Chapter 14: Holy Shit...

Memories are funny. There are so many memories in my head that are divided into extremes- some terrible and some great. There's not many memories I can access that fit into a "mediocre" category.

The first Christmas without my dad was a strange one- it was both amazing and horrible at the same time. It doesn't fit into any of the compartments that already exist. It stands alone and draws a giant red line between a simile time and a drastically traumatic time that would become our new normal.

Looking back now, it was a day that became sacred in my life. Yes, it was quite somber since we knew life was about to flip upside down (yes that's from Fresh Prince), but it was also magical. Christmas morning was quite literally the very last day of our "good life". Its like the day before you find out Santa Clause isn't real, and there is no magic, that everything is just a mask. It was the last day when life was safe, fun, full of possibilities, and open to our wildest dreams. Christmas Day was the last day of innocence, and tomorrow would bring a life consumed with surviving this ongoing ever-changing nightmare.

3 Day After Christmas:

"I wonder where your dad is," Mom asks.

"Wherever he is he isn't in a hospital. Mom we need to start doing some research. We need to figure out what he's up to. Do you have his mail? We need to go through it."

"I know," says my mom, knowing that it would take more courage than any one person is usually capable of.

Then my cell phone rings. The screen lights up BLOCKED. Well shit. This will not be good. So I take a deep breath and answer with dread dripping off my tongue.

"This is Samantha."

"Sam its Dad," he says.

Going completely cold and emotionless I reply, "Where are you?"

"I don't know baby. I've been wondering around looking for my rental car for a couple days."

"Why aren't you at the hospital?"

"When your sister told me you filed a missing person's report I got scared and I left the hospital right after I talked to you," he explains.


Seriously? Thats the best he could come up with? I mean we've got some serious soap opera shit going on here. He could have gone with a number of things to expand the coma story. I mean he could have gone all the way to I died and came back to life at this point. Besides the fact that people that are on the up and up don't usually run from the cops. But I let this little fact slip and try to trip him up on his story.

"You mean to tell me you have been wondering the streets in a hospital gown in Pennsylvania in the month of December for three days? Its like 2 below there Dad."

"I just..I uh..I just want to come home," he pleads.

"How do you suppose you're going to get here?"

"Well I was hoping you would western Union me some money so I can get a flight home."

"Hold on Dad," I tell him as I confer with my mom.

"Mom, he wants me to give him money to get home. What do you want me to say?"

"I don't want him here. I don't what him anywhere near me," Mom replies with as little emotion as humanly possible.

"Dad, where's your car? Did you find it?"

"Ya. Its here at the hotel."

Um okay. A hotel. I'm gonna let that one go for now. At this point my mom and I had had many conversations about what we would do in this exact situation- him asking to come back. We were both in agreement that we needed to give him some tough love. It was time for him to fix this, not us.

"I'm not sending you money Dad. You're going to figure out how to get back," I tell him.

"I dont' have a dime baby, my wallet and everything is gone. I left everything at the hospital."

BULLSHIT. BULLSHIT. BULLSHIT.

"Where does Aunt Darlene live again Dad?"

"Virginia."

"Go to Virginia. Go to Aunt D," I demand of him.

"How do I get there Sam?  I can't even buy a tank of gas?"

"Ask her for gas money because we aren't giving you a dime. You know you left Mom with $3 in the bank account? She didn't even have money for Christmas dinner Dad. If I'm going to give anyone money its going to be Mom and the kids. Dad?"

"Ya baby."

"Are you on drugs?" I question.

"NO! God Sam. I've been in a coma! I almost died! I can't believe you would ask me that! You know what? I WILL go to Darlene's and she'll see and she'll tell you how wrong you are!!" he screams at me.

"Okay Dad. I hope that's true. Call me when you get to Aunt D's."

"Love you baby."

"Goodbye Dad."

As I recall the entire conversation with my mom, her phone rings. Damn the phone- its never good when that thing rings.

"Hello. No he's not here," mom says and listens intently to the caller as her face slowly changes from stoic to complete and utter shock.

"My husband left us. He left us before Christmas with no money. He's been with other women and he just abandoned us," she says with panic mounting in her voice.

"Okay, okay. thank you," mom says scribbling down numbers and names on the closest napkin.

She hangs up the phone and takes a moment. A moment of silence before yet another brick of our well build lives will crash to the ground.

"What Mom?"

"The car your dad is driving hasn't been paid. Its a rental and he's had it for weeks without paying. They reported it stolen. He's driving in a stolen vehicle."

