were playing pool at a bar. The first time my friend offered me drugs, I was still sober enough to know better. I didn’t want to get involved in drugs, because I knew they were nothing, but trouble. I had lived with my brothers and saw what drugs did to them.
Obviously, my friend was experienced in persuading people to get high. A couple of hours later, after I had drank two or three pitchers of beer, she asked me a second time. At this point, I was so inebriated, that I couldn’t come up with any reasons why I shouldn’t get high. Not too many days passed when they introduced crank to me.
Shortly after I started drugs, I became involved in almost every kind of reckless behavior imaginable. I would find myself in various kinds of situations and wouldn’t have any memory of how I got there. I started becoming addicted to the drugs that she and her friends were giving me. On one occasion, during our lunch hour, I started to convulse heavily after only a few tokes off a pipe. Obviously, it contained more than just pot.
After I sobered up, the thumb on my right hand shook for days. During this period there was an incident in which one of my roommates swung at me during an argument and I became extremely violent. I got her down on the carpet and started banging her head onto the floor. I had completely blacked out. I was totally unaware of what I was doing until I came to my senses through the distant sounds of our roommate yelling. She was screaming at me, “Stop! You’re going to kill her!”
After I was completely coherent again, I stood up immediately, walked to a phone, and called my mother to tell her that I was moving home. When I got off the phone, my two roommates tried to persuade me to stay. They promised that it would never happen again. I knew I was out of control, and my temper was a wake up call that forced me to change my living conditions.
I smoked with other people too, who laced my pot with something that made me hallucinate. None of them ever admitted to me as to what they were giving me. They would either deny doing anything or just avoid talking about it.
9
Sobering up and marriage
“He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.” Psalm 40:2 (NIV)
I left the Binghamton area sick. I had contracted a venereal disease that had caused me continuous complications even after I was healed from the disease itself. One afternoon, I was at my mother’s house in Bradford when I came across a flyer that was sent to the area residents. An article mentioned four top diseases that carried the AIDS virus. Alarm struck me when I saw the one I’d contracted several months earlier, sandwiched somewhere between the first and the last one.
I was too scared to get tested for AIDS. I took prescription after prescription trying to get rid of the pain in my bladder and urinary tract, but I wasn’t having any success. By the summer of 1988 I was living in Jamestown, NY. I was in such a deep depression that I cried, smoked pot, and drank the month of June away. I was certain I had AIDS. I entered the month of July a useless drunk, but one evening between the fourth and seventh, Jesus spoke to my heart with a calm and gentle voice. I remember sitting on the couch watching the news, when his spirit started probing into my beliefs of Christ’s Second Coming.
I had always assumed that I had a safety net, because I had studied the book of Revelation for four months in ninth grade on a quiz team. I felt certain that if I watched for the signs of His return I could tell when he was going to come back. My plan was to give my life back to him before it was too late. However, as I sat there listening to the current events from around the world, Christ shook the very foundations of my belief system. I became insecure in my interpretation of the end times. Suddenly, I had this strong reverence for God and his love penetrated my heart. I meditated on why he still cared about me. I had denounced him, as well as blasphemed him for three years, and yet, he spoke to me with tenderness.
This simple act of love that the Lord showed me would change my life forever. The miracle that night was not God reaching out to me, he’d been doing that all along. The miracle was my response to him. He had finally brought me to a place where I could really embrace his love for me. The next day when I woke up sober, I found a pocket-sized New Testament Bible in my brother’s house. Right away, I started to read the book of Revelation. I moved out of my brother’s house within a week or so, and into the home of some Christian friends.
On July 28, 1988 I got engaged to Mark. We had met two years earlier just after I came home from college. Of course, we had not dated at all, but after my return to the faith, we sat and talked a lot about God’s will for our lives. Through our conversations we decided that it was his will for us to marry. I continued to devote myself to reading the Bible, as well as to prayer and fasting. Within the first two months of my return to Christ I had read more than half of the books of Bible.
At the end of August I traveled to Cortland, New York for Barbara and Raybert Patterson’s wedding. They were friends of Mark’s from the church he attended. Mark was living in Cortland, and was a pastor in training at the Assembly of God in Groton, NY. Our original intent was for me to stay at the home of one of his friends. It was supposed to be for two weeks and then I would go back to Jamestown, New York where I had been living. However, I ended up staying in Cortland permanently. In the middle of October, Mark became the youth pastor at his church, and moved into the small parsonage on the property. At the end of October, we decided that there wasn’t any reason why we should wait to marry. Therefore on December 10th, 1988 we were married in Jamestown, NY.
In that same month, I found myself in the ministry and pregnant after only five months of sobriety and serving the Lord. I continued to be plagued with feelings of guilt and insecurities about my health. Mark had also lived a high-risk lifestyle before coming to Christ; therefore, both of us were tested for AIDS almost three years into our marriage. Thank God we are healthy and disease free! Once again God’s mercy was shed on us and we are indebted to Him for it.
Our decision to marry so quickly after my sobering up was not wise, and I do not recommend it. When I look back on the situation with greater maturity, I see that we should have waited until we knew each other better. Given that we had never dated, or had any form of courtship, we didn’t have the opportunity to adjust to each other’s personality.
