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Warning: Contains graphic content & adult themes.

I got stood up. I didn’t like him that much anyway, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. I called my best friend and we went to the skating rink. Supposedly, JL had been watching me all evening until we finally met. He was charming and funny. We bumped into each other the next day, totally by chance. Later, we started hanging out. He first lied about his age, which later came out was 12 1/2 years my senior. Really, that should have been a big flapping red flag. Not the age so much as the ease of the lie. It seemed like such a little thing.

The first few months were fun and exciting. I met his five year old son whom he hid from me for several months. By the way, he’d been married, hence the son. (Side note here, he didn’t tell me about the second wife either. His mom told me and not until several years into our relationship.) If the bouquet of red flags didn’t tip you off here…

Granted, I had my own issues going in. My dating career had not been full of banner moments and it was a sheer miracle that I didn’t get into trouble during high school. Still, I had somehow managed to come out with my dignity and virginity intact. I started in a vocational program and had a part-time job. Not too bad for a start. I started having some health problems but hung in there. I won’t go into detail here, but I could trace it all back to the first time.

Really, it didn’t strike me as being anything spectacular. He wasn’t really that concerned with my participation as long as he was having a good time. At least part of it was that from the first moment, it was all laced with guilt, jealousy, and manipulation. They were mostly subtle, but it never felt right. I wanted to break it off, but had a sneaking (and growing) suspicion that there was more to my health problems than I was ready to admit.

We had been dating for about nine months and things were going badly. In his words, I was getting fat and he couldn’t stand fat, so he was going to go be with his true love, which by the way, happened to be my so-called best friend. If we weren’t already neck-deep in drama, try out the words “I am almost certain I’m pregnant” and have a man, bigger and stronger than me and fueled with disgust and anger, scream the F-word in my face. Oooookay… I guess I’m dealing with this by myself. Fine.

It was another two and a half months before I saw a doctor. Tricky part was, I had a period for the first three months and had been on the pill. I figured I wasn’t that far along. Wrong. Way wrong. I was seven and a half months along when I saw the doctor. He passed me off to another doctor, I think because I was a liability to be that far along with no prenatal care. One of the doctors suggested abortion and I nearly vomited in his office from shock and disgust. After that it was a whirlwind of despair that sucked me deeper into itself with each day that passed. I didn’t want to live through it. JL had left me but kept coming back. I saw judgement in the eyes of everyone who looked in my direction. I had lost my best friend. Abortion didn’t even come close to existing as an option. I couldn’t just send the baby away in adoption and never know what happened. Even so, I had absolutely no idea what to do. There were no good options.

My mother saved me. She hugged me. Against all odds, she wanted to help at a time when everything hurt. I confessed that I had tried to put myself in harms way on purpose. I was terrified. I wanted it all to end. I believed my life was over. How could it not be? There was no way out of the fear and doubt and pain.

“You know, there’s something called an open adoption. It’s where you know where the baby is and it’s not a secret. Your aunt and uncle can’t have any more children and they have been getting ready to adopt. Maybe they could adopt this baby.” When she said it, it was as if God had whispered it into my heart. It seemed like the only way possible for this to not end in tears. Now to ask the two people whose lives would be changed forever in a way they never imagined… My aunt and uncle. They were both on the phone when I explained the situation and asked them if they wanted to adopt this baby. I don’t remember the words I used, but their simultaneous and resounding YES echoed through my entire being.

There was not much time. We had only about a month after that to get everything ready. I told JL what I was going to do. He was irritated at first. Then I showed him the sonogram and he realized the baby was a girl. If I thought he was mad before, it was a joke. He became incensed, and I was afraid. If I hadn’t been in a safe place with something between us, I think he might have hurt me. You see, he wanted a girl. It was not the end of the world for the baby to go away if it was a boy. In fact, problem solved. Since it was a girl, though, he went through a sudden and remarkable change. He grew warm and loving and wanted to get back together and call off this stupid adoption thing.

By now, the red flags flapping in my face and a light at the end of the tunnel were enough to let me remember why things were the way they were. He still refused to go away. Several weeks later, I went to the hospital with contractions. We called my aunt and uncle and they headed down. Bear in mind, here, that it was a 650 mile drive with a seven year old in the car. It was not like they were an hour away. By the time the doctor checked me out and sent me home, they were already well on their way. A very generous friend with a ministry house let them stay for the next week until the baby was born.

As much as I enjoyed connecting with my aunt and uncle and becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea of sending this wiggling, kicking, punching, squirming, trying-her-best-to-get-out-by-any-means-possible baby with them, it was a terrible week. JL had redoubled his efforts to prove that we should stay together and keep the baby. He said such romantic things, like “After all, no one’s gonna want you after you’ve popped out a kid. I’m the best you’ll ever hope to get.” and “We should stay together. We don’t need to get married. We could just go back to how things were and keep the baby.” and “If you are so stupid that you still want to get rid of her, then give her to my sister so at least she’ll stay in this family.” (Side note here, he hated his sister and wasn’t currently speaking to her. I guess he was willing to “get over it”.)

