In or around the year 2000, my biological Father, Mayn, and I were having a conversation. The conversation was about “all my money”. I was asking him why he always asked me for money as if I was rich or something. He replied, “You are rich. What happened to all of your money?”.
I asked him what money was he talking about. His response was, “All the money from Michelle.”

Huh?

That Huh? was for you.

To him I replied, “What money are you talking about? There was no money.”

And then I went off. I started telling him about all of the money we DIDN’T get. I told him about the PrimeAmerica life insurance policy that the company voided out because she smoked. My Mother had stopped smoking at some point. Around that point she’d gotten this life insurance policy. The policy was for $100,000. With double indemnity (because she was murdered) the payout would have doubled, $200,000. When they did the final consultation and spoke with her doctor he let them know that she was smoking at the time of her death. Because the policy was under 2 years old and with the doctors statement, the company voided the policy. They didn’t pay it out. Never mind that she didn’t die of lung cancer. She died of a bullet to the head. If she was smoking then, maybe it was because of some ridiculous amount of stress that she may have been dealing with that triggered her to pick up an old habit. But, they didn’t care. They voided out the policy. In addition to not getting that money, we did not get anything from the many people, places, and other entities that around the time of her funeral had presented themselves and offered or stated that they would be there for us, her children. Yea, all of them were gone. Disappeared.

My Dad does a way better job illustrating and expressing anger towards those people. I was a child. It is what it is. My Dad though, he absolutely recognized the complete disrespect and disregard to my Mother’s memory that so much of that was. He still expressed that much to this day. Not to make another excuse for him, but I watched him take the stance in that moment of “… Fvck all of them. I’ll take care of my kids. They ain’t never needed for nothing and they won’t need for nothing. Whatever we have to do, we will do it”. He’s always had that belief and stood on that. I don’t agree or accept everything that he’s done in the aftermath of our tragedy, but I’ve always applauded the way he took that stance.

Back to the convo with my Father and I…

“Huh?”

That “Huh?” Was for him.

He listened to me talk about all we didn’t get and to which he replied, “All that money that Michelle left for you and all that money that was raised, what did you do with that?”

“There was no money!”

At this point I’m animated and getting frustrated. Because he was adamant and almost accusatory. It was pissing me off.

“Come here” he says.

He takes me outside and we go into the garage. We were at my grandmas, his mother, house. He used her garage as his something-like-a-mancave-but-not-exactly-more-like-his-secret-hideaway-getaway-thingy. He didn’t live with my grandma but he used her garage like he did.

We go into the garage and he walks over to a cabinet and pulls out a binder from the cabinet. The binder was filled with documents and business cards and zerox copies and pictures of…

“Why do you have this?” I asked

… things related to my Mom. Like a scrapbook but not a scrapbook. More of a detectives log. He’d collected a bunch of things that, well, didn’t make sense-from my perspective- for him to have. There was no reason for him to be concerned about these matters. He and my Mom were not together and had not been together since 1979. A year after I was born. They didn’t have a relationship. They didn’t even talk when she was alive.

Here he was with a whole scrapbook-not-scrapbook thing that was blowing me.

Then he says, “…They killed her. They know who killed her. They’re covering it up.”

Before I could respond to that statement, he opens to a page that has a newspaper article. There are 3 articles on 2 pages. There is highlighted typeset.

“Huh?”

That was from me.

I was looking at articles that had “a fund has been setup for the children and donations can be made here” typed on the bottom of stories of my Mother’s murder.

He’d highlighted the donation mention.

I’m reading, and he points his finger and says, “What happened to that money?”

“Can I have this?”, I asked.

“No. These are my records. They didn’t do Michelle right. Someone is going to answer for it one day. These are my papers, I know what they did.”

“Why can’t I have this? This is my Momma stuff. This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

Understand, my Father and I also NEVER talked about my Mom. Before or after her death. There was no reason to. He never asked me about her. She didn’t ask me about him. Well, she didn’t me about him in that way. She definitely asked me about his interactions with me whenever I returned from a visit with him. My Father had struggled with some things and he and I didn’t have the greatest relationship, due to that. I loved him. I always loved him. I wanted him to be part of my life. That was a struggle for him. Further complicating that was the fact that my Dad was who my Dad was to me. That hurt and frustrated my Father. I recognize that more now than I did back then. I was just a child then. I had no business trying to process any of that. But, I should have. I’m around the age now, that my Father was when we were having this conversation. I see it differently now. I can recognize some of what he was dealing with.