The substance of our engagement period consisted of ministering to young people from the streets of Cortland. We worked great together as a ministry team, but we lacked the basic love and respect for each other that a couple that was going to marry should have. The absence of these fundamental key elements created a more complex environment in our home than what typical newlyweds deal with.
Through our experience I have decided that dating for a reasonable period of time is an essential ingredient in the preparation for marriage. This might seem to be simple common sense, but this kind of intense attraction and quick marriage happens more often than people think. The minor details may be different, but the hastiness in making a decision for marriage happens frequently.
The dating process allows two individuals to live separately as they work out their differences with space and time. Having worked out those details before marriage, couples can deal with the normal things married people are faced with, like the toilet seat being left up, or dirty socks laying around in the living room. The courtship allows room for a meshing of the minds, responsibilities, and personal convictions outside of the pressures of marriage.
Once the “I dos” are said and done, expectations and pressures are heightened. Mark and I not only complicated our marriage by rushing the natural process of courtship, but we also added the pressures of being in the ministry and getting pregnant during our first month of marriage as well. Our son David was born before our one-year anniversary. It has only been by the grace and strength of the Lord that we are still married. He has taught us that humor and laughter are great tools for diffusing situations.
10
Life takes a turn at 24
“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” 2 Corinthians 4:8 (NIV)
About two months before my second wedding anniversary, I was involved in a tragedy. It has taken years for me to heal from it. Sometimes, I think it has been harder for me to overcome the following experience than anything else that I faced earlier in my life. It is a difficult story to tell, but I have tried to write the details as chronologically as possible.
It was Thursday, October 11, 1990 when I killed my mother. It was an accident, but the fine points of the evening run through my mind like a horrible dream. Some of the details may sound redundant, but I have kept them in the story for the purpose of showing what it is to suffer from a trauma and the effects it has on the mind.
Around 11:30 PM on Monday, October 8 my husband got off the phone with our friend Carolyne Nicholas. They had made plans for Mark and I to travel to Bradford, PA to pick her up and bring her back to Cortland. We left a few minutes later. We arrived back in Groton by sunrise Tuesday morning. I had not been able to sleep, but maybe an hour during the trip. Carolyne and I spent the day together, and talked late into the evening. Wednesday morning she and I left Groton and were back in Bradford by 12:00 PM.
I spent Wednesday evening at my friend Sharon Glover’s house until after midnight. My son David and I woke up by 7:00 AM Thursday. David could never sleep very late at other people’s homes. At this point, I only had about fourteen hours of sleep over the past four days.
My sisters and I got together and went to my brother Rick’s house for the day in Jamestown, NY. We took a picture of all of the grandkids to give to my mother for Christmas. We left late and arrived past the time we were to return to my mother’s work. She was expecting us by 6:00 PM, but we didn’t arrive until around 6:30.
My husband had wanted me to return home earlier that evening, but my mother needed someone to help her transport a bed from my grandmother’s house, so, I stayed to help her. It took over an hour to do everything. The three of us, my mother, my son David, and I went to my grandmother’s house to get a bed that she had owned since before I was born. Her sister-in-law had been borrowing the bed for several years, but she died in September, and now my grandmother was giving it to my mother.
It must have been somewhere around 8:00 PM when we finished unloading the bed. During the summer, my sister Jane offered me a dresser that was being stored in my mother’s garage, so, my mother and I took the time to load the dresser into my car. We placed the dresser in the trunk and the drawers in the back seat. Then we fastened the trunk down with some rope and bungee cords.
Afterward, the three of us went into her house to set up the bed. It was a full - size bed, however, my mother only had twin sheets. She decided to cover it temporarily with a pretty bedspread. As she lay down on the bed a large smile appeared on her face. She was elated to have this bed. I‘d never seen my mother excited about a material possession. This bed however, made her swell up with joy. At the time, I didn’t really appreciate what she was feeling. Since that night, I have often wondered why we never really love and appreciate our parents the way we should until it’s too late.
We worked our way into the living room where David became the center of our focus. There was a little toy bank filled with pennies in the shape of a Dachshund. The doggy bank was almost half the height of my son, and was pretty heavy. David was fascinated with it. He would carry it back and forth to the coffee table from the place where he found it. An amusing thing about it was that as he carried it to the table, he would make grunting noises. However, on the way back he didn’t make a sound. He performed this act over and over again.
We sat watching him as he worked with the bank. It was a glorious feeling to sit with my mother and admire my son. I lived four hours from her so, consequently she had only seen him a few times. The two of them were practically strangers. When David and I did visit, there were usually a lot of people around. On that night though it was just the three of us. It was going on 9:00 when our evening came to a close. My mother had to get up early for work, and I had to get back to central New York. I was dreading the long trip to Groton.
We walked out to the driveway and fastened my son into his car seat, which was now positioned in the front passenger’s seat. Then we stood on her sidewalk talking for a while. My mother spoke about working on her G.E.D., and how concerned she was about passing the test. She went on to tell me how she wanted to travel around the states to speak to women regarding her life experiences. She wanted to be an encouragement to them.
I listened intently to what she was saying, and tried to envision what she wanted to do. The whole time she spoke, my thoughts ran wild. My mother wants to be a lady evangelist? Wow! I’ve never seen this side of her. I never imagined her talking to a group of people. I’ve always considered her to be an introvert. As she went on, I began to see her in a different light than I had as a child. I realized that she wasn’t anything like the person I perceived her to be.