After my aunt and uncle had been there for a few days, he asked me to marry him. I said no. He grew angry again and told me that he would take the baby when she was born and I’d never see her again. He said if I tried to take the baby and go live with my aunt and uncle, he would track me down and take the baby from me and there wouldn’t be anything I could do about it. He told me I was a stupid whore and he would get even with me for what I was putting him through. There are few times in my life that I have sobbed so hard.

I cried so hard, in fact, that I went into labor. It was a complicated labor that lasted through the night. The baby was sunny side up and for the first time in a while, she didn’t seem to want to come out. My epidural took hold in only half my body, so half of me was numb and the other half felt every excruciating moment. JL was there, alternating between pacing and hovering. They used the vacuum but it didn’t work. The baby had a BM in the water, so it became more urgent to get her out. The doctor told me jokingly that if I had her by noon, I could have lunch. She was born at 12:01.

My family went to eat, laughing and talking and celebrating. The hospital staff brought me the promised lunch. It was a cheeseburger and french fries. I never got to eat it. By the time my family came back from eating, I was being prepped for emergency surgery. I had torn and hemorrhaged. The doctor was removing clots the size of the baby’s head. I was whiter than the sheets I laid on and was slipping out of consciousness. My aunt ran in a desperate search for chaplain. She found one and they all gathered around me in a circle while the doctor was busy getting the operating room ready. I would go into surgery as soon as it was ready. She told my family that I would most likely not be able to have more children.

What happened next differs depending on who tells it. According to my aunt, they were led in prayer by the chaplain as they stood in a circle around my near lifeless body. It was a prayer for healing and peace. Then the doctor came back to do a final check before surgery. That’s not exactly how I remember it…

I don’t remember the chaplain coming in, but I knew he was there. I know where everyone was standing. I was laying on the hospital bed and then I wasn’t. I was standing on the pillows stacked behind my body. I was looking down on my body and watching the circle around me as they prayed. They were crying. I was not. I had a choice. It would have been easy to choose to fly the bonds of earth. It was not a conscious decision, though I knew it was there. I didn’t weigh the pros and cons and calculate the best option. I simply didn’t go. There was peace there. Somehow I knew what I needed to know and did what I needed to do.

They were all still praying. I laid back down. That was when the doctor came bustling back in. She had my mother sign the next of kin paperwork and turned back to me. She made her last check and froze… She checked again. The hemorrhaging had stopped. This doesn’t just stop, she kept saying. She couldn’t believe it. She brought in her partner (who also happened to be her husband) and had him check. I had, in fact, stopped bleeding.

I had come back. No one else really understands what happened that day. The problem was that I may have come back, but I came back to an even worse mess than I had left. I woke up to JL sitting across the room, cooing to the newborn baby that he was going to take her away where none of these evil people could find her. He refused to hand her to anyone but me. The whole time I was in the hospital, he rode me with guilt and hurled insults disguised as thinly veiled threats.

We left the hospital on a Saturday, so we couldn’t go to the lawyer’s office until Monday. My aunt and uncle couldn’t take the baby until we signed the paperwork. Honestly, I didn’t think JL was going to show up. He had been getting more and more possessive and aggressive as we neared the appointment. He came, though. He came in, signed, and left.

I stayed to see them off. I held the baby and said my goodbyes. As they pulled away from the driveway with her, a wave of numbness crashed from one side and a wave of noxious pain cascaded from the other. They met in the middle where I stood and overtook me together. I was held on my feet only by the paralysis that had set in. I began to cry. I cried all the way down to the bottom of my heart, which had now been cleaved in two. Half of it was in that car with her new family getting farther away by the minute and the other half was doomed to stay with me and never be completely whole again.

The next weeks were torment. I was attempting to pull the pieces of my life back together and JL was trying harder than ever to pull them apart. This is the part where you ask why I didn’t leave him. Go ahead… Everyone does. So I will tell you. I was drowning. The peace of near-death was gone. The pain of real life was back in full force and now I had no baby. Everything had been ripped away from me. In a way, JL was in that water with me. The grief was overwhelming and he was constantly pushing his way back in, refusing to let go of me.

That may sound romantic, until he explained his reasoning. He told me that if I led the way, we could say that I changed my mind and we wanted to keep the baby. He told me so many times that we had to stick together to get her back. He pushed for intimacy and tried to keep everyone away from me. If I stayed isolated and connected to him, he might just be able to get me to cave in to what he wanted. If I left, I feared he might try to kidnap the baby. I couldn’t diffuse it if I wasn’t there.

Meanwhile, he hounded me to quit school. He didn’t want me to continue in Tae Kwan Do. He hated when I got together with one of the few friends I had left and he discouraged it heavily. He showed up at my work and ultimately cost me my job. All this was in the name of ‘love’. I felt trapped and he made sure I stayed that way. Incomprehensible emotions with fear pushing behind every single one is the only way to explain why I stayed.