But back then, that sh¡t made no sense. Why is he collecting info on my Momma?

He won’t let me take the binder, nor extract the articles from behind the plastic. He hands me a pen and a piece of paper.

“Write down whatever you need to write down.”, he says.

I wrote it down.

Long story short. There were funds setup by people we didn’t know. Money was taken in. It was never given to us. I contacted the banks, they gave me that much information. They required me to bring in documents to support that this was my Mother when I was trying to get this information though.

That is the whole point of this story…

So, after finding out there WAS money and that this was another middle finger to us in all of what had been done, or not done, I was left to do nothing. One bank manager told me that all she could do was give me the info she gave me. Further investigation would have to include an attorney, courts, and SUPPORT that it was already obvious we weren’t ever getting when it came to all of this. So I let it go.

Those documents that I had gotten to prove my identity and relationship to my Mom were about to open a whole new can of worms.

You ready for this?

Time-out:
(Let me say this before I go on… EVERY WORD OF THIS IS TRUE. As crazy as all of this is. Factcheck me. Look it up. Ask someone. Investigative report if you please. This has been my life. This is what I’ve been dealing with. AND THERE IS SO MUCH MORE!)

Back to the story…

I have my Mother’s birth certificate and death certificate, as part of the documents that are needed to verify my identity at the bank.

This was the year 2000, I was back living with my Dad. I took the documents back to the house and I was about to put them in the closet, where I had a lot of the other paperwork that had to deal with matters concerning my Mother.

I was about to put them on the shelf when something told me to open the envelopes. I’d never looked at either of them. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see my Mothers name on those documents.

Let me speed this up. I’ll do bullet points.
Get ready. This part is good.

• I open documents
• I read documents
• I notice something in documents
• “Father” line is filled in
• Has a name on it.
• I recognize the last name
• Kellogg
• “Huh?”

I’d been asking my Mother, for as long as I can remember, who her Daddy was. I don’t know why I wanted to know. But I did. AND ASK ANYONE FROM AROUND BACK THEN. They will tell you that I was obsessed with wanting to know. She never told me. NOT ONE TIME.

Back to the bullet points…

• I know the Kelloggs
• I take the documents and show my Dad
• He’s just as shocked
• He says it doesn’t make sense
• To me either
• I reach out to the most popular Kellogg I knew at that time, Eric. He was my teacher growing up. He was a friend of the family. I hadn’t seen him in years. I reached out to him.
• Eric is happy to hear from me.
• Tells me to meet him for breakfast on Wednesday at Denver’s Restaurant
• We meet
• I give Eric the folder containing the documents
• Eric is shocked
• Eric says we have to talk to his mom
• Eric sets up meeting with his mom and I
• I meet with her
• Charles Kellogg is my grandfather
• Charles Kellogg is a poet
• Charles Kellogg is alive
• Charles Kellogg lives in Dixmoor

Let me pause right there. My grandfather, who I always asked about, lives in the neighborhood that my Mother raised me in. You ready for this. My Mother raised me 5 houses down from her father, THAT SHE KNEW, and never told us.

Back to the bullet points…

• I’m given grandfathers address
• I go to house
• I get no answer
• I wrote grandfather a letter
• I leave letter at his house
• I attempt to connect with family
• I spend 20 years doing that
• Charles Kellogg died in 2006
• I never get to meet him
• At urging of a friend, Justin Stewart, I take AncestryDNA test
• Test comes back with results and connections to Kelloggs
• I search family tree
• I see names
• I recognize a name from Facebook
• I reach out

On December 1, 2021, I find out that I have 8 Aunts and Uncles, and 68 first cousins that I never knew about.

We aren’t even going to get into that story right now. I am telling it to put in context what I’m about to say.

So, the reason that I’d searched out the Kelloggs for so hard and for so long was because I felt like I didn’t belong with none of the “family” that I have. The silence, the tragedy, the dysfunction. The controversy. I’d been looking for “blood” family. I just wanted identity and definition. Because, as I told you, there was this feeling that I’ve been getting for the last almost 30 years that gave me the sense that a lot of people don’t like me. And I’m a legit “good guy”.

Grab your fvcking popcorn.