After we finished talking, we hugged. It was a wonderful hug. For the first time in my life I believed my mother loved me. I felt that our past was behind us, and that we were starting fresh. When I got to the driver’s side of my car, I realized I couldn’t get into the car because of the embankment. Earlier, I had gotten out of the passenger’s door, but now David’s car seat was there. This was before babies weren’t allowed to sit in the front.
We started to discuss how I could get into my car. After a couple of minutes my mother suggested that I try to open the driver’s door enough to slip my arm through to the handle, and then I would be able to roll the window down. Doing this would allow me to reach through the window to put the car in neutral. The two of us would roll the car away from the embankment, and then I would put the car in park. She would stand in front of the car to hold it back while I steered.
I did everything she suggested, but when I put the car in neutral, it didn’t move. My mother realized that the emergency brake was on. Therefore, I reached down and pulled the lever. As soon as I did, the car jumped forward. Instantly, we both knew something was wrong, and she started to walk away. The car automatically rolled into the grooves of the driveway.
For some reason she stopped in the middle of the driveway, and turned around to look at me. We had eye contact for a moment, and then she disappeared. Because the car dome light was on, I could see my son. I stayed with the car for about ninety feet. I frantically shifted the gears, struggling to get the car to stop. But it wouldn’t stop. As we moved down the driveway, it picked up speed. I could hear someone screaming in the background. That person turned out to be me. As I ran along the side of the car, I prayed. I prayed all the way down the driveway. I spoke aloud repeating the words, “God, stop the car.”
We crossed over Bolivar drive and started down the neighbor’s driveway, when suddenly the car stopped. I asked myself why it stopped. Then I heard an “uh!” The sound came from the rear end of the car. I turned around. I saw my mother’s body under the car. Her body was lodged between the wheel and the frame of the car. I started screaming. I thought to myself, I have to get her out of there. How can I do this? Should I start the car? No, I don’t think I should do that. Perhaps if I put the car in drive I can push it forward, and get her out of there.
I put the car in drive, and tried to push it forward, but it wouldn’t budge. I felt helpless, and didn’t know what to do. In the house that went with the driveway, I saw a silhouette of someone sitting in a chair; the person was watching TV. I started to yell at the window, “Help me! Help me! Please, won’t somebody help me?” The figure didn’t move and no one came to help.
It seemed like a long time before there was anyone else on the road. When a car finally did come, it stopped and the people just sat there. Although I couldn’t see any movement in it, I began to scream at it. “Help me! Help me! Someone please help me!” They just sat there. I continued to yell at the car. Finally, two people got out, and started to walk toward me. The man walked over to check on my mother, and the woman came to my side. They tried to calm me, because I was hysterical. “Go over and get your baby,” she said.
Before I went, I looked at my mother. I noticed that her shirt was pulled back, and I could see her bra. I thought to myself as I walked to the other side of the car. My mother is going to be very upset that we can see her bra. When I got to my son, I found him terrified, and crying uncontrollably. I took him out of his seat, and carried him back around to where the two people were standing. I began to crouch down to talk to my mother. As I drew near to her I began to speak to her. “Mommy, are you okay?”
I noticed that her face was pale, chalky, and lifeless. Then I saw that she was bleeding from her forehead, her mouth, and her eyes were rolled back. I saw a puddle of blood in front of her chest; blood was spraying out of it. The realization that she was dead struck terror in my soul, I started to scream frenziedly. “Oh my God, she’s dead! My mommy is dead!”
As the woman walked me away from the car, she began to speak to me. “I think your mother is alive, because I saw her talking.” There were numerous people standing around us. A few people joined her as she ushered me into the house I had screamed at earlier. I questioned them on whether it would be okay to go into the house. One of the men assured me that it would be okay. They encouraged me to take care of my baby.
In the house, I tried to console David, but he continued to cry. I tried to breast feed him, but it didn’t work. He was too shaken up to stop. I started praying. I couldn’t stop thinking about what the woman had said to me. My mother is still alive? She is going to live through this? Oh my God, please don’t let her live. She’ll be a vegetable for the rest of her life; she wouldn’t want to live that way. Oh God, help my mother. I don’t know how to pray for her. Is it wrong for me to pray like this?
Eventually, my son began to calm down and ceased crying. Some people came into the house, and told me to contact a family member to let them know what happened. I responded, “I don’t know who to call. I don’t have anyone’s number on me.” They asked me about my husband, and could I call him. I worried because it was long distance. I looked at the numbers on the phone and I told myself, Remember you’re in another area code; you have to dial your area code. I tried to dial the number, but I couldn’t seem to dial the right one.
The kitchen filled up with police officers. As they started asking me questions the room began to turn black. I told someone to take my baby because I thought I was going to pass out. Someone reached out and took him. Immediately the room turned black, and I fell to my knees. I came to, after I hit the floor. A moment later, I stood back up. They continued to talk to me, but the room began to turn black again. This happened to me at least three times before they had me stay on the floor.
After the last collapse, I woke up to a nice policeman sitting next to me. My baby wasn’t with me anymore; he was gone. I started to question the officer about my mommy. I asked him, “My mommy is dead, isn’t she?” As I caressed his face, he nodded his head yes. We sat there for a while. This man was very friendly to me, but at some point he left me alone. I had no idea where he went.
