Eternity

There is a box
upon a shelf
I open once a year
It holds the memories
Of a little boy
I keep it all in here.

A September day
So long ago
It feels like yesterday
In my arms
I held you close
Before you went away.

A Mother's love
Goes on and on
A stranger said to me
He's in your heart
That's where he'll stay
For all eternity.

Alexander Lee
September 13, 1995

The Box

On a shelf
Way up high
There is a box
With butterflies.

'By Invitation Only!'
The box exclaims
The things in there
She can't explain.

Once a year
She takes it down
Peers inside
What is that sound?

Of grief and loss
A mother cries
Leave her be
Don't ask her why.

All that's left
Sweet baby boy
Pictures of you
They bring no joy.

In her arms
You slipped away
In her heart
You'll always stay.

Alexander Lee, September 13, 1995

The Corner

Anxiety builds
Racing sadness
Around the corner

Another year comes
To break my heart
All over again

Empty arms
Tears devour
My heartache

With hope
Someday
To hold you

When
September
Comes

Tree of Life and Death

...and so it goes...

A beating heart
One, two, three
One-hundred and eighty seconds
How can this be?

Four and five
Pass quickly by
A life too early
No sound, no cry

The heart beating
In a tiny chest
Slowly fades
Eternal rest

Twenty-two years
I have grieved for you
A life too short
So silent too

Except for the sound
Inside your chest
300-seconds strong
I knew then that I was blessed

Alexander Lee
b. September 13, 1995
d. September 13, 1995

Reminders

I hate September. It is the one month of the whole year that I am viciously reminded that I am not good enough; for my kids, for my parents, and my husband.

For the world.

It is also the one month that finds me on my knees every night, a sloppy sobbing woman who hurts to the very bottom of her soul and there is absolutely nothing she can do about it. It's not that I am a helpless woman, it is truly because there is nothing I can do about it.

Matthew turns 28 on September 6th. He lived with me the first five years of his life.

My dad will be 77 years old on September 12th and I still have not seen him this summer and they will be going back to Florida soon.

Alexander's birthday is September 13th. I was afraid he would be born on my dad's birthday, yet he wasn't. He was born and died just a few minutes past midnight.

September 13th is also the day I lost my best friend, Tim. I still feel guilty that, had I been there as planned that night (and listened to my gut), he would still be alive. Tim was the first person I called after my grandson was born the month prior and he was genuinely happy.

Tim had called me, while I was driving to Toledo for Monica's ultrasound, to see if he could stop by later. At the time he called, Matthew, Monica's mom and Monica weren't even sure if Monica would deliver that day - yet she did.  When I called Tim later that night, he really was incredibly happy for me and thought it funny that I was now a grandma. "You don't look old enough to be a grandma," he laughed.

My stepmom's birthday is around the 21st or 22nd of September, as is my grandmother's.

I am still so deeply hurt by my stepmom's words and, while I may eventually forgive her, I won't ever forget.

I miss my grandmother so much. She died the same month and year Henry and I were married.

Her house always had an open door and I always felt comforted when I walked through the door. I can still smell her perfume and feel the softness of her skin. While I feel blessed I was able to hold her as she passed away, it still hurts to have had to let her go.

Her house was always the one place I could go and feel loved beyond measure and she never judged me. Grandmother was the very first person I called when I found out I was pregnant with Matthew. The southern drawl of her happiness at the news of my pregnancy still resonates inside my head. I eventually called my parents and gave them the news and while they were "happy" about it, yet it was Grandmother's excitement and approval that I needed first.

My husband's birthday is September 25th. I wasn't enough for him. Or maybe I was too much for him? Sadly, I may never know the answer either way. I am still glad that he was born. If only he had listened to my warning BEFORE things spun out of control, I wonder if we would still have wound up like this; apart. Still, he didn't heed the warning, reassuring me everything would be fine. By the time he realized he should have listened to me it was too late.

September, I fucking hate you.

Sleep

I can already feel the September Anxiety, deep sadness and grief creeping in on me.

If I could sleep through, or skip entirely, the month of September...I would...