That moment the phone rings again and Mom picks it up without a glance.

OKAY PAUSE. I know what you're thinking. This can't possibly be true, right? You have to be making this up. Well, folks, I wish it was all fantasy. But its not. This shit really did happen exactly like this. And it sucked. Like a lot.

"What do you mean?" Mom says with a small pool of tears forming upon her eyelids.

"Two years? Are you sure?" She questions.

All I can do at this moment is stare at her. I'm not sure if I can hear much more. I'm not sure I wont go into shock or faint. Or both.

"How much time do we have?" she asks as tears start to stream down her face.

"Okay. Thank you. Goodbye."

"Mom what's wrong. Who was that?" I question moving toward her to give her a hug.

"They're going to take the house," she says frozen in my arms.

"What do you mean? Who's going to take the house?" I ask.

"Your Dad. He hasn't paid the mortgage in 2 years. The bank is going to take the house. We don't have much time. We need to get out before they change the locks."

HOLY SHIT...

Chapter 13: Living on a Prayer

If you are just joining this blog, you might want to start at the preface and work your way up or you'll be missing major details :-)

The recap (Cliff's Notes style):

-Dad was put in jail for scamming a contracting job.

-Crack whore calls mom when Dad is in jail, who is in a hotel nearby waiting for my dearest Daddy.

-Dad's friend Julian bails him out of jail.

-Dad stocks the pantry with Y2K food and leaves on the road with the crack whore.

-Dad is missing for more than a week, during which we discover he has been caught with prostitutes previously.

-Get a call from Dad saying he's in a coma, but he won't give the phone to any personnel at the hospital- which on further inspection looks to be a rehab or mental health facility.

We sat down for dinner, while my precious Noah played.  Everything was quiet except the little mumbo jumbo coming out of Noah's mouth. I don't know that we had much to say, or maybe it was that we had too much to say and didn't know where to start. My brother and sister witnessed the entire phone call with my dad, allegedly in a coma. They were worried, confused, shocked, and looked all too adult sitting there. But we did what normal humans do and carried on with our normal habits. We ate our dinner.

Its funny how when we don't know what to do with ourselves, we merely carry on with the flow of daily activity. Its as if the part of the brain that controls emotion can retreat to some dark alley and process but demand that the body continues. Keep eating, keep cleaning, keep on doing. But as we sat there moving and doing, we were all peeling away layers of the past and fitting the jig saw pieces together, starting with the edges.

The room was thick with anxiety and dread, as we put bite after bite in our mouths. A quick glance at my mom, told me she was holding back a flood of raw emotion. She's a quick one, and I'm sure she had fit more puzzle pieces together than the rest of us had. Aftershocks of tears threatened to slip out of her eyelids betraying her resolve to hold strong for her children. She had so much there on her face: fear, anger, pain, and a hint of hopelessness.

We could all feel it, the change that was about to take place. Something big was on the horizon and it wasn't good. We had all experienced little tremors of the shift taking place, but this wasn't just a tremor, this was the real deal.  Our lives were about to be shattered into a million tiny pieces, and we still didn't quite know why,  let alone how to fix it. But there we were- a switch and been flipped and our life trajectory permanently altered. Our happy life with jovial old Preacher Tim was over and the life-quake was trying its best to take us down.

In the background, the radio was playing, filling the suffocating silence. A song came on I hadn't heard in a very long time. This may be the cheesiest moment in our lives or the most miraculous one. Its hard to tell. Either way, its what we needed. God can be funny, I'll tell you.

Good old Bon Jovi to the rescue. Livin' On a Prayer. I swear, this is absolutely not made up at all. The perfect song came on at the perfect time. If you have the song, pause reading this right now. Go start the song, and continue reading. I'm serious. Do it now...I'll wait.

 My foot started to tap as Bon Jovi tiptoed sneakily into my head.  My sister voice came out as a whisper  and my brother started tapping his fork to the catchy beat. Mom start to hum the tune mindlessly.

We gotta hold on to what we've got/ cause it doesn't make a difference /if we make it or not/ We got each-other and a lot / for love- well give it a shot.

And then as if we had practiced it, we all belted out at the top of our lungs in unison. I'm telling you, it was a real movie moment. You can't write stuff this cheesy.

Whooah we're halfway there/Ooohhh Livin' on a prayer/ take my hand and we'll make it I swear/ Whooah Living on a prayer.