Somehow I had my baby back in my arms and I began to pace the room. I walked onto the porch several times. However, I felt they didn’t want me there, so, I went back into the house. I had to take care of my baby, but I wanted to talk to my mother. I felt a great need to be with her.
Finally, I made the decision to sit on the steps and watch the people. It was a wet autumn evening in the hills of Pennsylvania and the night was dark and dreary. I sat with my son in my arms, as I watched the men work around my car. They had hung a large white sheet over the rear tire. There were bright lights and lots of people standing around.
I wasn’t really conscious of what was happening. The affects of the shock started to disorient me. Mentally, I couldn’t process anything that was going on around me. I became confused. As I sat there I noticed a bright white light piercing out of the darkness from the center of the road. A little further from it, there was an ambulance parked on the shoulder. Its red lights flashed almost vulgarly onto the backdrop.
Thoughts and questions started running rapidly through my mind. I couldn’t control them. I only have a few hours to go to get to my house. I need to go home. What am I doing here? This isn’t real; it’s only a dream. I’m going to wake up soon. Where is my mommy? I can’t see her. Who are these people? There’s so many of them. Where did they come from? I want someone to take me to my mother.
Due to the disorientation, I started to become upset. I couldn’t remember that we had been in an accident, or that my mother was dead. I found myself floating down the sidewalk. Out of nowhere, a person or persons, took me by the arm, and lead me to an ambulance. They opened the door and helped me in. They had me lie down on a little cot with my son. I felt numb, and I didn’t understand why I was in an ambulance. I thought to myself, I should be with my mother.
A few moments passed when I felt someone touch me. It was my baby. He was cuddling up against me. My eyes focused on him, and I began to think the following thoughts. He is so precious. Look how he is rubbing my arm to make me feel better. Who says babies can’t love? What is this, but a simple act of love and thoughtfulness? This is not a basic response to a basic need. He knows I’m hurting, and he wants to make me feel better. And I do feel better. I was feeling so lonely. But David loves me in his own sweet way. Oh, David, I love you so much, thank you for caring.
I have no recollection of the ambulance driving me to the hospital. Mysteriously, I just appeared there, and was lying on a hospital bed. Ron and Carol Johnson, two people I had known since I was twelve, were standing beside me. We had all attended the same church for years. Because I was in such deep shock, they started singing praise songs, and encouraged me to sing along with them. They did this to keep me conscious. David was sitting on me and was calm now.
At some point, Carolyne Nicholas arrived at the hospital. She spoke to me for a while, but I have no idea what she said to me. I think she may have asked me about the accident, I’m not sure. It seemed as though she was only there for a split second and then she was gone.
I have no idea how long I was in the room when some police officers came to question me. While they were there, I felt someone else enter the room, so I looked over to see whom it was. It was my Pastor Watson from my home church. I gazed at him and said, “Pastor Bill, I killed my mommy.” He just looked at me and didn’t say a word. I felt fear and emptiness as I lay there. I have no idea what he knew of the accident prior to coming into the room. Nor do I have any knowledge of what his internal reactions were when I said those words to him. I have never discussed it with him.
From the moment of the accident and over the next several days whenever I referred to my mother, I called her mommy. This was strange, because she had always been mom to me, never mommy.
While I was in the emergency room my sister Jane came in. She stood at the bottom of the bed and asked me where mom was. I said, “Janie, mommy is dead.” She started screaming and asking me who was driving. I started hyperventilating and asked those around me to take her out of the room. The shock of the whole ordeal was too great for me to deal with.
Later in the evening, Mark called the hospital. There wasn’t a phone in my room, so, my bed had to be rolled to the doorway. While I was on the phone, he asked me if I was okay. When I responded no, he began to pray for me. Unexpectedly, I felt a presence at the bottom of my bed it was my sisters Barbie and Janie. Once again, I started to hyperventilate and they had to be removed from my presence.
I am not certain how much time passed when my brother Rick came into my room. By that time, I was calmer. As he approached me I spoke, “Please don’t hate me.” I have no idea how long I was at the hospital, but eventually I was discharged and taken to my friend Carolyne’s house. I stayed up with her for a while and then went to lie down. My friends the Johnson’s took David home with them. He stayed with them for the next five days until the funeral was over.
Bradford is located maybe an hour and twenty minutes south of Buffalo, NY, so the report of the accident was broadcast over the Buffalo news. The news brief mentioned me by name. And because of this, my father – in – law’s mother heard my name, and knew that they were referring to me specifically. There are only a few hundred Lata families in the states. She called Steve’s house and spoke with Mark’s mom, Carol. She asked her what was going on with me. As far as I know this was the first they had heard about the accident. I never saw the broadcast, so I have no knowledge of what was said or shown. However, I have often wondered if some of the bright lights at the accident belonged to the news reporters.
It had to be in the middle of the night when my sister Sue came into the room. She lay next to me for a while. We talked for a few minutes and then she left me. In the early AM hours, I found myself sitting at Perkins Restaurant with Mark, his brother Willie, and his wife Terry. I am not sure if anyone else was there. I was totally unaware of my surroundings. The lights were bright and the room was distant from me. Mark offered me food, but I couldn’t eat anything. The thought of putting food to my lips made me sick to my stomach. It wasn’t until after the funeral that I could even think about eating.
