Spousal Abuse and the Death of My Mother

As I was driving and listening to the Michael Baisden show yesterday it brought back memories long repressed regarding my mother and her death. When the subject turned to how the violence of abuse affected the children I began to look back on what I felt had been exorcised from my spirit many years ago. I'm in my 50s now but the show brought back the memories full force. My story might be different because of the man who killed my mother saying that he was not going to raise a bastard that was not his I didn't know a lot about my mother and was not with her. In hindsight this probably was a good thing but it took many years of dealing with abandonment issues and finally a series of therapy to understand that.

My mother gave me up at birth to her grandmother because of the aforementioned. As I grew older I would hear my grandmother on the phone begging my mother to just leave the man. My mother did not heed the advice and I remember hearing my grandmother speaking to others on the phone saying that mother would tell her "She stays because she just loves that man". I'm sure my grandmother did not mean for me to hear these conversations but I was an inquisitive kid and knew how to sit and be quiet thus making myself invisible.

Over the years I heard those frantic phone calls periodically with my grandmother begging my mother to leave this man. I remember one time my grandmother crying and calling around for a ride to go to the hospital when this man had beat my mother severely and they were worried about her life. This was the only time I remember spending with my mother upon her release from the hospital when she came to stay with us for a few weeks. I remember her face battered and bruised and her arm in a cast. I also remember when the man came to get her and my grandmother once again begging her not to leave with him yet she did. We lived on the outskirts of Houston Texas in a wooded area and I sat on the road crying as the car pulled away. I remember sitting there at the age of 8 crying as I watched the car turn into just a dusty image fading away. After that the man moved my mother out of town and my grandmother didn't even know where she was.

Even when she was still in Houston the man would not allow her to see her family and then he moved her away to make sure. My mother would sneak a call every so often but I never saw my mother alive again after that day and four years later I remember the day we received the phone call. I came in the house and saw my grandmother on the phone crying and saying "NO NO NO!" I didn't know what was going on and tried to comfort Mama. "What's wrong Mama what's wrong!" I cried as I hugged her broad shoulder as they heaved with each sob. She hung up the phone and gave me the biggest hug I had ever gotten from her. Mama was a hard woman and didn't show a lot of emotion but on that day as she hugged me I knew something horrible had happened.

She hugged me so tightly that I could hardly breath and then she pulled back and told me "Baby your momma is dead" and then pulled me back to her breast and we cried together that day. Afterwards I went out to the yard and sat on my tire swing trying to understand. I didn't really know my mother but I felt a tremendous lose all the same and I cried there by myself not really knowing why I was crying. Like I said I didn't know the woman that was my mother and didn't understand the deep feeling of loss I was experiencing.

Mama took care of all the arrangements and I didn't want to go to the funeral. I remember that but I don't remember why I didn't want to go but on that day Mama made me get dressed and I remember trying to run away but there were other relatives around and the men caught me and held me for Mama. The drive to the funeral home was a blur for me and when we got there my mother was in an open casket and I didn't want to go anywhere near it. I began acting out and causing a scene and I could hear all of these people whispering "That poor child". For some reason which I still don't understand Mama made me go up to the casket and look at my mother's pretty face and then she made me do something I will never forget. She told me to "Give your momma a kiss". I remember being so exhausted and didn't want to fight anymore so I leaned in and kissed this woman I didn't really know, my mother, on the cheek.

About two weeks following the funeral Mama was outside feeding the chickens or something and I saw the mail sitting on the table beside her chair. It was from the police department of where my mother lived. It was the police report of my mother's death. It stated how the man, Horace was his name, apparently went on a rampage that night. He got in a fight with some man in a bar, followed him outside and stabbed him. Then he went home, where my mother had barricaded herself, broke in through a window and commenced stabbing her. They described the crime scene as chaotic in that my mother tried to run. The bathroom door was kicked in and they found my mother huddled beside the toilet stabbed 32 times.

Mama came in to find me sitting on the wood pile reading the letter and crying. She snatched it from me and for the first time in my life a wave of hate washed through me and this 12 year old me began screaming "I'M GONNA KILL HIM!" I remember screaming this over and over until Mama slapped me and immediately pulled me to her. "No baby don't hate like that. Don't let the devil fill you with such hate". And then she just hugged me and began to rock me as though I was a baby.

For many years I thought about finding that man and killing him but I never did. He was given life but only served 7 years of it. I failed to mention that my mother had a child by him, a girl my sister, and she came to live with us right after the murder. I don't know if I hated her for the actions of her father but I never felt like her big brother and wanted nothing to do with her even though she was just 3 years old. As for me a year later I took off and hitched from Houston to Los Angeles where I began my life which led me to now.

A few years ago I tried to find my sister with the help of a cousin and discovered that she had went to live with her father after he was released and my grandmother died. Her life was not an easy one either since when I tracked her down she had died in Huntsville State Penitentiary. Over the years it had crossed my mind that perhaps by abandoning me my mother saved my life because if I would have been there that fateful night he might have killed me as well. This thought and therapy helped me to come to terms with my mother and about 15 years ago I finally laid my resentment toward my mother and the dysfunction associated with it to rest. My resentment towards my so-called father as well but that is another story.