Scented

Yesterday, as I was in the process of scheduling the next appointment for a woman sitting in front of me, her husband leaned down and put his face in her hair, breathing deeply, I heard the mom-to-be whisper to him, "Does it smell nice?" "Yes it does" he whispered back, "Very nice."

After I arrived home last night, as I was walking around the side of the house, a yellow-green butterfly flew straight into my face then continued to flutter around me as I walked to the door.

I cried myself to sleep.

Butterflies

I talked about you in depth yesterday, which is something I almost never do. You are on my mind everyday and in my heart always, yet sharing any details about what happened during the 12-hours before your birth is something I have only shared with Henry. Until yesterday.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A young woman, 5-months pregnant, stopped in our office Wednesday morning to reschedule a missed appointment. Then, leaning through the open window, she said to me, "I'm having symptoms, they just started this morning, and I don't know if they're normal or not." I leaned closer to her and in a low voice asked, "What are your symptoms?"

I immediately put her in an open appointment slot so she would be seen immediately day and asked her to have a seat.

Walking to the back office to talk with the physician I schedule this young woman with, I knew.

I knew her water broke.

I knew there was a muconium stain.

I knew that were she to deliver her baby that early, chances of the baby surviving were slim.

One of the nurses gathered her and her husband from the waiting room and it wasn't long after when I saw her standing 10-feet away from me at the check-out window with the doctor. Her face, wet with tears and swollen, indicated what I already knew. We looked at each other and I mouthed the words, "I am so sorry..."  Then she was gone; whisked away to OB Triage.

I couldn't stop thinking about her that day and into the next. Thursday morning, an OB Triage nurse called to speak with the doctor who sent her there. I couldn't stop myself from asking about the young woman and her baby. The nurse told me the plan had been to induce her Thursday morning, yet the flow of amniotic fluid had stopped and an ultrasound soon after indicated there was still fluid around the baby.

Thank You, God.

I learned, serendipitously so, that things might turn out all right for mom and baby.

"Cautiously optimistic."

I was cautiously optimistic that this young woman might never know the feeling of a broken heart, and the enormous and forever grief, of losing a child born before his/her time.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

So I told a coworker about you and me. I told her about having to call my doctor from a payphone in the busy entryway of a major one-stop shopping store. I told her I had to shout into the phone so the doctor could hear me above all the cacophony I was standing in. "I THINK MY WATER BROKE AND THERE'S BLOOD!" I yelled into the phone receiver, hoping he could hear me. Several people stopped to stared.

I picked DH up from work, less than 15-minutes after I dropped him off there. As he slid behind the steering wheel I told him to stop at our apartment so I could change my soaking wet pants. It was there that, while wiping myself after urinating, I felt a large bulge. Horrified, I grabbed a clean bath towel to place between my legs while yelling to DH to call an ambulance NOW! then I slid off the toilet onto the bath mat on the floor in front of me.

With the ambulance on its way to me, my mind was a frenzy of thoughts. DH was asking questions I had no answers to. I was laying half-naked, on my side on the floor; the bath towel pressed firmly between - and held in place by - my legs. Then the paramedics arrived.

After assessing my situation in place which, by the way, neither of them had seen before, I had explained to them that me standing and walking to the ambulance was a very bad idea so they decided to put me onto a backboard.

Let the circus begin!

I told my coworker about laughing with the paramedics, after they moved me onto a backboard, that they couldn't figure out how they were going to get me off the bathroom floor, into the short hallway that lead out of the bathroom to the main hallway - and a wall - then right 45° to the living room. Without me sliding off the backboard I was strapped to. In the end they had to almost stand me up in order to get around that corner. I think we were laughing so hard at how the paramedics were so puzzled that we were crying. Maybe I was laughing to keep myself from crying?

As per protocol, the paramedics took me to the hospital nearest to my home instead of to the hospital where my Obstetrician was on staff. After a few hours of DH and I batting a glove balloon back and forth, we were told that the hospital didn't have an Obstetrician on staff to see me and, by the way, none of the doctors there had seen this problem before. Wait. What!?!? Then they transferred me to the hospital they should have taken me to in the first place. 