He didn’t hit me. The potential was always there and many times violence was boiling just beneath the surface. No, his form of abuse was more subtle. It would have been easy to leave if he had hit me. Tiny acts of evil manipulation each day wore me down until I started to believe what he said about me. I was afraid that he was right. I was ruined and worthless. My body was spoiled and no one would ever want me.

What he didn’t count on was one simple fact: I am stronger than he ever imagined. I saved that baby’s life. I saved her from the life of abuse that took me nearly ten years to escape. I saved her from being the waif to wipe up her birth father’s needs. Nearly the whole family was rife with adultery, molestation, and their own unique brand of guilt-torture. To this day, she has no idea what squalid circumstances she so narrowly escaped, both physically and emotionally.

He never forgave me for giving her up and made sure I knew it. I don’t really care. He wasn’t the one I was trying to save. I stayed with him to keep him from going after her. It was the only way to protect her. Every day was a tiny victory. I sacrificed everything to give her a life that was not my own.

More than twenty years later, it still burns in my very core, but by the grace of all things holy, I gave her a life.

The Easter Triduum in the Catholic Church leads up to the highest holy day we have. Holy Thursday, also known as celebration of the Last Supper, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, also known as the Mass of Light are a time of preparation and build up to Easter Sunday. After all, this is the day the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it! Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday and ending with the last moments of the Vigil Mass on Holy Saturday, is what we all wait for throughout our preparation days in Lent. Five weeks of prayer and sacrifice and then BOOM, Holy Week gets here and things really start getting interesting…

Well, interesting if we can get over hearing the same story told every year since either birth (for us cradle Catholics) or conversion (those who made their profession of faith later). If we’ve gone to the same church for a long time, we probably haven’t seen anything new about Holy Week for a while. The main thing is that even if it’s the same thing as last year and the year before and the year before, the celebration is the way it is for a reason. It’s actually a good reason, and each of the pieces of it have their place in the whole.

People in general don’t seem to have any issue with Holy Thursday. Their worst dilemma for the day is how much they have to cover up their legs and feet so no one has to volunteer (or is voluntold) to get their feet washed. I mean, it’s the Last Supper, right? Not so bad. In the same way, most people don’t mind Holy Saturday either. It’s long and pretty involved and for musicians and vocalists the whole thing is pretty daunting, but folks don’t have a problem with bringing light into the darkness.

Right smack in the middle, though, is Good Friday. Many people do not like Good Friday. In a way, I don’t blame them. I mean, what’s “good” about the death of Christ? It’s dark. It’s painful. It’s sorrowful. Depending on how it’s portrayed, it can be downright distressing and horrible. Yelling “crucify him” at our part of the Passion just reminds each one of us of the very real probability that we would have been in that crowd, the same crowd that hailed Jesus just days before as he entered Jerusalem and the same crowd that demanded his execution, or at best, hanging out with Peter denying that he even knew Jesus. So why do we do it? Why is that evil even remembered year after year when we relive the Passion on Good Friday?

We do it because it is a very real part of who we are. The Passion reminds us of each facet of our reaction to Christ, and moreover it sets the stage for the incredible story that comes after. Let’s face it, none of us is perfect. Have you never felt the dilemma of Pilate? You figure out who Christ is and what he means to you, but the crowd pushes so hard that they overtake you and you bow out before it turns really ugly. Or Peter? You know Jesus personally but when things get hairy, you know that if you admit what Christ means to you it will spell certain doom. How about a Pharisee? It was jealousy that pushed their hand. It was fear of losing what they had, even to the Son of God. Or even one of the faces in the crowd? The push and pull of the bodies crammed against you on all sides, screaming for the death of a man. Who can turn that tide? The women wiping the tears and sweat from His face? You want to help but feel powerless against the world, so you do what you can just to try to ease the pain.

So many people think only of the main players in the passion, but there are so many more perspectives. We aren’t only reading it each year, we are recalling the pieces of ourselves that need saving. Fear, jealousy, darkness, and pressure to sin, these things are horribly powerful and are every bit as real today as they were in the time of Jesus two thousand years ago. Jesus knew from even before that what steps must be taken to reach the light. He knew that the seeds would be scattered and fall into these perspectives. He knew that He would have to walk the dark path. He did this because He knew that if we were called to walk it, we would not make it on our own. But still, why bring it all into the forefront so brutally on Good Friday? Aren’t we as Catholics a Resurrection People? Why dwell on the death of Jesus? People die all the time and nothing more than a passing moment in the grand timeline is spent on their remembrance.

We remember. We recall because the light shines so much brighter out of the darkness. The darker the path, the more profound is the light. For the Resurrection to mean anything, to be anything special, it has to come from the path of death. If Jesus had not died, he would have been just another king or prophet or historical person. He’s not. He’s so much more than that. He told us to do this in remembrance of Him, but He didn’t only mean the Last Supper part of it as we celebrate in the mass. It is a part of the whole as much as we are a part of Him. We need both. Joy is joy because of its contrast with sorrow. The sharper the contrast, the deeper the joy. The pain and the heartbreak of Good Friday allows us to fully realize the amazing, breathtaking, astounding gift that we relive every Easter by the resplendent beauty taking the place of the horror. We are a Resurrection People in part because of Good Friday. We don’t worship a king; We are embraced by our Lord!

