Three Generations: A Short Story of Strength, Endurance & Hope (Fiction)

Three generations of women learn from one another how to cope with the ups and downs of life by enduring tragedy and embracing hope.

Three Generations: A Tribute to Strength, Endurance & Hope

Again she was on her knees, sobbing into her pillow at 3 a.m. so she wouldn’t wake her brother and sister, it had been three months but the pain of losing her father was only heightened by the knowledge of me dating again.

She screams at me now, cussing even, saying, “You ***** never even loved my father, you couldn’t have if you can just move on so easily.” 

She doesn’t know it but I still spend sleepless nights crying over her father, who I once thought was the love of my life, my one and only �" but that all changed long before his death.   I know her resentment is intensifying, but I don’t know how I am suppose to tell her that months before her father’s death, he revealed to me he had never been in love with me.

It didn’t come as a shock to me.  We were living separate lives.  I took care of the children and our home.  He worked and worked and worked.  We didn’t enjoy our time alone; in fact, I think we avoided being together without anyone else around.  Our date nights were always spent with other couples and if it did wind up being just the two of us, all we talked about was the children and that could wind up contentious.  I thought he should make more of an effort to spend quality time with them, he thought I should encourage their independence by going back to work.

To anyone looking in, we were the perfect family.  We never fought in front of the kids.  We never showed anything but support for each other in public.   Chad was a deacon at the church and the kids and I were there every time the doors were open. But there were signs, if only someone would have seen the signs and intervened.  If only I would have let myself see the addiction to pain killers, late night drinking, disappearing on weekends claiming he needed solitude to get his head straight. 

The same reasons I fell in love with him, his charisma, his handsome stature, his ability to talk anybody into anything were the same attributes that lead to his death.  Now I am left to tie this unraveling family back together, only I’m falling apart inside. 

Taking the good with the bad…

My own mother and I were never very close.  She was cold, unemotional and detached.  Though, I learned one very important lesson from her by observation.  At the height of my father’s career, owning the largest paint company in Charleston, SC, one of his workers called in sick on an historic hotel project.  He went in to make sure the job was done in time; to ensure his business would win the bids on future historic preservation jobs.  He said he earned more money for the same amount of work if the buildings were more than a 100 years old.  So he left that Monday morning, climbed to the third story scaffolding and started painting.   An hour later, the scaffolding shifted and he lost his balance, tripped over his equipment and fell, crushing his feet, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. 

I never saw my mother pity herself.  She simply took over the company and became known as the shrewdest businesswoman in town.  That was in 1953 when women did not own businesses, much less run them.  She also never let my father feel sorry for himself, instead insisting he handle all of the duties he still could including the finances, the laundry, the cooking and the children, yes my father was even expected to do my hair for school.

So when I found Chad frothing at the mouth, rattling through his nose and blue in color, my instinct wasn’t to cry but to get my house in order.  I didn’t want my children seeing this, knowing it would traumatize them if they saw their father dead.  Instinctually, I called 911 and hurried the children off to school.  I returned to tell the police what I knew.  My husband slept in the upstairs apartment last night so he could get a good rest before an important meeting with a client.  At 6 o’clock I entered the apartment to see what he wanted for breakfast.  That’s when I found him.  The policeman interviewing me couldn’t understand why I would leave my husband in this state to take the children to school.  I tried to explain, “My children would have rushed in the room to hug him as they always did if I hadn’t insisted their daddy needed more rest and whisked them off to school.”  I couldn’t understand why the investigator didn’t comprehend why I would want to protect my children from such an image.

A full investigation was launched into the death of my husband that included a full autopsy and Toxicology report.  In the end, the reports concluded my husband had a heart attack, inevitable, but exacerbated by the myriad of painkillers, alcohol and stress in his life.  He was 43-years-old.   There was a small life insurance policy, but the debt my husband accrued in the last year of his life absorbed anything I would have received.  It turns out my husband had gotten into some wrong dealings and promised clients more than he could deliver.  The important meeting that day was with a bankruptcy attorney.  He never shared any of this with me. 

I could hear my mother’s voice in the back of my head after I told her I was pregnant, dropping out of college and marrying Chad as soon as we could get the license. She simply said, “Now that you’re a mother, you’ll need to learn to accept the good with the bad, no more acting out when things don’t go your way. That will be your child’s job now.“

My mother was there for the wedding but died shortly before Shay was born and left me her journals.  It was there I learned my mother wasn’t cold, unemotional and detached; rather, it was her love for her children and my father that motivated her to make things work.  She wrote, “I never knew your father until I had to take over his role.  I couldn’t have known how stressed out he was dealing with clients he couldn’t please, not getting paid for months at a time.  Our love for one another became real when your father and I had to switch roles.  It forced us to rely on each other.  I only hope you and Chad can grow to love each other in this most vulnerable way over time.”  She said to me just before she died, not to let my heart grow hardened by the hard times, but rather to pray harder.