WTH?

I was finally in the correct hospital, also a Level 1 Trauma Center, with physicians and nurses who knew exactly what was going on with me. It hadn't occurred to me yet that I would leave the hospital no longer pregnant, and without my son.

I told my coworker about being stoned on Morphine. I told her about the on-call doctor forcing my cervix open, tearing it, I found out later, in order to deliver my son. I may have been stoned on Morphine ASSHAT, yet I felt THAT PAIN completely. 

FYI: Were I able to gather up enough STRENGTH at that moment, I would have kicked your ASSHAT off that stool and let DH finish you off.

My own OB had stopped by the day before to layout my options. There were only two: wait and go into labor on my own, or be induced now with a Pitocin drip. I remember asking my doctor, whom I trusted completely, what the outcome would be for both options. Dr. R. always shot straight from his hip, which is one of the many reasons why I trusted him so much, and told me that both options would end the same way; I would lose my son. The amount of time it took for one versus the other was the only difference between the two.

I told my coworker about the ONE (and only) redeeming quality about DH was he did what I could not have done which was give our son a name. 

Another reason why I trusted my OB so much is that he was an extraordinary doctor. He specialized in treating depression in women during pregnancy, who were being treated for depression prior to becoming pregnant. Sadly, the number of depression medications that are safe to ingest during pregnancy, are few.

I did not however tell my coworker about you, my Beautiful Butterfly. How you first came to me in late October, shortly after the memorial service we held for you, and how you have continued your fly-bys by showing up in the strangest places, and in weather conditions a butterfly wouldn't normally be.

I also did not tell her that the first time you came to me, I had just pulled into the driveway where your paternal grandparents lived. I was sitting in the driver's seat of the truck, sobbing uncontrollably while the song "You Are Not Alone" by Michael Jackson played. The volume of the song through the enormous speakers BOOMED. It was like a earthquake beneath me. It was the sound of my heart beating, even though I felt dead inside.

Your Grandma heard the music and came outside. The state I was in scared her because when she yanked open the truck door her first questions came in quick succession, "What happened? What's wrong?! Are you hurt!?!" When I shook my head no, she gathered me up in her arms and held me until I was able to step out of the truck and walk into the house without crumping to the ground. 

There you were. A small pale yellow-green Butterfly flitting around my head and in the space I walked between the truck and the house.

I miss the mornings of drinking coffee on my Robinhood porch because you were a frequent visitor while I lived there.

Then Tim was killed. On the same day, 17 years ago, I lost you.

Not long after Tim's funeral, I drove to work and parked my car. I remember feeling the crispness of the air as I stepped out of it. It was going to be a beautiful fall day. Then I saw you, flapping your small wings, as you flew closer to me. This time, not far behind you, was the most beautiful and large black and gold butterfly.

"Keep watch over my little boy for me, Tim", I whispered.

Tears welled up in my eyes as I told you, my beautiful Butterfly, "You're in good hands."

* * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Since that day almost five years ago, my Butterflies continue to visit me, separately and together, and always - ALWAYS - in the weirdest places, when I need them the most.

Weeeeee have a situation! (September/October 2016)

I always laugh at that commercial. The little boy needs to pee and is struggling with his belt while doing a slight pee-pee dance when he says, "Mooooommm, we have a situation!" It's the way he says it that cracks me up the most.

The past few weeks have been full blown hell for me. All my fault, as usual. I finally checked myself into a psych ward praying that could shut up the fucking demons in my head for while. Instead, the music I was used to, and rather enjoyed, is gone shadows have started lurking around corners and underneath furniture.

The good news is, I lost my job. Yeah, me! I am also in the process of being evicted from my apartment and I have discovered, much to my amusement, that I honestly do NOT give a fuck. Not even a smidgeon of a fuck. I will start packing shit up this week and throw it in storage and live in my car until I find a job and figure something out. Something that has always puzzled me is that of all the people that are accidentally or deliberately killed every day - how the flying fuck am I never in the right fucking place?!  What are the goddamn odds on that shit?!