Good Friday is the darkness that we have to understand in ourselves to breathe the Life of God on Easter. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Light. He steps out from the grave on Easter morning and we are right next to Him, blinking in the fresh, new light of a brand new day. Only when we let go of those dark pieces of ourselves  are we ready to step with Him into that light. It is in that moment that this truly becomes the day the Lord has made, and He made it for us. Rejoice and be glad in it!

I will start with saying that I am neither passive nor panicked about COVID-19. I exercise caution and care for myself and my family and a healthy dose of compassion for others. In other words, I practice social distancing and wash my hands, amongst other precautions. Having said that, I must add: People. I mean. For the love of all things holy, wash your damn hands! Being in one of the two stalls in the bathroom when you finish your business and leave means I know as a fact you didn’t wash your hands. Give me a break, it’s 20 seconds of warm sudsy. You can do it. Trust me.

In the current situation, if you’re going to use masks and other valuable medical supplies, please at least use them correctly. Every person wearing a mask on the trail where I walked today was wearing it incorrectly. The colored side goes towards the person you are trying to protect. If you are protecting yourself, the colored side should be towards your own face. If you are sick and protecting others, 1) the colored part should be facing outward and 2) if you are sick, freaking go home! Also, if you are only covering your mouth, yer doin’ it wrong. The mucous membranes in your nose are still very much unprotected.

On yesterday’s walk, there was a couple that came to the trail shortly after I did. I came to 15 feet away from the woman, who had stopped walking. Her husband was calling to her to follow him, but she wouldn’t move. She moved far off the track into the mud and I gave her a wide berth (as I said, 15 feet). I realized she was saying something to me, so I popped out my ear bud. She put her hand over her nose and mouth (which will do absolutely nothing in the way of protection) and was yelling at me “Ain’t you afraid of that Chinese flu?!?” I responded that we need to keep our distance from each other. She took off through the mud and woods to get back to their car. The husband threw up his hands and finished walking the trail to meet her at their car. I was dismayed at her reaction. I purposefully kept far away from her. You would have thought I was intentionally pushing her boundaries. Her obvious panic aside, we’ve long passed the stage of this being a “Chinese” flu. It is a worldwide pandemic. Calling it the Chinese flu is doing nothing but instilling fear of a nation and is not helpful. It has a name. Coronavirus is the virus that causes the disease COVID-19. It does not care what country you’re from, color you are, language you speak, or how much money you have. It is the essence of ‘indiscriminate.’

I know how this sounds. It sounds like I am being very critical of my fellow human beings and county-mates. It is born from frustration of someone who is immuno-compromised and worried about the fact that so many people are taking a blasé attitude towards our current situation.

We’re not statistics… not merely numbers on some chart for scientists to track. I hear people saying that this is a Democratic hoax. At last count, my county has lost 23 people to this disease. For the record, a hoax doesn’t usually kill people. To add to that, these people are not just 23. They are mothers and fathers, grandparents, brothers and sisters, friends… They shared this Earth with us and left it too soon. So many more were effected by their loss. “Yeah, well, he was old anyway.” That’s a grandfather who won’t see his granddaughter graduate high school. “Yeah, well, she didn’t do social distancing.” That’s a mother and a nurse who was treating patients and sleeping (when she could sleep) in a separate room so she didn’t risk contaminating her kids. “Yeah, well, he was always sick anyway.” That’s a dad with COPD whose lungs could not handle the strain and now his small children have to figure out life without their dad. “Yeah, well…” What would yours be?

I have not lost hope. Neither should you. There’s far more to this situation that any of us realize, but it’s not beyond us. We need to take it seriously and take care of ourselves and each other. Be careful and smart. Be kind and patient. Be loving and understanding. We need each other, and this will get worse before it gets better. We are called to be generous and compassionate. If we don’t, this will go on for much longer and inflict so much more damage than it has already.

Oh, and wash your hands.

I run. From one thing to the next, it is a mad dash. When things don’t work the way I want, tempers flare and words fly unchecked. Frustrations mount and I feel as though I’m moving backwards, being pushed in all the ways I don’t want to go.

That path is a dangerous one. Those are the moments that are most hurtful to others and to myself. Anger and impatience keep me from being to person I am supposed to be – the one I was created to be – but they live within me. These unwelcome houseguests elbow their way through my life, shoving aside peace and joy and love. They invite regret and hurt in with no regard for my good intentions.

Only after the storm, in the quiet created by fear and pain does it become clear to me that they have surfaced again. Only then has my mind cleared enough to realize that another stone has been cast and that it was by my hand.

