LIFE....As It Goes

In the beginning

Let me start off telling you a little about my childhood. I can't say that it was bad, honestly. I remember canoeing in kinder Louisiana with my dad. He always got me a yuhoo and a honey bun before we went off to the river. And let me just tell you, my Grandma Judy. She was my best friend even though she was so strict. She was something else, but as I think back on her, I began to think I'm alot like her. Sadly, I didn't get the chance to know that as she died in her 50s of a brain aneurysm. I remember Elton John had just remade the wonderful song "Candle in the Wind" about Princess Diana. My mom told me the news while I was cheering. This was in elementary school. We were the big 5th graders. Anyways, that song was the very first song I heard on the way home. At the young age of 9 or maybe 10, this was tragic. I'm not sure if I've cried that hard in my years of life. Sadly, I was in for much more heartache and lost loved ones. I'm never going to be 100 percent sure if this was the beginning of me holding things inside or not, but what I do know is that childhood just got a little darker for me. Now, I have friends that I adored. There are some I still talk to these days. However, a part of me felt gone. My grandma Judy would cry at night and pray to go be with what I considered my grandpa. He had died only a few months before. He was the one that would give me what mawmaw had already said no to. It's crazy how life is, I remember the day my mom came to pick me up from my dad's, my mawmaw was cooking rice and gravey, while trying her hardest to keep me from seeing her tears, her pain. She drops the rice and just breaks down. I didn't know what heartache was or ever felt such pain in my gut before. When mom finally arrived, maw Judy had asked my mom to stay and eat. They hadn't seen much less talked to each other in a while. That brief moment, as I glanced up at her, she was smiling, the tears were gone. Before leaving, my grandma told me to do well in school and make her proud. I was determined to do just that. I can't say how long after that day she passed but it was definitely before I got the chance to show my granma Judy my report card, I had made honor roll, and for the first time. I remember crying in my room, I think that's one of the first time I tried to talk myself out of my own sadness, that night in my dreams I was on a school bus and my mawmaw was sitting right by me, she told me that she was so proud of me. I truly think to this day that it was her telling me she's watching over me. That was the last time I had dreamed of her. Shortly after mawmaws funeral, another family member passed. Now let me tell you these deaths were all family on my fathers side. My uncle Teddy was found dead. I think I was already at the point of numbing myself without knowing. It had been a long time after losing mawmaw that I cried at death. Dad said death is part of life. So I'd tell myself, well, I hope they had a fun life. Just after i began to understand that with life comes death, a new lesson was coming my way, a new pain, a new sick in the gut feeling.