I started self mutilation in the hospital (arm) and tried again when I got home. It is pretty fucking pathetically assinine when I own the dullest fucking knives on the planet. Still, didn't turn out to bad. The funny thing about what I used on my arm was the stupid big ass 1980's comb THE HOSPITAL puts in all the little tolietry kits..THEN they sent the fucking thing home with me. Geeez Loiuse!

September 13, 1995

Alexander Lee was born a few minutes after 12 o'clock in the morning on September 13, 1995 and died in my arms five minutes later.

The earth has made twenty-one trips around the sun since that day. While I have grown older and wiser in some things, I am still a complete dumbass in so many others.

I know that time does not heal a heart that is broken over the loss of child. I also know that I will never stop wondering "what if...?"

Tomorrow I, alone, will quietly celebrate the birth of my son Alexander Lee and I will again ask God, "Why? Why this child?"

When I close my eyes for sleep tomorrow night, it will start all over again.

Would I...?

If I knew then (September 6, 1989) what I know now, would I...?

If I knew then (November 18, 1992) what I know now, would I...?

If I knew then (September 13, 1995) what I know now, would I...?

If I knew then (February 2, 2007) what I know now, would I...?

If I knew then (May 12, 1999) what I know now, would I?

If I knew then, what I know now, would I still have offered up my heart for the beast to crush and consume?

If I knew then that the self-LESS choices I made in the best interest of my boys would come back to chop me down at the knees, would I make the same decisions?

I. Don't. Know.  I just don't know.

Another September

The month of September completely unravels me and this year seems especially dark because I am actually having anxiety attacks, something I haven't experienced in years.  I think it has a lot to do with me having to stretch my medications so my prescriptions last a little longer than 30 days*.

The 19th anniversary of Alexander Lee's birth and death is September 13th.  I have a box of Alexander's things on a shelf in my closet and I took it down the other day and looked through it.  Inside are pictures of him from the hospital, his birth and death certificates, autopsy report, sympathy cards we received, a baby blanket, booklets on grief and grieving that the hospital gave us.

I read through his autopsy report, something I haven't done in probably 10 years, and looked at the photographs of him, which I do once a year or less.  I remember holding him in my arms that day and I remember he was very tiny.  It isn't until I look at photographs of him that I can visualize just how tiny he was.  

He was born on September 13, 1995 at 12:10 am and died at 12:14 am.  His four minutes of life were spent in my arms.  If my grief only lasted that long...

* Without health insurance my prescriptions, for a 30-day supply each, will cost me around $600 per month.

15

Years. 15 years tomorrow since Alexander passed through my arms. The pain ~ the comfortable ache ~ is still here inside my heart to remind me of that day.

The day that I delivered Alexander into this world and held him in my arms. The day I didn't hear him cry. The day his heart beat for five minutes while the priest read his last rites. The day God took him home.


That day will always be that day...

Bittersweet September

September is upon me once again. One of these days I believe this month will swallow me whole.

I have an enormous love/hate relationship with this month because in the midst of celebrating a few important birthday's (Henry, Matthew, my dad, and grandmother), I mourn the birth and death of Alexander Lee on September 13, 1995.

It's been 14 years since I held my teeny-tiny son in my arms. Wishing for him to cry, praying for the miracle of all miracles ~ his life. Knowing the harsh reality that he was too tiny for anything to be done. I still have difficulty reconciling the truth with the hopes I once had for him.

As much as I believe that things do, indeed, happen for a reason and as much as I believe in a higher power and His will, I am constantly tripping over the powerful grief that, 14 years later, still overwhelms me.

Time truly does not heal all pain. There are some sorrows that sting like hell no matter how much time passes.

Memories of that day and night are still crystal clear in my mind. Time has not put a fade on them either.

The anguish I feel over not having been enough, physically, for him to continue to grow in my belly shreds me to pieces. Although I knew the probability of carrying him to term was low, due to an incompetent cervix, terminating the pregnancy was never an option. In all honesty, the thought did stroke my brain for all of 2 seconds, I just couldn't do it.