I forget to pause. I do not remember that the aftermath could be avoided. It is difficult to ask forgiveness. I would not have to ask if I practiced the pause before the storm. I could prevent the storm entirely, but I have to remember that anger and impatience are not the only residents within me.

There is peace. There is love. There is kindness. There is compassion. These are quiet – much quieter than their counterparts who bicker constantly for attention. Those are the ones I must learn to seek out when things do not go as planned. Those are the ones that I should keep close at hand when the world is moving so quickly around me that I am a tempest trying to keep up.

I must remember to pause. I won’t always; I understand this about myself. There is more good than evil, though. More beauty than unloveliness. I have to call those parts forward and leave them in the forefront, pausing in everything to make sure that those parts of me are what is presented. I know that it is in me to be the person I was meant to be, and that is a great comfort.

There is a battle going on right under our noses. The warriors are not the biggest or the strongest. They are not what any of us expect in a psychological fight that will change the course of the world. In fact, most people have no clue that the battle is being waged.

Picture the scene… There is a girl. She is eleven and is running for all she’s worth. It is, after all, what she is expected to do. Yes, she’s even trained for it. There is another eleven year old behind her, quickly overtaking her. The heat is fantastic in the open field, registering more than 95 degrees. They’ve already been running for over a mile without stopping. The girl in front blacks out and falls forward into a metal post that grazes her side as she falls. The girl behind her stops in her tracks, seized for a split second in indecision. People all around her are yelling indecipherable things in her general direction. It’s her versus her.

The decision is made. The girl behind kneels to help the girl who passed out. The words being yelled begin to become coherent. “Leave her!” “Someone will get her!” “What are you doing? RUN!” The kneeling girl ignores them. She has to know that the girl will be okay. Rough hands pick her up from where she knelt, pushing her away. She digs in her heels and refuses to move. The yelling intensifies. Other people have reached the fallen girl. “Run, girl! She’s not on your team!”

“No.” The girl says, “I want to know that she’s okay.” “She’ll be fine, now RUN!” Finally, the girl turns and begins again to run. She is very far behind the other runners now. Still troubled and looking back until she can no longer see the scene, the girl runs. Most of the cheering crowd has disbursed around the finish line as she crossed it in 111th place. The course was two miles in the heat of a late August afternoon in Georgia. The delay cost her too much time in the eyes of the coach. Didn’t she understand that she was in a race? Yes. She understood it well.

Her dilemma, though, was not from a lack of understanding. It was from an abundance of compassion. No, the other girl was not on her team. Yes, she knew she would forfeit ranking higher in the race. This scenario was the desire to win versus the moral implications of leaving another human person in a bad situation. It was what everyone was screaming at her versus what she knew to be right. It was what others thought versus the kind of person she wants to be. It was how she would want someone to treat her if she were in that other girl’s shoes.

What is so baffling is that many people have told her since then that she shouldn’t care. It’s telling an eleven year old girl that she should only care about someone if they are on her team. She should care about herself more and a race that changes nothing in the grand scheme of things. That’s simply wrong. She was ridiculed because she cared about another whom she does not know. That’s wrong. Even at eleven, she knew what was right and she did it.

This is what all things come down to. Our children need to understand that compassion and empathy are more important than coming in first. Winning the race is not the answer. Love is. She understood it without having to make a conscious decision about it. It’s who she is.

My warrior fought the battle. She didn’t win the race, but she won the day. I know beyond a doubt that what she did was so much more crucial to who she will become than any race. Honestly, even if she placed last, I simply couldn’t be prouder.

Friday. The rain is washing the yellow off of Northwest Georgia to turn the creeks and ditches a lovely shade of striped. My coworkers are bustling in under umbrellas and coats, dodging raindrops and looking only to the ground before them. If they turn their heads but a little…

Everything takes on a serene hue of clarity. With the air clear and the world baptized, things are the color they should be. There’s a smell to the air of damp moss and pine. The grass is beginning to leave its brown jacket of winter and spring forth in its annual greening. Against the green, the gray stands out to me. It must have hit the wall of my work building and fallen. In some kind of morbid curiosity, I touch it. The tiny body is still warm, its life still falling away from it. The feathers are so soft. Variations of gray wrap the graceful body as I pick it up gently. I cup the little bird in my hands and can feel the remnants of its warmth on my palm. Such a little thing.

“Not a sparrow falls…” The words came unbidden to my lips as I whisper to the sweet bird. Its feet are curved as if it grasps a branch. Intricate and beautiful. The very tip of its beak curved into a hook. Its eye was open only a fraction and it was difficult to imagine that this amazing creature was dead. In my mind’s eye, I saw it open its eyes and shake off the impact. It stretched its wings and fluffed those lovely silver feathers. The clouds beckoned it, and it lofted itself from my hands into the sky.

I blinked and the image was gone. The lifeless body was still in my hand, its warmth transferring to me. Were those raindrops on my face? No, but they could be. I carried it away from the building. This would not be where it rested. I would not allow that. Together, we found a place under the shelter of a white pine. As the last wisps left it, I laid the bird at the base of the tree and made a decision: if there are no birds in Heaven, then I don’t want to go.