Connecting with the Kelloggs gave me a sense of victory, in that, even though I never got to meet my grandfather, I’d been going after this feeling I had since a child. I pursued it. I worked at it. And although it took more than 20 years, it was real.

Well, that gave me a renewed sense of courage and confidence to start pursuing some other answers and clarity. If you’ve been on here, then you’ve read some of the post over the last couple of years. This was all the reason and impetus for where I’ve been in that.

By March of 2022, I’d gotten to a place when I was no longer begging for certain people to talk or avoiding asking certain questions and I started to demand or force certain conversations.

March 22, 2022, my Dad and I had the very first conversation about my Mom’s murder. Yup that’s right. After 28+ years, he and I finally had a talk about it. It was much needed. I communicated a lot of things that I needed to say. He said some things I’ve long needed to hear.

I’ll get back to that later. In another “part”.

The conversation with him led to me doing some other things that I’ve long needed to do. One of those things was to reach out and find my aunt that we had been raised around. The aunt that my siblings haven’t seen since my Mothers funeral. That I saw in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2008. I lived with her for awhile. But it was always this weird feeling that I’d been telling everyone about. I used to tell people that she doesn’t like me. Because the way she felt was obvious. I just didn’t know what she felt.

June 2023.

So I send out a message in early June to some family that I knew could get in contact with my aunt. I sent my number and asked if anyone could find her and my uncle, I would really appreciate it. I wanted to speak with them.

On June 16, 2023 I get a text from an unknown sender. I respond asking who it was. My aunt said that it was her. I called immediately.

The first 25 minutes were AMAZING. We were catching up and talking and… well.
I asked why she left us. Why she felt whatever way that she did.

My aunt said that…

Even typing this bullsh¡t is frustrating

My aunt said that the wrong decision was made back then. She said that with “today’s eyes” she can say that. But at the time, back then, the reason that I was treated the way that I was…

First of all, let me say this: I TOLD YALL THEY WERE TREATING ME FUNNY. There was this feeling, this strong and distinct feeling. I KNEW IT!

… because I had chosen to go and live with the family of the person that murdered her sister.

Yup, you-heard-that-the-fvck-right.

My family, a whole bunch of them evidently, has held a grudge and animosity with me for all of this time because I chose to go and live with my Dad. And instead of considering that I was a 15 year old child who found his mother’s murdered body, who had two younger siblings that he was not going to separate from, who was already dealing with a world of hurt and trauma and stress, who was THE ONLY ONE FIGHTING on behalf of he and his siblings… they decided that because I chose to go and live with my Dad, they were going to abandon us. Because understand this: The people that have been in my life, I chased after. They didn’t come for me, or come for us. That is how I can say that my siblings have not seen 90% of the people that were part of our lives prior to my Mom’s murder. I actually went after some people, seeking and searching acceptance, connection, and response. But I was met with this weird-ass energy that I talked about for all of these years. My aunt had finally explained it.

“… You chose to go and live with the family of the person that killed my sister.”

Some-fvcking-nerve.

My dad had absolutely nothing to do with my Moms murder, outside of being the uncle to the woman that did it. Mind you, his guilt, hurt, his shame and embarrassment has always been profound and made obvious by HIS silence. He has always felt some level of responsible. Because, oh yeah, there’s the fact that he was part of the love triangle that is most likely a supreme contributing factor to her being killed.

That part, a bunch of the adults in the room knew about. And it was something they didn’t want to know. Like everyone says… it was 1994, homosexuality was taboo. It came with stigmas. It wasn’t a topic anyone wanted to discuss. It was synonymous with AIDS. It was highly controversial.
And here was this lesbian relationship that turned violent.

I heard something the other day that I’d never heard… “A lot of people looked at what they were doing as incest.”
At first I didn’t understand that. But I get it. My Mother publicly presented the dynamics of our household as her family and Hazels family being cousins. Because that’s what they were. By blood, to my siblings, and my Dad.

This sh¡t so messy.

And instead of my family acknowledging that this might have been hard for me… my Mother is gone, I’m now living in a place where I’m most accustomed and comfortable, but with the reality that I live in a house where everyone is blood-related to the person that murdered my Mom.
And I had to deal with all of that…

Breathe.

I dun forgot the point of this part.

I’ll be back.

(Cont’d…)

©️Cornelious “See” Flowers