Hindsight? Yeah, it's almost always 20/20. In this instance, and as much as intense agony as his premature birth and subsequent death caused, I wouldn't trade holding him and his beating heart for anything.

So, happy birthday, Alexander Lee, my angel baby.  I held you in my arms briefly, once-upon-a-time, yet you will live in my heart and soul forever.

Happy Birthday, Alexander...

I have been so overwhelmed with grief this past week that I have been frightened of sitting down to pour out all the emotions I am drowning in. I am not frightened of the emotions themselves, but rather of my physical reaction in looking at them straight on. I am so deluged with emotions and the astonishing power behind them that I am firmly rooted in this place – trying to determine which is worse; yielding to them, or continuing to squash them down until I finally suffocate.

Sorrow appears to be the emotion I feel most often. Sometimes I think I understand it and other times I can only shake my head in confusion.

I realize that losing someone you love is devastating, but the shadows that follow you around and blanket your heart forever after can be equally, if not worse. Occasionally we are forewarned – by illness or age – and see the loss coming. Other times it comes at us like a stealth fighter jet and we haven’t the opportunity to react and get the hell out of the way before it decimates us. The infinite questions that follow that type of annihilation will forever remain unanswered.

Even now, 13 years after Alexander’s birth and death, I think about all of the “would-a, could-a, should-as”. The “if only-s” drive me crazy, too.

Somebody told me once that I am living my present life too much in my past. For awhile, that bothered me because I didn’t understand what that meant. (I still don’t, really.) Then I realized that if feeling emotions infinitely deeper than some people means I’m living too much in my past, then there is very little I can do. I am an intensely passionate person and when I love someone, it is with every iota of my being. Oddly enough, I don’t wear my ardor on the outside of my body so it is very often missed – or misread.

The day Alexander was born was an extraordinarily beautiful fall day. The sky was an exceptionally intense blue. The sun was high and not a cloud stood in its way. The fall colors came early that year, too, so the road home from where my son lay was surrounded by multicolored foliage. Even now it doesn’t make sense to me how I endured the worst loss of my life that day, but the world continued to turn.

Please, stop the world and let me step off…I surrender...

Calculating Time

My oldest son, Matthew, came to live with Henry and me in early February and it started me thinking about the time that's passed...

• 13 years and 7 months since Matthew, Connor and I have lived under the same roof.
• 13 years and 7 months since I made a difficult decision to give my boys up because I wasn't sure I could take care of them and have a nervous breakdown at the same time.
• 13 years and 2 months since I tried to end my life with a bottle of prescription medication and failed and my first psychiatric hospitalization.
• 12 years and 8 months since Alexander Lee passed through my arms on his way to heaven.
• 11 years and 2 months since I held Hunter Nicholas for the very first time.
• Almost 9 years exactly since I walked across a parking lot and stepped into Henry and Jake's lives.
• 5 years and 11 months since my beautiful Grandmother died in my arms, as I whispered how very much I loved her.
• 5 years and 10 months since Henry and I said "I Do" to each other.

ThisClose

On June 5th my oldest son graduated from high school. The feeling I had when they handed him his diploma is indescribable. It feels like his life thus far passed in the blink of an eye. On the hour + ride home from the ceremony I cried at the thought of having come ThisClose to missing out on one of the most important days in a child's life -- graduating from high school.

I've written before about the overwhelming guilt I feel for hurting Henry and my boys by coming ThisClose to being completely swallowed by a black hole that came ThisClose to becoming my grave. I am having great difficulty accepting the fact that I cannot undo the hurt and make things right. There is no band-aid big enough to cover the wounds or enough words in the English language to apologize for the mistakes I have made. Oh, and there have been many.

A few of the mistakes I made led me to this moment, blissfully married to the love of my life, and the blessed mother of four boys and a stepson.

Even Alexander's premature passing through my body and my life had a reason. For a couple of years I was so busy searching for answers that I didn't see the reason for his being staring me in the face.