I doubt very much that they are denied entrance, however. After all, not a sparrow falls that He does not know it. The clouds DO beckon. That sweet little bird is flying as it’s never flown before. It will never grow tired. Its wings will never fail and the winds will never cease to carry it. Fly to forever, little bird, and enjoy your eternal springtime.

There is a particular moment in time when each of us realizes that we are mortal and will die. We might not be able to articulate it, or even remember it later when we have the words to describe it, but it’s there. I don’t remember the moment, but there have been multiple times when my mortality has danced before my eyes like a barely visible water spout over a lake of time. It’s there and it’s moving, but it isn’t quite tangible for me.

I’ve been in violent car crashes. I’ve nearly died in childbirth. I’ve had more near misses than I can count. Still, I never really thought I would die. I’ve thought about it, even considered doing it to myself, but hadn’t truly considered the actual moment that I will die – until recently.

I took what one of my friends calls a “horizontal life pause”, aka a nap. Sometime during the pause, my youngest child climbed into bed with me. I was not completely aware and was drifting back to sleep. In that haze between wakefulness and dreaming, she took my hand. Her sweet little whisper lifted from her and entered the haze… I love you…

In that instant, we were transported. I opened my eyes and saw the hospital room. There was a single monitor behind me, beeping softly. A window to one side showed a pleasant scene with blooming flowers and beams of sunlight. Motes of dust sparkled in the beams, making the light dance and swirl. My eyes dropped to my hands. They were not the smooth, youthful skin I was expecting. They were spotted and marked with age. They were thin and frail, my great-grandmother’s hands as she gestured, telling us a story from her days of teaching school. They were hands that had braided hair and cooked feasts and applied bandaids and changed diapers.

A young hand took mine. I followed the smooth hand to the arm and up to the face. It was a familiar face. I knew that face. She smiled. I love you, Mom… Her adult voice was still a whisper. I smiled. I felt the stretched skin and the strain to hold up my head. She touched my face and I closed my eyes again. Years of memories flitted through my mind, filling my spirit for its journey. It would not take long, but I would be buoyed by those memories and a lifetime more.

There was no fear. There was only joy. There was beauty that my little one – though not so little any more – was with me. She let go with peace and joy, sending me off with all the love in her heart. I let her go with peace and joy, lifting from her with all the love in my heart. I left the love there for her to keep. There was lots more where I was going.

I blinked. Tears of love were streaming down my face into my hair. Her little fingers brushed my cheek and her sweet little breath released in a contented sigh. She was six again and I was was laying in my bed at home, utterly taken with the vision. I understood then. I had been given an amazing gift. I saw a glimpse of what would come to pass.

My sweet little one will be with me when I die. She will be by my side as she was that day, bringing love and joy and peace. I will be at peace, and so will she. I understood that death will not be something to fear when it’s time. It will be beautiful and filled to completeness with the kind of love that lasts forever.

Warning: Contains graphic content & adult themes.

“Do you swear to tell the truth…”

The dog belonged to one of my best friends. About ten of us slept over at her house for her birthday. We braided each other’s hair, stayed up late playing Truth or Dare…

“The whole truth…”

We were playing outside and the dog jumped on me. His paw brushed down my chest and his claw caught and left a deep scratch…

“And nothing but the truth…”

My friend’s mother cleaned the scratch and declared that I would live. I wasn’t sure I believed her, but once the pain subsided I was more upset that the dog messed up my French braid…

“So help you God?”

I do.

“Your Honor, Defense has already addressed the history of this witness and does not see the purpose of this questioning.”

“Your Honor, this witness is necessary to show the history of the Defendant and that the charges brought against him in this court are the latest in a habitual tendency towards abuse.”

“Prosecution, please proceed.”

My heart pounded until I thought it might burst from my chest. Dad, the scratch is fine. There’s not even a scar now. His fingers ran down the place the scratch had been and was now barely discernible. He examined it. He examined all around it. When I finally put my shirt back on and walked away, the feeling of wrongness stayed.

“Have you ever been examined by the defendant for bugs?”

A sound somewhere between a laugh and the remaining air leaving my lungs came unbidden from my mouth. God help me…

Yes.

“Can you explain, please?”

He said anywhere there’s hair, ticks can go. He said he had to check.

“And what did you do?”

I figured out how to check myself with a mirror. I didn’t like when he did it, but I was afraid I might get ticks there, so I checked myself.

“What happened then?”

He told me I didn’t check well enough. It had to be him.

“Did you ever have a tick there?”

No, sir.

I locked the door. He yelled at me. He came in while I was taking baths. I switched to showers. He came in when I showered. I showered faster. He came in anyway. I stopped showering unless someone else was home or he wasn’t. I got in trouble for being dirty.

