All these years of asking questions and trying to get answers, reaching out as I have, fighting and seeking justice for my Mom, has been exhausting.
I’ve been the only one fighting. My siblings were babies, 11 and 8. It was very little they could do when it happened. All they should have been expected to do was grieve and hurt, but they weren’t even allowed to do that. We weren’t given that opportunity. I was without that opportunity as well, but with the responsibility of handling the business of all matters after my Mom’s death. At 15 years old!
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve received a few phone calls and a few visits from individuals that were once part of our lives. I wish that I could report that these people came and said things like “No, that’s not how any of this happened. You’re lying and you need to tell the truth!”. I wish that were the case. But instead, what I’ve been getting is, “That’s exactly what happened. How do you remember all of that? I’m so sorry.”
I’ve received acknowledgement and apologies from a few people and it made me realize how much I needed it. It also made me recognize that over these last 29+ years I’ve longed for acknowledgement and an apology from that lady. Because she did this. She did it and her silence has been able to kill more than my Mom. Her silence killed my Mom, it killed the establishment that we knew as family. It killed our connections and access to so many people and things. It killed the momentum of our family, the process and progress of what we were becoming as family. It killed how we looked at people and our sense of humanity. It killed our ability to fully trust, hope, love, believe, and care. It killed our ability to be able to receive those things properly as well.
No human deserves that. Children especially. We were children.
My wife heard a conversation that I was having the other day. She walked in on a discussion I was having with one of the individuals that has called. I’d been on the phone long enough for both AirPods to die out and so now I had the call on speaker. I muted the call when my wife walked in and told her who it was. She had come into the room to handle some business and so she sat down to do what she was doing. She looked over at the phone and me a couple of times while the person was talking and made some dramatic faces. At one point she looked at me and said, “Hang up the phone”.
I knew why she wanted me to hang it up. I didn’t have to ask her. I told her that I wasn’t going to hang it up. She responded, “Why are you listening to that, why are you doing that to yourself?”
My wife was hearing an adult, on the phone, attempt to rationalize, justify, excuse and explain their 29+ year absence from our lives. I was being told some of the wildest sh¡t that you could never imaging being told.
While the person was talking, and with the phone one mute, I said this to my wife:
“I get it, you don’t get it. Just like so many people don’t get it. You have your mother. You have your family and all of the friends and connections that you’ve had all of your life. You don’t understand that I had a Mom and a whole bunch of connections too. Then my Mother was murdered and more than 90% of the people, community, family, and friends that we knew, disappeared. Gone to this day! No explanation, no reasons, just silence.
So yes, what they are saying on this phone, some of it is obviously false, and some of it just meant to force me to think away from what really happened. But do you understand that I deserve to hear something? I deserve to hear a justification, a reason, an explanation, an excuse… even if it’s a lie. I can differentiate the mess from the message. But all this time I’ve gotten nothing. So I’m not going to hang up. I’m going to listen. Finally, people are talking. I’m going to listen.”
And I continued the conversation. My wife listened as well. She heard some ostentatious emotion being the costume for ridiculous and radical thoughts, assumptions, judgements, and opinions. Just bizarre and bullsh¡t conjecture. Outright and outrageous lies, mistruths, and deception. Then she heard an apology. She heard someone say to me that they were sorry for not being there. Someone that should have been there. Someone that believed false narratives and drew conclusions from gossip and mess. Instead of ever even attempting to come and see about us.
I needed to hear that part. If hearing all of the other stuff was the price I had to pay to get to it, then it is what it is.
As I write the things that I’m writing lately, understand that I’m healing. Unfortunately I couldn’t heal on my own. I’ve needed these parts. These people. These conversations. I needed them to put finality to my healing process. I needed them to “move on”. The truth, my truth, is that if I would have healed in this season, without closing the books on these people, these parts, these conversations… then I would have allowed these same people and their silence, and their abandonment, and their hypocrisy, and their irresponsibility… to show up to my healed self, my forgiving self, and act like all was well. With no accountability, no responsibility, no response to or recognition of the past. And I would have paid a price for that. Somewhere down the line, this all would have resurfaced.
So, I’m going to keep writing. I know that lady is dying. Her dying now has forced me to realize that all of these years I’d been hoping that she would fix this. I hoped she would confess or be caught and that would fix this. That would bring everyone back and explain everything.
That’s what I was waiting on. I’ve procrastinated and paused my entire life waiting for that.
She knows what she did. A lot of people know what she did. That has never been questioned. There have been a lot of other questions though…
Over the years I’ve reached out to her. Privately. In addition to what any of you have read from me, what you might or might not have heard from me, what you might or might not have thought, I’ve been sending her messages.
I’ve offered to come to her, I’ve invited her to come to me. I’ve sent messages through people. I’ve written open letters that I posted online.
She wouldn’t respond. Meanwhile, I’ve had her close family tell me that they too know that she was guilty of this and that it wasn’t right. Duh.
Recently I sent her a list of questions. I’ve never needed her to acknowledge that she did this. Her and I know what she did. I wanted to know why. I wanted to know some other things. Finding out that she is about to die made me realize that I won’t get the answer to those questions. That forced me to start getting this out of me so that I can move on from this. It’s time that I step into my purpose. Time for me to move forward. Time for me to live.
(These pictures are the questions that I recently sent to that lady. I’ve been sending her messages and trying to meet with her privately for this entire time. Because our world shutup and no one has talked. But me.)
