Ghosts of Christmas Past...

By the time I was 11 so much hatred had boiled up inside of me because of the abuse and neglect, that my mother and I fought constantly. During one such fight, she was hanging up the Christmas lights on the house and bitching about how if my father hadn’t left us then she wouldn’t have to be doing this. “It was his job after all!” to take care of his wife and kids, etc, etc. It had rained recently and was going to rain again so I think this contributed to her need to rush. So, me arguing with and yelling at her while she was on a ten-foot ladder probably wasn’t helpful. After a particularly heated exchange I went back inside and slammed the door. I heard something a few minutes later that caused me to go outside but I don’t remember or have blocked out what the noise was. Maybe a scream, a crack or just the ladder falling over…

The winters where I grew up were damp and it was cold that night. When combined with what I saw in front of me as I swung the heavy front door open, it  felt like being dunked in a bucket of ice water. My mother was lying on the sidewalk leading up to our front porch,, the ladder toppled over in the wet garden bed and the Christmas lights dangling unfinished. She was conscious but not moving, she told me to go get our neighbor Helen, a very sweet woman who lived next door. Helen called 911 from our kitchen phone. I think I was the one who called my brother; he was out with my sister and one of our cousins and they all came over.

The ambulance and fire-truck lights soon filled the empty space of the dark night sky as the neighbors started appearing, gathering around our house and it seemed like our yard was full of people. The paramedics were asking my mom questions as I stood silently with my siblings. I can still hear her feisty answers: “Ma’am, how old are you?” “Too damn old!” “How much do you weigh?” “Too damn much!”

I was told to ride in the ambulance because my brothers car was full, but I wanted to get a book first because I figured we would be at the hospital a while and reading was the only “coping” skill I had. I ran to my room and stood in front of my pink and purple bookshelf unable to decide which book, since someone had said “just ONE!”. I don’t know how long it was before someone came in my room - and told me the ambulance was waiting on me. It was an awkward ride to the hospital, sitting in the front seat in silence.

The paramedic who was driving turned on the overhead light for me so I could read on the drive.  I mumbled a "thank you" and stared into my blurry book the rest of the way as my tears overflowed onto the page.  I wasn’t at the hospital for that long, I spent the night with my brother & his wife and they drove me to school the next morning. My mother was in the hospital for 3 days, she had fallen about 10 feet, landing on her head first, and when she came home she was different. Her vision was damaged temporarily, she lost some long-term memory and became an evangelical Christian…