I look into the faces of my husband and my kids and I know I am right where I was always meant to be.

More Musical Memories

Read part 1 here.

The song that kept me company for 13 long days in the hospital, in pre-term labor, with my last son, Hunter is 'When You Love a Woman, by Journey'.

The song Sophie B. Hawkins' 'Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover' that my husband (then new boyfriend) sang in my ear while I drove us to his parents house in upstate New York (We live in Michigan). We had known each other less than two weeks and I helped him re-roof his parents house. Hearing it still gives me chillbumps!

I first heard this song when I was pregnant with my first son, Matthew, in 1989. It followed me through each of my pregnancies. Elton John's 'The Greatest Discovery'.

'Return to Innocence' by Enigma was a song that almost consumed me after the birth and subsequent death of my third son, Alexander, in 1995.

I first heard this song, Michael Jackson's 'You Are Not Alone' right after I lost Alexander, too. It still gives me a lump in my throat. I remember pulling into the driveway of my then mother-in-laws house with this song blaring and me sobbing.

Henry and I danced naked, in his kitchen, to John Denver's 'Annies Song'.
'My Wish' by Rascal Flatts for our kids.

For my incredibly beautiful mother-in-law, Josh Groban and Charlotte Church sing 'The Prayer'.

My song: 'Wildflower' by Skylark.

For Barb: 'Summertime' by none other than Janis Joplin.

Comfortable Ache

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17237979/

I've been in a funk today because of the above mentioned news story. I first heard about it on the way to work and as soon as I hit my desk I looked it up. Don't get me wrong, I am truly thrilled for the parents of Amillia. I just hear the "coulda, woulda, shoulda" reverberating in my brain.

My son, Alexander, was delivered at 18 weeks gestation on September 13, 1995. Amillia's story makes me wonder what would have happened if my pregnancy had lasted four more weeks. It still hurts. 11 1/2 years later the pain has become a comfortable ache.

Grief

I have been trying for more than eleven years to make sense of the premature birth and subsequent death of my son, Alexander. (I've already posted part of his story under 'I'm Bipolar and So Is He'.)

I truly believe that things happen for a reason but I still struggle to see how losing a son has anything to do with it. In reality, about 8 years ago, I figured it out.

My family was the epitome of dysfunctional. From a spectators point of view, our family appeared normal when in reality it was far from it. We took family vacations and attended a small church regularly. My three older brother's were athletes through and through so my parents were deeply involved in various sport booster clubs. My mom was a SAHM and our family was highly respected in our small island town community. It is what went on behind our house walls that nobody knew about. There was a lot of speculation (hush-hush) about why my mom left my dad 18 years, and five kids, into their marriage. Why one day, when my dad was at work, she packed up my sister and me in her brand new, baby blue, Chevy Nova and moved us to another city.

I remember the warm summer day in 1978 when my mom told me she was leaving my dad. I was eleven at the time. My mom, my little sister, and my three aunts were visiting my grandmother in northern Michigan. The fact that my mom, my sister and I were camping without my dad and brothers was not suspicious to me. My dad was a general contractor and it wasn't unusual for him to be away from home. My mom led me to a picnic table in the campground and told me to sit down. At the time I was thinking "I'm busted! I shaved my legs and she KNOWS!" Instead, to my blatant surprise, she told me that when we returned home to island town we would be packing our clothes and leaving my dad and two brother's, 15 and 13, behind. Earlier that year my oldest brother, 17, left high school and joined the Army.

She moved us all right. To a town even smaller (without the island) than the one she, my father and my family had grown up in. To a mobile home trailer with paper thin walls that rattled in the slightest of breezes. The new town had one stoplight, a bar and its own post office.

Our family built every house we ever lived in. About every four years we would spend our summer vacation knee deep in sawdust, pounding nails and erecting walls. The home we were leaving was almost brand new. We had moved into it the summer before. My sister and I shared a room and this was the first house I lived in where I remember having an active part in selecting paint, wallpaper and carpet for it. (Baby blue carpet/paint, blue flowered wallpaper.) Our curtains were custom made.