I was eleven. I was dirty. I could be infested with bugs at any moment. I didn’t shave properly. I couldn’t be alone. My door could never be locked. My life’s mission became a simple one:

Never be alone with him.

“What was the first instance that you felt this way?”

The scratch. My breath caught in my throat and stopped. Nothing could get through into my lungs. I was back there… eleven and in pain… afraid and confused… why did he do that???

“Why didn’t you tell?”

He was always there. If I told, they would fight, maybe divorce… my fault… all my fault… The tears that were held back opened like a torrent. My breath stopped completely and I panicked. I couldn’t talk, couldn’t breathe…

So help me God…

“Were you upset when he left?”

I nodded.

“Please say your response out loud for the court.”

I gasp out a barely audible yes.

“Why?”

He’s my father… The words hung in the air like smoke. Now instead of no air, there’s too much. My head begins to spin and I hear the D.A. address the judge.

“Your Honor, please can we have a short recess?”

“Granted. We will recess for ten minutes.”

The District Attorney half dragged, half carried me to the back of the makeshift courtroom. What little composure I had left fled. Pale, shaking, and gasping for breath that wouldn’t come, I choked out an apology. No, he whispered, you’re perfect.

“No more questions for this witness, Your Honor.”

“Your witness.”

He smirked. I steeled myself for the worst. He called me a pathological liar. I was a part of a conspiracy against an honest man whose only mistake was asking for a divorce from a woman who no longer loved him. I was angry at him for leaving and jealous that he had a step daughter and a new daughter that I felt were replacements for me. Admit it, I just wanted revenge.

What are you talking about?

“Admit it, you were after revenge!”

No, I promised to tell the truth!

“How many children have you had?”

Tw- “Objection!”

“Withdraw the question. Defense is finished with this witness.”

The abruptness with which it was over was confusing. What had just happened? When I wouldn’t lie under pressure to bend to his version of events, he tried to use take the questioning in a direction that would show I was the whore he said I was in his previous statements. When the D.A pounced on the left turn, he withdrew and ended it.

My father sat perfectly still through the whole thing. No emotion, no reaction. The only trace of anything was that little half smile that said to anyone who knew him that he thought the whole trial was a lark. Total BS in his book.

Ultimately, the jury did not believe his conspiracy theory. I did not celebrate. This was no cause for celebration; it was cause for tears. I do not hate my father. I did not then, nor do I now wish revenge on him. I know what happened and in his deepest heart that he seemingly chooses to ignore, so does he.

For three days, my family and the new one he made after he left my mother sat together. Each of us in turn went missing for a time, to be shaken, verbally beaten, taken to the brink of whatever we called sanity, and then redeposited with the group to await the next disappearance. We all had different experiences to explain and in the end we all said the same thing:

Never be alone with him.

I forgave him. I do not fear him. I understand that he acted out what was first done to him. That is not an excuse but an explanation. I understand that addictions do not just go away. I know that he never trusted himself for good reason. We were the lingering bottle to the alcoholic. A teaser shot to the druggie. A glimpse of skin for the porn addict. He knew it was there beneath the surface and he did not cage that beast well enough. The state did it for him.

So help him God.

1986. That was the year I turned 10. From beginning to end, it was a roller coaster ride unlike any other period for me. For anyone who knows me personally, for me to say it was unlike any other is no small statement. Rather, it’s probably the beginning of a winding, twisting, upside down, downside up, corkscrew of a story. Yeah. 10.

January came in typical Georgia fashion when snow falls on daffodils and melts in the same afternoon because Mother Nature said, “Here, hold my sweet tea.” My grandparents were at our house for a visit. My brother and I were homeschooled at the time, so we didn’t have to worry about missing a opportunity to play a round of rummy or go for a walk. I could do my work any time during the day as long as my assignments were done.

I was a Junior in Girl Scouts, and to raise extra money we collected aluminum cans. Now, my brain did the math here and figured out that about 25 regular cans were right at a pound, which was fetching a long-time high of 50 cents. Each can made a 2 cent cha-ching in my mental register, and if I gathered cans from a certain area of the road we lived on, they were likely to be the bigger beer cans that had recently been introduced to the guzzler community. Those were almost the equivalent of 3 cents for a heartier sounding cha-CHING. Going for a walk along the mile and a half of dirt road was like picking money off the ground, so Grandpa and I took our daily stroll with plastic bags in our pockets. He walked along the road while I ducked and bobbed and wove my way through the brambles along the roadside, my mental radar pinging each time I spied another cha-ching just waiting for me to pick it up.

When we left the house, the world was normal. By the time we got back, it had exploded. The space shuttle Challenger had blown up, killing the entire crew and leaving the country shaken in its smouldering path. All day, we were glued to the TV. We got only two channels with the antenna my dad had rigged, but we watched as again and again the footage ran on a nearly continuous loop. It continued for days with interviews of schoolchildren saying they wanted to be astronauts now more than ever and their parents looking on proudly, silently pleading for answers as to what happened and why. There were then more interviews with scientists and NASA engineers and anyone else who had an opinion to share.

