Everything around the house seemed to go from bad to worse in the house in December of 1999. The first thing that went wrong was with my brother, Jerry Jr. also known as Dooley or Peco. My brother had been working at a local community hospital or clinic and every Friday or every weekend, he went to local clubs with one of my older brothers, Alexzae also known as Lilman or K-9 (his rap name) who he also worked at the clinic with. One night after coming from the club, he began acting strange. My brother, Peco was always a laid back person who was cool-tempered and never bothered anyone. But this night, my mama decided to ask Lilman why bought him to the club since he was only seventeen and had to work tomorrow. My mama just was arguing with Lilman and telling him that he was older than him and that Peco was too young.
Peco was silent during the whole conversation until he snapped during the end of it saying and slurring his words, "Man, I asked him to bring me! I wanted to Go! Leave Him Alone!" Then he said, "Come on K-9, let's go in the room." When he did this my mama got madder and they were playing tug of war with Lilman. My daddy heard this chaos and he came out of the room and so did my Uncle Charles (who stayed with us who stayed in the back room) because things began getting physical. Lilman and him went outside while my parents met in the kid's room to talk about what was going on. After talking, they called Lilman in the room to ask if somebody put some kind of drug in Peco's drink and Lilman replied no, so they decided to bring him to the hospital to check him out. They came back two hours later, the doctors found nothing in his system except alcohol - he was drunk. However, that's not the end of that story - my brother lost his mind soon after that (around a few months after that).
He was diagnosed with the bipolar disease also known as schizophrenia. He would turn into a totally different person every summer and come back to his normal self every winter but in the summertime, he'd be short-tempered, angry, and act as a spoiled child. He officially lost it for the first time a few weeks after my daddy died. Bipolar is a disease he genetically got from my mother but unlike my brother who has two personalities, my mother has sixteen different personalities. My mother's disease has caused her to have five strokes in seven years & has caused her brain to bleed twice which has to do with a lot of stress on her head; I always found her talking to herself (which she still does) but she said it was normal and she was just figuring stuff out in her head. My mother is a very intelligent person but this is only one issue she has.
My brother, Deedie also has bipolar disease but I don't think his is real; although he does click out when he's having relationship problems with his baby's mama. He goes crazy sometimes when he feels misunderstood and breaks windows or gets extremely violent, sometimes.
The next thing that went wrong was because my mama was under stress with Peco, she had a stroke and her brain bled for a while. She was unconscious for around four days and she says she was dead. My Uncle Butch who is a preacher at our church, brought her back to life by praying for her and calling out to her.
My daddy was sick and none of us knew why; my mother first got the idea that he was sick when he began urinating multiple times in the middle of the night which was always unlike him. Then there were some days that he'd come from work, rushing to the bathroom or coughing up blood on his way out. All these signs worried my mother, so she told him that he had to go to the doctor. There were the two firsts I ever saw: my daddy had never went to the hospital EVER because he was never sick and my mother was never scared for my father's health.
My mother was always a loud woman but she never yelled the way she did when she was scared of something because when she told my daddy that he had to go to the doctor the first time, her voice nearly shook the whole house - it sounded like everyone in the house heard her even our next door neighbors. When she said it that loudly, I looked around to see what was wrong with her; why was she yelling at him? Can't she see he's sick? But when I looked in her face, all I could see was worrisome face filled with concern so I kept silent and let her feel an emotion I'd never seen her feel.
When they came back from the hospital the day after that, they didn't tell us what was going because the doctor had to take tests and give them the results a week coming week. Through the week while waiting on the results, my mother planned a cruise for her, my father, my sister, Dixie, her new boyfriend, my uncle, and a few people from the church. They went back to the hospital and found out the results but they still didn't tell us kids what was going on. The phone call my mother said she had gotten from my father was, "Get the children's social security information! Get the children's stuff!" He did this because he planned to put all seven of his kids on Social Security, so we can be financially taken care of when he died. My mother went to my uncle's house and got our stuff, and they filed for Social Security the next day. My father had told my mama that he had lung cancer and that he had a year to live. My father lied to my mama which I think was the first time - he had five months to live.
