V's Version

On February 24, my mother would have been 60. I just read two tributes to fallen friends by Candye Kane. One was for Heather and one was for a friend who reminded me somewhat of my own mother. Below was the comment I left for Candye:

Hello Candye - Heather spoke so fondly of you that I feel as if we are connected. I came on to read your tribute to Ms. Mac but didn't expect to get a double feature that would hit home so much for me. My condolences on the loss of two loves.

My mother endured a tortured childhood, in and out of foster homes and orphanages, abused along the way. She even burned one house to the ground, hoping to escape. Like the way that you believed that Dineen had it in her to pull herself up, I believed in my own mother. She was a butch before I ever knew the word. She was the very model of "scrappy." Her name was Jo (like in Little Women) but they called her Joey when she was a kid. Her familiarity to abuse led to an adulthood riddled with battering, drugs, alcohol and crime. With the exception of the few happy years she was with my father, she battled demons I will never know. Sadly, her young life was ended from a fall from a seventh floor window onto an asphalt parking lot during a fight with her lover/batterer who had been released from prison that day. The last image I have of my mother is her chalk line.

But it doesn't stop me from believing that we all have it in us. I know from my own life that it is possible to survive abuse. It is possible to walk away from drugs (clean almost 18 years.) It is possible to fight cancer (heartbreaking chemo, etc. for four years but it was sex that saved me.) We just have to believe or fake it until we either make it or are released.

Thank you for the beautiful testimonies to Heather and Dineen and for reminding me that not everyone makes it but that those of us who do have a responsibility to be grateful every day.