Memory is a strange thing. I don’t remember my grandparents leaving the next week. I know they did, but the event was minimal as compared to the news. I know that NASA was able to figure out what happened, but I can’t tell you what it was, at least, not without going back and reading the stories from the 32nd anniversary of the event. It didn’t matter. I know it mattered to those who came after in the space program, but not to me. I remember details that make no difference to anything, except to me.

The smoke trails. The piece that broke off and made that second trail. The image is indelible. It is absolutely seared into my brain. Gray and breaking, falling like a campfire ember back down to the ground that it was unable to escape. They stayed there too long, those streaks of shock and grief. They were painted onto that perfect blue canvas of sky as if they would never dissipate. For me, they never did.

After the grief, people started to joke. As an adult, I understand that joking can be a form of defense mechanism. As a nearly 11 year old, my response was,”Well, screw that!” I hated the jokes. To me, they belittled the dream of flying to escape the bonds of Earth and the wonder of life itself. Death is far too immense a thing to be mocked so. They made me angry. I didn’t want to be an astronaut. Not because of the Challenger, but because that was never what I wanted to be. I wasn’t one of those kids who decided that they would try to join NASA because they wanted to keep the dream of space travel alive. I don’t like heights (at all, ever), so for me to even consider being an astronaut would be down right silly. I freeze up in glass elevators, so trust me, that line of work is not for me. I believed though, that the people who made those jokes lacked compassion and empathy. In my mind, that was a travesty almost as horrific as the explosion itself.

So it began, with smoke and fire and tears. Cue deep narrator voice, “Little did she know, it really was just the beginning…”

To be continued…

They call me indispensable. Irreplaceable. Is there really such a thing? I’m not talking about the value of a human life. Life and death are not in dispute in my mind. I’m thinking now about a situation that I’ve found myself in that is very new for me. I’m changing jobs. That’s not what’s new, but the feelings that are associated with this particular job change have been unique.

The company I work for is a start-up. For anyone who has worked for a start-up, that is a loaded statement. Frankly, it’s a certain type of person who can do it successfully. First and foremost, there must be an understanding that it’s resting state is chaos. For people who thrive in routine and established certainty, a start-up is most assuredly NOT the place to be. If the policies and procedures must be tried and true, a start-up is not going to be a good fit. In fact, that’s a recipe for disaster.

I always say “Blessed are the flexible, they don’t get bent out of shape.” You can ask my co-workers. I say it. Always. Like a mantra. That’s the life in a start-up. Start-up status doesn’t go away after a year. Or two. Or three. It takes a solid five to seven years for the kind of establishment that holds stability in more than a mesh sieve. Steady-type personalities hear that scenario and feel nauseous. The two simply don’t jive and that’s totally cool.

There are those, however, who hear that description and think “dude, bring it on!” In my phone interview with the HR manager at the time, I remember her asking me if the thought of working for a start-up scared me. I told her “I just got laid off from a 25 year-old successful company. Ain’t nothin’ you got that’s gonna scare me.” I had the job within a week.

Here I am, four years later and about to embark on the next leg of my professional journey. I’m apparently the only one who’s cool with that. So what did I do? Well, I grew up. The instructions I authored when I first started are obsolete because change was the only constant, so I rode the wave and I understand it. I feel the rhythm of the business. It has come to the point that when someone new starts in some other department on the other side of the plant, almost any administrative question is answered with “have you tried asking KC?”

I have trained my replacement to the best of my ability, and I am a good trainer, if I do say so myself. Others have said the same. I know that the information I have to pass along is valid, useful, solid information and it’s what my colleagues will need to continue in my stead. So… why be called indispensable? Because my boss still asks me how to do things? That’s not impossible to replace. Difficult, yes, but I never said it would be easy. The knowledge is there and I’ve dispensed as much as I could possible give in the amount of time I’ve had. What are they considering irreplaceable ?

It’s not the work; It’s not the tasks themselves. Those can be done by anyone. It’s not the calling people by name from the CEO to the groundskeeper (his name is Ed, by the way). Anyone can do that too, and should. Helping wherever possible or pointing in the right direction… Nope, that’s easy to replicate. So, what is it?

Apparently, the ebb and flow of the business that I feel to the point that it’s a part of me, that’s what it is. No one hired on now can understand on an experiential level what those beginning days were like when there were six employees and we were building the business that was different each day. The understanding of the business that comes from being one of the last remaining “originals” is not something that they can replace. I get it now. It’s like having a hand in raising a child. I participated in building it. There’s pride there, and hope and concern and protectiveness and responsibility and… It’s not just a job.

There are going to be pains involved for those I leave behind. Growing pains. They will trip and they will fall, but they will also be all the stronger for it. They’re nervous to take it and run because I’ve always been there. So, no, they can’t replace me and what I mean to them, but they can certainly succeed without me by using what I taught them. My fingerprints will always be all over that place. They’ll learn to run, and in a few years they’ll learn to fly.

And so will I.