Pastor Bill opened the Foursquare Gospel church for our family. The fellowship hall was full of people day and night, right up until the funeral services. Various congregants helped out at the church by preparing food in the kitchen for anyone who came to be comforted after the tragic accident. It must have been very difficult for the members of the church to go through this period with us too. My family had been attending the church for about twelve years when the accident occurred. I always felt that our church was one big, happy family.
I think it was Carol Johnson who asked me if I wanted to participate in the funeral. Regardless of who it was, I told them that I wanted to sing the song Amazing Grace. She thought it would be best if we recorded me singing it in the sanctuary of the church. Someone played a piano, I sang the song, and I think Ron Johnson worked the sound booth.
The services were held at a funeral home in Bradford. I remember getting lost in the, because all the halls and rooms looked the same to me. Of course, it was really because I was still in shock. Once, when I was trying to find my way back to the room where my mother was, I accidentally walked into another funeral service. As it turned out, the father of the man who was at the accident had died, and his viewing was going on simultaneously with my mom’s.
I had no idea that I was in the wrong room until I approached the coffin, and saw the body of a man. This really dazed me. I wasn’t aware that there was another service going on. I stood there looking around at the strange faces. I was stunned and embarrassed that I was in someone else’s service. The woman, who ushered me into the house at the accident, came to my side. If my memory is correct, she walked me to my mother’s area. She commented to someone about how good I looked. She assumed I was on drugs, because I was so calm. In fact, I believe that was the consensus of a lot of people. In truth, although I might have appeared to be on Valium or something similar, I wasn’t on anything. My demeanor was a direct result of the affects of the shock I was suffering.
Although the funeral director had recommended that we have a closed casket, my family wanted an open one. At various points of the viewing, I would stand beside my mother and stare at her. The dress that my siblings purchased for her was pretty. And even though she looked at rest, there were details about her body that stood out to me. Some of her fingers must have been broken in the accident, because they were curved in an odd way.
She was wearing her Mother’s ring that we had purchased for her a couple of years before. And there was a necklace around her neck; it was resting on her chest. If I remember correctly, it was a cross that had been donated by a jeweler from the mall. He gave it to my siblings out of compassion when they were shopping for her attire.
She was also wearing her glasses, but it didn’t hide the fact that her eyes were swollen. The swelling made them seem unusually wide and her eyelashes were darker than normal. The make-up person must have put mascara on her. I hadn’t remembered ever seeing her in any make - up, except lipstick. I could see bruises under the cover - up.
A picture of my mother and Ronnie rested on the crevice of the lid of the casket. Some of her work friends came to see her either during the viewing, or the funeral. One of the women asked who the man in the picture was, while I was standing beside my mother. I told her it was my brother Ronnie. I knew that there weren’t very many people at my mother’s workplace that knew about my brother. I think the only one who knew was her boss.
My mother worked ten years as a cook at the Ramsbottom facility that was somehow associated with the Bradford Children’s home. Although they increased her responsibilities through the years, they turned her down for a promotion, because she didn’t have a high school diploma. The facility was a home for men and women who had severe disabilities. When she first started working there, some of the employees made fun of the residents, and because of this, she never told them about Ronnie. She felt that working at the facility was a blessing for her. She loved the residents and it made her feel closer to my brother Ronnie. My heart breaks for her now that I have an understanding of what it is to be a mother.
At the viewing, there were a number of our friends from Groton Assembly of God. Although I was surprised to see them there, it didn’t really occur to me that they had traveled hours to attend. I only recall talking to them briefly.
There were also some women who showed up at the viewing that I had not seen since before we left Austin. I don’t know who they were, but I think the younger woman was named Kathy. She was friendly to me. There was a small room that contained the casket and the flowers. It was adjacent to a larger room where the bulk of the people sat. She and I sat in some chairs that were positioned to the right of my mother’s casket. I spoke with her about how both my mother and I had a close relationship with Christ. I even asked her if she wanted to pray with me to accept Christ as her savior. She agreed and we prayed the sinner’s prayer together.
The other ladies with her were not as friendly. They were cold and indifferent towards me. The oldest lady especially was unsympathetic. Perhaps she was suspicious of my mom’s death and my responsibility regarding it. Then again, maybe she just didn’t know how to relate to me under such traumatic circumstances. I have never seen or heard from them again since that day.
On the day of the funeral someone brought the cassette tape with my song on it, and it was played during the service. The sound of my voice was foreign to me.
I’ll never forget how many people showed up for the service. The main room was bursting at the seams. I think someone told me the number was well over three hundred. Besides those individuals that sat next to me, I never saw the faces of any of the other individuals in the rooms. I don’t remember crying, but maybe a few small tears at the service. I really wasn’t conscious of what was going on. I simply followed people and went to where I was directed.
Brian, a former boyfriend of mine, spoke with me for a while outside of the funeral home. Other than him asking me how I was doing, I don’t know what we talked about. I remember seeing my husband watching us talk from the steps.
I believe that it was after the service, that my siblings asked me to sit down with them at our mom’s house, and tell them the details of the accident. I remember being hesitant about it. It was scary to sit there and recite the events of that night. Even though they were in the room, I was only conscious of my hand moving across my face. It seemed to be surveying my eyes, nose, mouth, and the curves of my face throughout the entire story. As my hand made its way over every little crack and crevice, I felt my lips shaping the words, “ Mark thinks I might have to have counseling.”