I jumped up from my chair and sang relentlessly into my microphone fork (and I don't usually sing...EVER). My brother followed suit and played his air guitar with nimble fingers wearing that scrunched "rock face" you see from most guitarists. My sister sang into her fork microphone which magically turned to a drum stick when necessary. Mom sang and smiled at us- her three children unintentionally telling her we would make it after all, if only on the grace of a prayer. Together we'd make it.

In this moment we told her that we didn't loose everything. We didn't loose our spunk- the spunk she had given us over the years. The same spunk she had had shown us how to use well and often. We danced and showed her we wouldn't give up the fight- that we still had fight left in us. We sang and told her that even in the hardest times we would find moments to bond, to laugh and to just be okay. We were going to live on what little we were about to have- each other and a prayer. A prayer to survive. A prayer to keep afloat and not let this ruin us. And it would be on the heels of this prayer that we would stay for some time. We would pray and we would continuously be showered with grace and love...

 And then I got the text from my husband who was on his way to the house to celebrate what we thought was to be a very sad thin Christmas.

Come outside

"Daddy is here Noah! Lets go get him!"

Noah sprung up and bolted to the door bursting with excitement. I opened the door, and there it was. Our car stuffed full (and I mean top to bottom) with wrapped gifts. Gifts for my brother and sister. Gifts for my Mom. Gifts for the whole family. Gifts for the family drowning in a mess of tragic chaos. Gifts for the forgotten. Only we weren't forgotten.

"Presents! Mommy presents. Daddy presents!"

Santa Came after all. It wasn't the white bearded Santa this year though. This Santa came from the hearts of kind friends that wouldn't let this Christmas be one of broken promises and empty hearts. It was in this moment when my brother, sister, and mom realized that hope wasn't gone after all. These gifts came from an unlikely source, but it still came. This Christmas we would ALL have gifts. It was not the miserable dollar store Christmas we all thought it would be. And we got amazing things. Not just re-gifted crap that people like to give as "charity". My friends went above and beyond. They shopped- really shopped for everyone. They cared- really cared. They cared for people they didn't really know, and gave us the ultimate gift of all. The gift of hope.

The kids were more excited this Christmas than I had ever seen. More excited than the days of Santa being real, because what they had now was hope. Hope we would be okay. Hope we would get and receive help. Hope that we would make it through what was about to come. God help us, with a couple good friends and Bon Jovi we might just be okay after all.

Dear Pop

This is out of place in the timeline of this story because most of you reading don't know what has happened yet. Not really. Actually not at all. There's just so much more. But I needed to write this. Needed this to be said. I needed to write this or I might not ever have the nerve again. A letter to my dad.

Dear Poppa,

As I sit here writing this, tears stream down my face. I'm overwhelmed with sadness and in the same breath I'm angry that you've made me cry again. I just want to forget you. Like some stupid boyfriend in college. I'd cry for a good 30 minute stretch and then sulk for a few days. But after that I'd get my kick ass dress and some great fucking red heels on. And for anyone that doesn't know me- I am in love with ALL red heels. They make me feel invincible. All I want to do  to rid myself of this lame guy is go dance. Dance my ass off. Dance and sweat. Dance until I can't feel my feet. Dance the bad experience away with just me and my great red heels. That's what I want to do. 

The problem is...you're my dad. Not just some guy. You're not some guy I can just dance away. I am, as they say, cut from the same cloth. So I can't forget. No beautiful pair of red heels, no dancing, and no crying will make me forget. I don't know how to forget you, and even my go to arsenal wont work.  Not for this man.

I don't know how to make the hole you've created in my heart fill. I can't even begin to think of good things to fill that hole with. People with good intentions always say things like, "you'll heal in time" or "you'll find your way" or "you're so strong so you'll find a way to deal". Actual people have said those things to me. I want to believe them. I want to think that some day in the future I wont feel a hole. I wont be broken or hurt. I wont cry again over the same man I've cried too many tears for already. 

People say things like "focus on your baby and your husband" and "let your family be your saving grace". I've tried that. And God knows I love them with all of my heart and soul and I wouldn't be sane today if it weren't for them. But, they aren't here to heal the wounds you've caused. Its not on them to fix the pain I feel. Its on you Pop. 

You have single handily destroyed a bit of my soul. You destroyed the piece that believed in fairies and Santa Clause. The part of me that believed in happy endings and the princess having it all. And yes, I am a grown woman that knows about the truth of all this child like magic. But what you broke was far worse and housed in the same department as all my childhood magic. You crushed the fairytale I still believed in. The last one I really really thought was true. Its the one where people are intrinsically good. The fairytale where humans are all good and mean the very best, even when they go about it in the wrong ways. In the end people are always good. That's what I most wanted to believe long after the days of flying reindeer and an egg delivering bunny. That was perhaps the biggest lie of them all.