From a chocolate brown, four bedroom, 2,000 square foot home to a two bedroom trailer. From an island town where we knew everybody and everybody knew us to a trailer park where we knew no one. The only consolation, if you can call it that, was that my aunt, my mom's sister, and my cousins lived in a house at the bottom of the hill. To christen our new "home" that first day, I collapsed on a pile of blankets and sobbed my heart out. Shortly after that there was a knock on the door and several kids from the park offered to give me a tour of our new surroundings. I dried my eyes and took them up on the offer.

My mom had already lined up a job as a housekeeper in a hotel for next-to-nothing wages. I think she told me later that that job paid her something like $1.90 an hour. My dad wasn't paying child support but she managed to support the three of us on that pittance. Even now I stand in awe of her.

That fall I started sixth grade at the middle school in that tiny little town. My dad figured out where my mom had taken us and one day, while my sister and I were at school, he showed up and tried to choke my mom. He had told her repeatedly while they were dating and especially after they were married that if she ever left him he would kill her. He never bothered her like that after that.

I don't remember the frequency but I do remember my dad, driving his white pickup truck, would pick my sister and I up and take us for a visit to "his" house in the island town.

Three months later, over Christmas vacation and leaving my little sister behind, I moved back to island town. Back to my baby blue bedroom, back to the kids I grew up with. Right back into the lions den that was my home. I knew what to expect because it was familiar chaos. I hate my dad for what he did to my mom and my brother's. I hate my brother's for what they did to me.

In January, 1979, my oldest brother turned 18 and was given an honorable discharge under dishonorable circumstances from the Army. He went AWOL so they kicked him out. The military really frowns on that. I still have a letter he wrote to his commanding officer explaining what we now know to be ADD as his reason for going AWOL. He moved back into the chocolate brown house, into his black carpeted bedroom with a mural of a tropical island on the wall. He went to work for my dad as a carpenter. He fought regularly with my dad.

Apparently, in the Army, he was part of a crew that built and subsequently blew up bridges. He hadn't been home long when he decided to show his friends how to make a bomb. It blew up in his face and singed his eyebrows and eyelashes. His face was slightly burned and he had difficulty opening his mouth so his girlfriend and I had him drinking from a baby bottle. Mostly because he let us. As much as I hate him, the picture in my head of that night still makes me laugh.

On the evening of March 28th, my oldest brother and my father had a huge fight over the use of the family car that night. My dad told him no, my brother insisted, punches flew. My brother landed the final punch to my father's eye, breaking his glasses before he slid behind the wheel of the car and drove away. The last words ever between father and son -- the jr. to his sr. -- were in anger.

Early in the morning of March 29th my dysfunctional family was flipped upside down. It was spring break and I had a girlfriend spending the night. Instead of sleeping in my baby blue bedroom, we slept on the family room floor in front of the stereo because we thought it was cool. I awoke in the wee hours of that Thursday morning to hushed voices coming from our kitchen. I peeked around the corner and after recognizing the faces of several adults peering back at me I went back to sleep. Everything was right in my dysfunctional little world.

Later I was awakened by my mom and dad. My mom? Here? With my dad? They walked me into our living room with the pale shades of blue carpeting. They sat me in the green chair in front of the bay window and knelt down in front of me. They had something to tell me. My brother was dead. I started to cry. They left me crying and staring out the window at the rain to go upstairs and tell the boys. Not long after that I woke my friend and told her what happened and she went home.

Later I would find out the details. At 1:30 that raining morning, after barhopping with friends, he slammed my dads car into a tree. In front of the church we grew up in. In front of the church he was baptised in. My dad had to drive to my mother's house and tell her. She fell apart in my father's arms, pounding on his chest.

We buried my brother five days later in the rain.

In 1999 I finally figured out why Alexander passed through my arms in 1995. In grieving his death, I finally grieved my life. All the abuse my father doled out to my mother and my brother's, all my abuse at the hands of my brothers. I finally let it all go.

Time does not heal the pain. Instead, the pain of losing Alexander has become a comfortable ache. He will forever be my angel-baby.