Mark and I didn’t return to Groton until Wednesday, October 17. We had to empty out my mom’s house. Unfortunately, I was the one chosen, without a lot of wisdom, to drive the car that had run over my mother back to Groton. I believe I was alone in the car for the entire trip. Mark drove the vehicle he had brought from Groton to the hospital.
The drive was very difficult for me. I had my grandmother’s bed that was given to my mother, tied down to the roof of the car. I felt so out of control with it up there. I kept visualizing the accident and my mom. It was months before we got rid of that car. Whenever I drove it I suffered shock, and night blindness.
Also, because our bed was a waterbed, Mark wanted to sleep in my grandmother’s bed. It was hard to get any rest. I would try to sleep in the bed, but I would suffer from intense itching, and horrible nightmares about the accident.
11
Living with myself and
others after the accident
2 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4 Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1: 1- 4 (NIV)
One afternoon my husband was reading aloud an article about the accident from the local newspaper. I grabbed it from his hands and started yelling. What they had written wasn’t even close to what had actually happened. I was furious! Because there was a conflict between the newspapers and the story I was telling, people became confused.
When my husband went to the police station to get a copy of the report, he was told that the officer, who had given the story to the newspapers, was trying to protect me. He thought the version he gave, would make me look better than the truth. He didn’t think I would remember the accident the next morning. He thought it was best for me to have time to remember the accident on my own. Although I appreciate his thoughtfulness, it caused me a lot of trouble. He told the newspapers that I was in the car playing with my son when I accidentally stepped on the accelerator and ran over my mother, who had been standing in the driveway.
The simple truth is, I have never forgotten anything that happened that night. Occasionally, when telling the story, I left out the fact that the emergency break was on, and that I had to release it. For several years, the details were burned so deeply in my brain, that I never had any rest from them.
A couple of days before the funeral some of my siblings approached me in the sanctuary of the church and informed me that they were going to sue my insurance company, because they felt that they had lost their mom they were going to get whatever they could out of it. This was shocking to me and I was really hurt by it. Because of their lawsuit, I had to go to Pennsylvania in the spring of 1991 to give testimony about the accident to the lawyers, so that they could determine who had more responsibility in the accident my mother, or me.
If they determined that my mother held more of the burden, then my family wouldn’t get the insurance money. However, if I held the greater amount, then they would. I felt like I was between a rock and a hard place. Their final decision was that I held more of the blame. They said it was an accident, but they had to place a percentage on the two of us in order to determine if my mother may have been trying to commit suicide. This is the essence of what they were saying and is not a direct quote.
The following summer, I started suffering periods of wanting to get drunk, but I never did. I stayed sober through out the entire healing process. Initially, I kept myself from drinking by counting the cost of getting drunk. I knew that if I started to drink, I wouldn’t stop and I would ruin my son’s life. I didn’t want him to grow up with an alcoholic mother, and in turn, screw up his life.
The weight of what I had done was overwhelming and to have lawyers document it as my fault caused me even more stress. I felt it wasn’t fair to me, because I had only submitted to my mother’s plan, which left me bearing the consequences. I was angry with her for this, and I was angry with Mark for insisting that I return home that night, instead of early in the morning.
My siblings scattered geographically over the next several years. A couple of my siblings’ lives fell apart and they ended up in divorces. Often I felt alone and desperate for them to be an active part of my life and the life of my son. I felt I had no one to offer him, since my mother, and all of my grandparents were dead.
I understand that it was an extreme set of circumstances and it didn’t come with instructions. No one can be truly prepared for such an enormous burden. Emotionally, even I wasn’t there for my son. Physically I was tired for the first year and slept a good deal of those days away. When I was awake I felt overwhelmed with nausea and dizziness.
Some of my siblings went through long periods of time where they hated me and wouldn’t speak to me for years. This separation hurt me tremendously and placed a sense of abandonment in me. I felt so isolated to the point that I was afraid that if Mark died, I wouldn’t have anyone to turn to and that David and I would be all alone. God kept my heart soft toward my family even though it came through the cost of many tears.
Through the first seven years after the accident, I struggled with any decision my husband made if it didn’t make absolute sense to me. My reaction to him was in direct response to submitting to my mother’s suggestion about setting my car into motion. I couldn’t trust the judgment of others on their reasoning alone, because I felt the consequences were too great if they were wrong.
All the emotional distress I encountered drove me to the point of wanting to get drunk. There were several times when I would leave my house with the intention of getting drunk. But the Lord’s hand of protection was on me and He shielded me from myself.
When this long period of trials and temptation had ended and I had settled down emotionally, I found myself looking back at my temperament during this time. I could visualize myself in the arms of God kicking and screaming for Him to let me go and Him holding onto me as my arms and legs flailed. I could imagine Him speaking gently to me the words, “You are out of your mind right now girl! And you will hurt yourself and others if I let go of you!” I believe this to be the case, because through all of my struggles, God’s faithfulness is the one thing that constantly resounded in my being. I know without a shadow of a doubt that He loves us even when we are unloving and unfaithful to Him.
The first winter after my mother died the stress from her death caused my grandmother’s health to decline. Immediately after my mom’s death she began seeing visions of my mother walking down her sidewalk. She started having heart attacks and strokes for the next two years. Then on November 1, 1992 she died. I carried guilt about her pain and death, because of my responsibility in my mom’s death.