You were Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and the good guy. The guy that was the measuring stick for all my relationships. The example of what to be. But just like with old Saint Nick, someone always ruins the fun. Someone always tells the truth. 

The truth is you're not the good guy. You're not the pillar of strength. You are not my hero. You are just a guy that cared more about himself than his family. You are the guy that threw it all away for a few moments of self gratification. People are not all good- especially the one man that seemed to be the best of the best-the ace in a deck of jokers. No, you are not a fairytale. You are just a normal human that has failed at being my example. Failed at being my dad and my hero. 

I don't know what's worse, writing that you have failed me or knowing that you will read this and have to look yourself in the face and know this is what you've done. I don't envy you knowing you have broken the last little bit of magic left in your daughter's life. I don't know if I could look myself in the face if I did that to my child.

-Your first born

Finding a Boat

Its been a really long time. The reason for writing this story initially was to help me deal with unbelievable things that have happened over the last year and a half. I was writing as the story was unfolding in front of me.


All of my discoveries and experiences were like being a dream, where you are there going through it, but soon you'll wake up and it wont be real. Just my awful subconscious punishing me for watching all that crime TV. Yes, I cried, boiled with anger, and succumbed to sadness, but I still only felt some small percentage of the emotions that should be natural. They didn't hit me in full, surely  I was not feeling them at 100%. Writing the story made it feel more real, but I still wasn't there. Writing helped me snake my brain around what has become my family's crazy story.


But then it happened. It became real. Really real. It was my family and my dad that was drowning and breaking before my eyes. It was my heart and my soul being suffocated within my body. It was me that would fall to the floor and weep for what I was loosing. It was my demolished mom I held while she sank into despair. It was my brother's dispirited eyes I had to look into. It was my sister's loss of "sunshine" I had to endure. It was our pain, our agony, our torment. It wasn't just a story to tell. It was real. Real. Life.


And I couldn't write anymore. It was too real. I sat down and tried to force myself, but only managed a few ragged sentences. I got so many emails. "When's the next chapter coming?" "What's going on? Any new news?" I started to feel sick from all the inquiries. I was angry with all the questions. I felt like yelling at the questions. Telling the questions to FUCK OFF- this is just entertainment for you but its MY LIFE. OUR LIFE. OUR PAIN.  FUCK YOUR PERSONAL ENTERTAINMENT!


I know that is extraordinarily unfair, since I did start my story AND share it. I know much of those emails, were well meaning, loving questions of outreach and support. I needed to be mad at the questions. I needed to stop writing. Stop it from feeling real. Stop feeling. ALL feeling needed to just stop. In truth, my feelings of anger were misplaced. I was just angry this was happening. What I realized was that people ask questions because nobody talks about this stuff, yet this very story has touched the lives of almost every person I know. It wasn't entertainment, but camaraderie- a shared experience.  Everyone has a brother, a sister, an Uncle, someone that has left a cataclysmic wave of destruction. Its so common, but we hide it. We stuff it in a box and pretend it never happened, but so many of us are crying inside. Hurting deeply. I'm blessed that my readers have stuck by me. Waiting patiently for me to come around and find my voice again. I'm blessed to have the support and love from friends, family, and readers. I didn't realize I was alienating myself from my support system- the very people that know exactly how I feel. The same people that are putting on a smile and crying inside with me. 


But still, I never picked up writing again, until now. So very much has happened since the last chapter. It really is only the tip of the iceberg. But I'm back. It may be slow, and angry, and awful, full of crazy, and foul language. It will be honest and, yep you guessed it, real.


I HAVE to write this story, because its not just for me anymore. Its for millions of families that face this story and stories like it every day. Its so they know they are not alone. We are here all together feeling this pain. Grieving over time and people lost. We are the ones left standing to pick up the mess. Left to sink or swim. We are the mother's of children left by their fathers. We are the sisters left to raise our nieces and nephews. We are the grandparents that foot the bill for rehab for the 6th and 7th time. We are the children that visit our fathers dressed in prison orange. We are the families that have been destroyed by lies, hidden lives, infidelity, substance abuse, and moral corruption. We are the ones caught in the undercurrent struggling to reach something, anything, that will keep us afloat. This is my story, our story and its time to find a damned boat.