Tsunami Warning

There was a time when I began to hide my whole world from my father when it came to the abuse I was experiencing.

Dad stood by when I moved out of my tiny cabin-style studio in Ben Lomond ~ in my first attempt to end my destructive relationship ~ a mere nine months before I ended up moving in with my abuser.  I had to get out of the Santa Cruz Mountains in order to break free from the man who had begun to destroy my life in a short six months.

So the day after my 37th birthday, he stood watch in the van while I packed up the rest of my stuff.  My nephew Cameron and his friend Nick had already came for the furniture days before my final visit. 

I had not even really been living in the mountain studio for a couple of months having already rented another studio near the university the previous November shortly after I drove myself to the E.R. on Halloween night.  Looking back, this was my first attempt at some sort of safety plan ~ securing some secret housing that would wait for me until I could sneak away completely.

But The Bad Man soon found out where I lived, and he began to come by at all hours of the night, tapping on my windows with his motorcycle keys, calling out my name, begging me to let him in ~ just this once, he would plead.

And sometimes I did let him in just to not wake the landlords in the house next door.  Other times, I would stay as quiet as I could behind those four walls ~ like Anne Frank in the Attic Apartment ~ waiting for him to finally leave ~ and then I would call the police to make an incident report.

He wore me down after four months of stalking turned to wooing, and then he began another four months of fighting with me about his wanting me to move in with him and my wanting to remain alone.  I remember Karen at Walnut Ave Women's Center telling me that once I did move in with him it would be very hard to leave. 

But I gave in to stop the fighting ~ the main topic of our arguments ~ that I did not want to live with him.  I gave in, and I did not want to tell my father.

And so I called Quicksilver.  A local voicemail service where I could set up a Santa Cruz phone number so my dad could stay in touch with me and never find out that I moved back to the Santa Cruz Mountains.  Three more years of secrets began on the day I acquired my secret voicemail number that I still have to this day.

Dad would leave me messages about family get-togethers.  And I would call him back from work.  He would send me cards to the old apartment, and I would get them a week later with the yellow forwarding address sticker on them.  I did not think ahead to how I would handle the situation with the mail once the year ran out for forwarding.

The secret voicemail then became the only weapon I had against my abuser from finding other ways to contact me once we finally broke up three years later.

I had changed my home phone number multiple times during our on-and-off relationship that I was not about to give him my phone number once I was finally free.  So I kept paying the $45 quarterly bill to give him only one way to contact me.  He would leave me long, lengthy messages at times ~ always wanting to see me again ~ using the animals as ways to get me to miss the dogs and cats ~ telling me they missed me and did not understand why I did not visit.  I made a copy of each of the messages, especially if they were abusive ~ always with the notion that one day I may need to finally file my own restraining order on him ~ and not just one that cops had automatically placed on him the night he bashed my head into the wall.

Last summer, the voice mails stopped.  And I started having nightly dreams and daily flashbacks about him.  I instinctively knew that something was wrong.  I emailed his sponser and found out my ex was finally in jail but not for any charges of domestic violence.  The whole idea of him finally being in jail really caused me to tap into those horrible four years I spent with him and to all the heartbreaking years of verbal abuse that escalated into physical violence ~ so much of which I had blocked out simply to get through another day.

For six months, I processed those flashbacks.  By the third month, I knew I had to continue writing about my experience.  The blog I had started to honor my mother at Christmas immediately transitioned to include stories of domestic violence.  All the titles in my head from all those years together were typed up and out in a frenzy of writing for four months all with the idea that he would be locked up for 2 years.  When I heard his release date had been bumped up to February and that his sentence was reduced to six months, I began counting down to that day in February and wondering just how long it would take him to contact me.  Maybe I should have had Vegas take bets.

"You have one unheard message," informed the familar voice to my voicemail service of 9 years.  And there he was on the other line ~ same as he ever was ~ as if another marriage and domestic violence and being locked up for drugs had not even happened since his last message to me ~

There he was warning me about the tsunami.  Asking me to check on his grown son who was staying in the old house in Felton.

I felt nothing inside at the sound of his familiar voice. 

There was no pain.  No sadness.  No fear. 

  

Uncensored

Stage Four

The Cancer Year has already begun.  Mom's story technically starts in January 1994 with two months of misdiagnosis and treatments for conditions that did not actually exist.

But to me, Her Cancer Year officially starts on March 9, 1994.  And so every March, I do relive those last moments as each anniversary unfolds ~ not in a morbid way or even a sad way ~ but in such a way for a person who has a calendar in her head and remembers key days of the week, days of the month, and days of the year.

We had been waiting for the call.  And the call came just shortly before I had to leave for work.  I remember Mom and Dad huddled together using the same hand-held phone.  Two words: lung cancer.  Words that shattered our world in a single breath.

Looking back, I wish there would have been some way for me to cancel my shift.  I did call the video store to at least ask if the morning shift person could stay a little longer.  We all worked shifts alone, and she could not stay longer.  I did not want to leave my mother or my father.  But they did not want me to lose my job.

So I left for work in a daze.  Drove 14 miles to Scotts Valley.  Started my shift at 4.  And cried between customers the whole night. 

I was wearing my favorite windbreaker ~ the torquoise one she and Dad had bought me for my trip to New York the previous summer ~ tears streaming so fast that the sleeves were saturated with sadness ~ really knowing this was the end ~ we had not even gone over concrete details and treatment plans with her doctor yet ~ still more tests ~ but I knew ~ I just knew ~ this was the end of life as I knew it ~ and at 29 years old, I knew right then that I was about to lose my mother.

I endured the six hour shift and came home after 10 p.m. later that evening.  Mom was already asleep.  Started the next day on automatic pilot with a new found strength that I never knew was within me.  Began a series of appointments with her and Dad.  Went to the cancer resource library and brought home books.  Really should not have brought home books as the information only scared her more ~ she thought she was going to have to have surgery based on the information in those books ~ she envisioned being cut open and having a lung removed ~ she studied diagrams and read information on other types of lung cancer.

She had been having pain in her back and in her ribs for two months which originally started the whole series of testing and missed diagnosis back in January.

After her official diagnosis of lung cancer in March, I went with her to the dressing room for the X-rays at Dominican, and she came out of the X-ray room all excited. 

"It's only a broken rib!" she exclaimed joyously, ''I broke a rib on the exercise machine.  That's what is causing the extra pain!"

For a fleeting moment of perhaps a few days, we thought she could really still be Stage One.  And during that moment, the situation seemed manageable, bearable, and slightly less scary.

But it was me who looked the doctor right in the eye at our next appointment and asked him what stage was my dear mother's cancer.

"Stage 4," he answered point blank.

Silence broken by winces of shock and then tears.  The three of us huddled in his little office, taping the whole conversation to fully comprehend all that he was saying later.

Any remaining hopes and dreams I had for my mother were crushed with two single words ~ Stage Four.

And so it turned out that the rib had broken from the lung cancer spreading to the bone. 

Both chemotherapy and radiation now were the plan.  And she dived right in as if the world still held all her hopes and dreams.  She believed in the 5% survival rate given to Stage 4 lung cancer patients.  She had to believe if not for herself then for her husband of nearly 34 years, her three grown children, and her two beloved grandsons.

Her Cancer Year had officially begun.  We packed our fears into our bags and traveled with her throughout this journey into this unknown world ~

Stage Four ~