In Just A Moment
My
world came crashing down on Wednesday January 11, 2001. When I woke up it was just another day. The weather was typical for North California;
it was sunny and hot with slight humidity and no chance of rain. Later on that Wednesday my world was rocked
forever. As a little girl, my
understanding was muddy but the one thing I heard was that my daddy was
gone. Daddy wasn’t coming home thanks to
a paranoid schizophrenic with agoraphobia and voices in his head. I couldn’t tell you what was happening around
me. Everything had faded away as my
world came crashing down around me. Of
course, I wasn’t the only one who had their heart ripped out. I remember seeing my mom fall. I had never seen her so broken; the woman who
wiped away my tears when I fell or kissed my bruised knees was no longer in
front of me. Instead was a broken,
sobbing woman at my feet. She called out
to me and I went to her. We sat there
and she held me as she tried to explain things to me. I remember asking questions, "where's
daddy? What do you mean gone? He’s
coming back right?" No one wanted to
answer my questions, to explain to me that I would never see my daddy
again.
It wasn’t until later that I was able
to understand, and when I did I wish I wouldn’t have known. Earlier that day my dad had gone to work. He was the manager of our local Lyons. While he was working, a man came in demanding
to speak to the manager. At the time no
one knew what was going on in his head.
The man was convinced that the restaurant had tried to poison him. That wasn’t true, but the voices in his head
convinced him otherwise. As my daddy
went over to speak to this man, he was shot.
He never even had the chance to flinch. The man aimed, shot and it was
over. That one fateful day was enough to shake and shape
the rest of my life.
To say that the next year was dark
would be an understatement. My family
and I mourned, but somehow we moved on.
We can always move on but we never forget. I began to lean very heavily on my mom, but I
couldn’t even begin to imagine how she felt.
One thing became very apparent, I was changed. No longer a loud friendly child, a grudge had
taken over my heart and I became a shy lost person. I didn’t feel like a child anymore. I had my childlike looks and speech but my
thoughts and views became very grown up very fast. I grew up and saw the world as a scary dark
place. My mom did the best to give me a
normal childhood; but I didn’t want that I wanted to mature and help her.
As life moved on, we moved
too. I was taken from my sunny home of
California and thrown into a snowy and foreign Ohio. A place with only memories of my great grandparents’
house on holidays, a place to start fresh.
If there was anything I hated in the world it was snow. The move was terrible, seven long days in
eighteen wheelers and different hotels every night. Once we got to Ohio, everyone tried to look
on the bright side. My grandparents had
moved in with my mom brother and I. They
were born in Ohio and their parents lived in Ohio so they were ecstatic. I couldn’t tell you how my mom felt, if she
was miserable like me then she hid it very well. I would never tell you that I fell in love
with Ohio, but even to this day I can say that it has maybe grown on me.
Slowly but surely, life got
easier. I stopped trying to be the grown
up and tried to lighten my heart. I grew
up in church and accepted Jesus and Christianity from a young age. If it weren’t for God and my family I would
never have tried to be myself again. I
remember the hope I saw in my mom’s eyes when I told her that I accepted Jesus
into my heart. It was a year after our
move and casually I spilled out “Momma, I’m going to go to Heaven one day and I’ll
be with daddy.” I could have said so much more but that was all that seemed
necessary. From that day forward, I
became a happier child. I knew that my
views on life would never be the same, and I accepted that. Acceptance, that’s all I ever needed it’s the
best gift that could ever be given. It
allowed me to move on and live the way I can now, and for that I am very
thankful.