From the time they returned from the cruise and celebrated my father's 59th birthday at the church that year in December, his health begin deteriorating quicker. After his birthday, he began losing weight here & there, he couldn't even stand on his own half the time, and soon he wasn't able to go to work because my mama didn't want him to.
He began getting clubbed fingernails, he barely ate because he'd lost his appetite, and he had a weaker voice than usual. He couldn't drive anymore (which he loved to do) and he loved to take care of himself. After almost a few months of that, he became bedridden and couldn't go to the bathroom at all, so we bought him some adult diapers and Dixie's boyfriend took care of him. My mama said that my father was ashamed of this because he didn't want another man seeing his [censored] or taking care of him like a baby. It took away from his masculinity and made him feel uncomfortable. After all of that, my mother decided to let him have the bedroom they once shared while she slept in my sister, Dixie's room while Dixie moved in with her new boyfriend.
I wanted to help him in any way that I could but he wouldn't let me because if he had it his way, he'd rather not let me see him like that at all but I did. He always asked my sister, Darla to fix him juice which was something I tried to assist him with. I felt so useless because everytime I tried to help him he wouldn't let me and I'd never disobeyed him so I didn't. He called everyone to help him except for me - I guess he was still trying to protect me.
My daddy was alive for my thirteenth birthday and was still bedridden. My family didn't celebrate my birthday that year because only one paycheck was coming in - my Uncle Charles'. Since we were having financial issues, it was okay and understandable that I wasn't going to celebrate. The first thing that I did that morning was wake up and check on my daddy like I always did. He said "Happy Birthday" to me even though I couldn't hear what he said since his voice was so low, so I leaned in and he whispered it in my ear. When he said it to me it meant a lot to me and it was special to me because he was fighting every single day to make it to me and my mama's birthdays.
On June 2, 2000, my sister, Dixie had a baby named Able Reginald Johnson. I guess my father knew his time was coming up because my mother said when she bought the baby in to see my daddy, he barely wanted to look at him simply because there's a superstition in our family that when one person leaves this earth a baby is born and vice versa.
One day, it was a week (on a Saturday morning) before Father's day and a week before my mama's birthday - we were all sitting in the front room watching cartoons with my daddy in his rocking chair and I turned to him and asked, "Dae, what do you want for Father's Day?" and he tried to say nothing but he shook his head instead. I just turned back to myself drawing a picture thinking the exact same thought he was - he might not make it until then.
Another time, my sister, Darla and my siblings listen to the radio before we go to bed every night and I love the Oldies, so I liked Gladys Knight and others. This was like a Thursday before June 17th (the 15th) and every night after that we heard the same exact song every night before the 17th, it was Gladys Knight's "Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)". I know that song isn't for a son and a daughter but it reminded me of my daddy and the situation we were in. I felt the need to cry every time that song came on but God wouldn't let me cry - not just yet and not until he actually he took my father's soul from his body.
The doctor had given my mother permission to inject my father with morphine because he wasn't going to make it a day after the seventeenth of June. Early on the morning of June 17th, my mother was awaken by my father's painful moans, so she went into the room with an injection of morphine. My father asked three times to my mother, "Is it your birthday?" to my mama because he wanted to make sure he didn't die on her birthday because he knew she'd be traumatized. She reassured him that it wasn't over and over and over. He replied that he was tired of fighting after that and my mother told him that he could go on and rest in peace as she stuck him with the needle of morphine.
At nine o'clock that morning I awoke to go to his room, thinking he was still sleeping and went inside his personal icebox in the room where he was. Usually, he'd wake up and stop me but this time he didn't. I had gotten what I came in there for and left to go back to sleep again. I woke up again at twelve in the afternoon and everybody was in the front room, and my mama told me, "Your daddy died this morning. Deedie Paul found him. Leo Greene checked his eyes & they were still and his body was cold."