During these two years unbeknownst to me, my mother’s brother’s wife spread rumors that my siblings and I planned my mother’s death for money. I did not find out about this until two evenings before my grandmother’s death. I was very hurt and angry that anyone could say such mean things. Apparently, from what my sister Barb told me she had gone to them for money during the time they were receiving their insurance checks. When they turned her down she got angry and starting to spread rumors about us. I felt that this was such a hateful thing to do. Didn’t people understand that we had been through enough already, and that we didn’t need this sort of thing to compound our trauma?
On October 14, 1993 my brother Rick was involved in an alcohol -related accident, which left him paralyzed. He went out drinking after work, got drunk, and subsequently rolled his car within a mile or so of his home. Again I felt responsible for him, because he suffered depression annually during the week of my mother’s death anniversary. He and his wife were having problems during this time, so he had gone out drinking after being sober for about six months.
On May 4, 1995 my brother Rich also got into an alcohol - related accident and cracked his skull open from one ear over to the other. I prayed intensely for him and constantly put his name on a prayer chain with the Assembly of God in Groton, NY. The Lord blessed him with a speedy recovery. He was released from the hospital one month and two days later.
In the spring of 1997 my stepfather was back up for sentencing. He had married again after my mother, and had at least three more children. Evidently, his daughter had come forward and told people that he had been molesting her. While waiting for the judge’s decision he shot and killed himself. When I learned about it I cried, because I had forgiven him and I felt sympathy for him.
In the first few years after his death, I cried at different times for his soul. I wondered if anyone had ever shared with him the message of God’s grace and forgiveness. I too have sinned against people, but still God shed his love on me. I want that same love to be shown to all mankind.
To this day, I suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Usually the hardest times for me are the times when I am in a car in severe weather conditions and someone else is driving. I tense up, my heart starts beating rapidly, and my breathing becomes shallow. At times, I get to the point of hyperventilation.
On occasion, I will simply be standing next to a car when my eyes start to see the car rolling. In the first few years, my response would be to grab the side of the car and scream for help. But through time, I have tried to respond mildly and with reason.
A couple of times, I have been in the position where I saw the car rolling and I just stood there saying to myself, “This is just my imagination. The car is not really moving.” But as the car rolled past the normal distance it usually moved in my mind, I realized the car really was moving. It turned out that because it was a standard, something caused the gears to pop out. I have taught myself to get a giggle out of these occurrences rather than to spaz out and get hysterical. It really must have been a funny sight to see me standing there casually, as my car is rolled down my driveway.
For the first year after the accident, I suffered constantly from nightmares. While I was asleep my mind would try to work out the details of that evening. Sometimes the speed of the dreams would slow way down or the characters would change. In one of the nightmares, my grandmother was in the car, and somehow she died in the accident instead of my mother.
On the night of the accident, many police officers approached me to interview me. Subconsciously, I must have been scared of them, because following that night I would have repeated dreams of them coming for me, and at times they were coming to kill me. The dreams were so intense that during my waking hours when a police car would get behind me, I would panic and detour, to get away from it.
One of my dreams involved a night setting in which my car broke down, and a police car pulled over. The officer got out of his car, and came at me to kill me. The dreams were not reasonable or even logical, but those are the kind of details that make up a nightmare.
Often at night, I would suffer from night blindness while driving. The blindness was so bad that I couldn’t see more than ten or twenty feet in front of my car. I would be so gripped with fear when I was behind the wheel that it would paralyze me. Many times, my husband would lead me home with his car. Having a safety net sometimes was the only sane way I could function as a driver.
12
Why I want to share
my life with you
6 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 1 Peter 1: 6,7 (NIV)
When I read these words that Christ spoke to Peter, they resound in my own soul. I am encouraged to use my experiences for the benefit of others. For this reason I have written this book. I want my testimony to strengthen and equip you in your walk with the Lord. I want to instill in you that you are a unique individual. You have gifts and talents that only you can contribute to this world. God ordained your footsteps and He knew you before the foundations of the earth. He called you by name while you were in the womb. He created you with his very hands. He wanted you to come into this world knowing that He met with you first, before your parents ever dreamed of you.
This may be difficult for you to believe because maybe you were just a product of a circumstance your parents found themselves in like I was. Perhaps your existence was a predicament that brought heartache and pain, brokenness and despair. I want you to know that even if your conception was a matter of rape, incest, or a one-night stand. You are not a mistake!
God in His complete foresight of all things knew that you would arrive under those conditions; He was not surprised by your birth. Don’t forget He weaved you in your mother’s womb with His hands and He left his fingerprints all over you. You are His creation, His handiwork, and His personal piece of art.
I have found much consolation between the covers of the Bible. From the first page to the last I have been enlightened about the mighty creator of the universe. Although there are many details about God’s measures that can be dumbfounding and incomprehensive to the human mind, I have come to trust His judgment and His foreknowledge of the consequences of the actions of mankind on the earth and the people therein.