For a second there, I didn't know what to do. I tried to stay strong but my mama told me it was okay, I could cry and let it out. No sooner than she said that I balled; I cried for four hours straight until there were no tears in my eyes and after crying for so long, I went to sleep for another two hours and felt so drained & empty when I woke up. Even when I woke up, I still couldn't believe he was gone (my mother & the rest of my siblings had left the house; don't know why or where) except for four of my closer siblings. I sat them all down on the front porch and we started talking about our memories that we had with him and how we felt about him. After we talked for an hour, we visited the room he died in and went through his closet - smelling his suits and checking out his collections; he'd never allow us to do that when he was alive but just finding something that allowed us to remember him. After collecting some of his things for my keepsake and my other siblings did the same, I went to sleep again. I've had connections with his spirit, so I'm okay because he's still here and all around me.
None of us kids or my mother hasn't had counseling or therapy after his death because that's the kind of people we are. I find writing to be my therapy and my counseling because I'm free to express myself more. If I had the power to bring back one member of my family and only one, it'd be my daddy because he never was able to see me grow up, if he were here I would have turned out way better than what I am now but I believe he bought my husband to me through his afterlife. He never was treated fairly by anybody in our family; he was surrounded by a majority of my mother's family and they never treated him right. My mother always accused him of cheating even though he wasn't because he was home faithfully every single night of the week. My mother also only thought of him as a provider and nothing more - she was always trying to make us (his kids) think the same thing but I always knew there was something more to my father. My mother always tried to be the center of attention because she was always at home; none of the kids went to my dad with anything or didn't want to learn anything from him because they were all independent like my mama but even I suffered from that but I got out of it when I noticed that my daddy was a loner in his own household - I began seeking my father's consult, watching TV with him, and much more because I wanted him to feel needed as a father.
My father took care of seven of his own kids and three other kids that weren't his - ten in all. I think that if my dad was alive more of him would have come out. My father is like me and I am like him; sometimes I think the only seven of them who is just like him. He was a loving man who was the best father he could be and he knew he was which kept him getting up for work until the day he was diagnosed with lung cancer and died.
If a Genie could grant me 3 wishes to bring me back three things I lost it'd be the following things:
I would ask the Genie to bring me back my father's track medal from high school; my father gave me a medal a few months before he died and I gave it to my sister's boyfriend (at the time) because he claimed he could clean it & make it shine but I was young and didn't know it was a bronze medal, and I want to give it back because I have nothing else of my father, not even a picture. I'd also ask the Genie to bring back car & all of my father's belongings my father had before he died so I can keep them for my keepsake - my mama gave all my daddy's stuff to thrift stores when he died. My last wish would be for the Genie to bring back my daddy because I hardly knew him although he was a committed father to all seven of his kids; he was just a shy man. I lost him to lung cancer in the year 2000 and I want him back to know more about him, to spend more time with him, and to bring him out of his shell for all of his kids to see.
I'm a strong person emotionally and physically, so this isn't the only thing I've gone through but this is the first time I'm really talking about it. The wounds are clearly fresh from his death but I'll keep exposing my inner self and what I'm feeling and keep updating my people's on how it leaves me feeling. I feel calmer in knowing I'm a bit closer to closure with this but I know he is still here, around me, watching me, and is proud of me.
Also, let me just clarify that my father never smoked a day in his life - I never saw him with a cigarette and I'm aware that you can get lung cancer even when you don't smoke but there's something a little off because my mama lied to us kids and said that she had found a box of cigarettes in his glove compartment in the car but I knew it was a lie because I played in his car a lot and I went in it after he died, and found no such thing.
My father worked at Avondale Shipyards for more than seven years and was exposed to radiation, so I think that was the cause. I think my mother and my uncle filed a lawsuit against the company and won because she has always had a lot of money while us kids received Social Security checks every month of $255. My sister, Darla is mildly retarded, so she received checks of $500 every month, all her life and my brother Peco received that much after his illness took over. My mama kept all our check for bills, so she had nearly $2,000 in her pockets every month. She spent all of this money and I don't know what she does with it because she was always borrowing from my Uncle Butch and winds up owing him all the $2,000 and creating another web of debt.
Thank you to the person on Yahoo! Answers who asked the question and left me these comments: A very touching part of your life there you must of been strong. God Bless You.~ Your answer really touched me. Your father was some kind of a man! A real life unsung hero and I am sure he is really proud of you. He left a wonderful legacy in you. I am sure he is really proud of you. Congratulations! Wishing you, peace, love, light and strength -Christine