While some of His methods could be stumbling blocks if I allowed them to be, there are more things about God that intrigue me. As I read the various books of both the Old and the New Testaments, I see that God uses an honest approach with people. He is neither shy nor intimidated by humans and their approval ratings of Him. He is not a political figure who changes his mind and beliefs in order to please the masses. He is consistent in his expectations as He lays out His wisdom before us in His instructions on how we are to live as individuals and with one another. Also, He is not embarrassed to share with us the anguish He has suffered under the disobedience and disloyalty of His creation. I have found that He continually pursues us like a heartsick lover.
I was nineteen when I first read Isaiah 43, since then I have been strengthened in my understanding of who I am in Him, and have taken comfort in the fact that God is looking out for my safety. The passage is set up in context with the Lord talking to Israel about His being their Savior and Creator. However, in application to my life, I understand that there are portions of the scriptures that I too am able to apply to myself, especially when God is referring to himself as a Savior. Specifically, I am referring to Isaiah 43:1, 2 from the New International Version.
1 “But now, this is what the Lord says he who created you,
O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “’Fear not, for I have
redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and
when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When
you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will
not set you ablaze’.”
At this point, you can buck His authorship of your life and spit in His face out of anger and accuse Him of being cruel for allowing you to be born into the life you live. Quite frankly, He did not take your parents hands by force and lead them unwittingly through the choices that they made; instead He took the time to prepare a way for you to find Him and to turn your life and your circumstances into good. The Word encourages us with this message from God Himself, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future” (NIV Jeremiah 29:11).
You are uniquely special. There will never be another person who can be what you can be, or give what you have to give to this life. Put behind you the lies people have told you or have insinuated about you, and the demeaning nicknames and the insults they have said to abuse you. These things are not you! These are mere labels and stigmas that people have tried to associate with you. Until you have lived your days out completely, no one has any idea what your potential truly is except God.
The following are a few principles that I have come to embrace, because of the healing power they possess. Perhaps you will find them useful as well. First, I am not able to conquer these ghosts of my past without outside intervention. I need to acknowledge the hand of God in my life and that He has a particular plan for me. Why do I have to do this? Because it is essential for me to believe that I am more than a happenstance.
Second, I have to recognize that the world has some pretty foolish philosophies. There is a philosophy that would have us believe that we are our all in all; that we can make it through this life by simply having faith and confidence in our skills and talents. These ideas may sound good, and when kept in balance and in a healthy perspective they can be useful; however, God never intended for us to form ourselves into idols. We are not something to be worshipped, or to put our complete trust in.
This lifestyle is completely contrary to what He desires for us. He knows that when we choose to worship ourselves we will find a dead end. Too often we hear that we need to follow the desires of our heart. I am not sure about your experiences in practicing this type of reasoning, but I have found that my heart is never focused on any one thing for very long. It always wants to change paths, and never wants to see any commitment through to the end. It is led astray by emotions and sexual desires that are fleeting.
Third, I decided to find a resource that is tried and true. In my search, I discovered the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament. In my opinion, this book is just as relevant today as it has ever been. It is a good solid philosophy for wholesome living, especially since we live in a culture that is changing rapidly ---both spiritually and politically. Proverbs 19:3 show us that, “A foolish man ruins his way, and his heart rages against the Lord.” I can testify to this wisdom as being true by my first - hand experiences. In order to have a hardy foundation to build my life on, I try to live in accordance to the principles I find in the Proverbs and the other books of the Bible. Since I have put these standards into practice, I have seen my life bear fruit and become an asset for others.
Being useful to others builds me up, because I am able to see the value that I possess, and it allows me to see my growth and maturity. I don’t claim to have all of the answers, but I am confident that I have an invaluable treasure from which I can draw when I am seeking answers and directions.
My fourth and final principle is that I am not ashamed to declare that I am full of sin and that when left to myself, I head straight down a path of destruction. I have discovered the essence of the scripture that warns that, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (NAS Romans 6:23). I have learned that everything that I indulge in, that goes against the wisdom of the scriptures, will eventually bring physical, spiritual, and/or emotional death. The smartest choice I ever made was to humble myself and admit my foolishness and arrogance.
13
Living victoriously
and successfully
“[B]eing confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1: 6 (NIV)
So, here I am, twenty-two years of sobriety and twenty-one years of marriage. My son is twenty-years old, and is a very talented individual. He is a college graduate from a music conservatory in Manhattan. His dream is to work on Broadway someday.
Educationally, I have earned an A.S. in Liberal Arts, a B.A. in English, M.A. in English and Publishing, and I am currently working on Ph.D. in Educational Leadership.
With the grace of God, I am an overcomer. I am still overcoming new obstacles all the time that try to keep me down, but my perseverance has grown significantly. This is why it is important for me to hold fast to the principle of not focusing on where we come from or how we start off in the life we are given. I have found that if we dwell on our past too much, it brings despair.
Always remember that God sees the bigger picture. He has a destiny planned for each of us, which is beyond our greatest imagination. Sure, there have been trials and tribulations while I have been serving God, but look at where I was before I chose to serve Him. It rains on the just and the unjust alike. During one of my many trials I decided to focus on the well-known saying, “And
this too shall pass.” It was a constant reminder to me that I would get through this trial just as I had with all the others.
As part of my main sustenance in life, I have chosen to use the resources that are available to me under the care and direction of God. I believe with everything in me, that there is no better person to turn to for help than to the one who created me. Nor, is there a better friend to have than the one who laid down His life for me. Jesus is my friend, and He is your friend, too.