On My Knees

And so I prayed harder and began taking children into my home to make extra money just to get by until the Summer was over.  At that point I was planning to return to teaching.  With three children, it would be hard to make it on a teacher’s salary and social security.  I put our home up for sale and was in the process of selling all non-essentials. 

That’s when I met Michael.  He was dropping off his niece as a favor to his sister who was also a single mom and just needed childcare for the Summer since her son was in second grade.   It turns out Michael and I went to the same elementary school and we use to play together.  Our moms were friends.  There was even a picture of us playing at the pool in one of my mom’s journals. 

He seemed interested from the very start, asking me questions and smiling at me with a flirty grin.  He wasn’t supposed to return that afternoon, but he said his sister was running late and he had the day off.  He was on nightshifts at the hospital through the end of the week.  He wound up showing up every morning and afternoon that week staying and even helping with the kids.  He seemed anxious on Friday when he dropped his niece off.  That afternoon he pulled me aside and asked me if I would consider going to dinner with him that weekend, but that he understood if it was too soon for me. 

Everything in me wanted to say yes, but I thought of Shay, Charley and Sam.  I told him I would have to sleep on it.  I knew it wouldn’t go over well with the children.  That night I couldn’t help but be giddy.  I really liked Michael, just sitting and talking to him.  I hadn’t talked to another man like that since my father was alive.  I tossed and turned and tried to fix my mind on something else. That’s when I heard Shay crying.  I went upstairs and entered her room.  She started screaming at me, using expletives I did not teach her.  Then she said,  “I know you’ll say yes to him.  I can see it in your eyes.”  Though shaken by Shay’s reaction, I wanted to give Michael a chance, so I decided to call him Saturday morning and tell him I would go to dinner with him but that I would not tell the children about him until I knew he was more than a friend.  He agreed that was the best plan.  

That night was the best night of my life.  My brother wanted some time with the kids, so he and his wife agreed to stay over.  My brother is the only one that knew the whole truth about Chad and could understand why I might be ready to move on.  I told the kids I was going to spend time at Gina’s, my best friend from childhood.   I took a bag of clothes and got ready there.  Michael arrived early and waited for me to finish getting ready.  We left around 7:30 p.m.  I can’t tell you anything about the night except we never stopped talking and laughing and when he kissed me I knew this was something special. 

I didn’t get home until midnight.  My sister-in-law waited up for me.  I told her about every detail of the conversation, how Michael never married because he hadn’t found the right person, how he went to school for so long and the program was so intense to become a heart surgeon, he didn’t spend a lot of time dating.  He even said his biggest regret was never having his own children and that’s why he is so involved in his nieces and nephews lives.   He even told me he secretly thought the only way he’d be able to have the family he always wanted was to marry a whole family.  It was a magical night, like I just unwrapped the kind of gift that would never stop giving.

Giving Life

In the middle of our conversation I heard a scream that shook me to the core. I rushed to Shay’s room thinking she had heard everything I just told her Aunt Dottie.  I found Shay lying on the floor with a pillow over her face, hyperventilating, exhausted from crying.  I took the pillow from her and picked her up off the floor, laying her in my lap, I began to run my fingers through her hair.  She lay their crying for a long while, her face raw from streaming tears.  

Finally she said, “It’s not what you think, I’m not angry at you for dating.  I’m angry at Dad.  I’ve read your journals and I know he wasn’t perfect.    You deserve to move on.  I’m not really angry with you at all. “  I had never seen Shay like she had been the past couple of days and if it wasn’t my dating that was upsetting her, I was scared to know what was troubling her.  

I mustered up all of my courage and asked her, “What is it then…”

“I’m pregnant.” She said, her voice shaking with fear.  “The boy won’t even talk to me.”  On the inside I shattered for my baby girl.  I had noticed she had become more interested in boys.  It seemed the more distant her father became, the more Shay would leech onto boys at school.  A few of them would call the house every night, but I thought they were harmless crushes.

I wiped the tears from her face, and kissed her forehead.  With tears in my own eyes, I told her of her father’s great love for her, how he worked so hard to provide for us so that we would have a better life than he had.  How I was pregnant when we got married and how he felt obligated to marry me.  Then I shared with her about my mother’s story, telling her first that times have changed and she has options.  I told her of a family down the street who has been waiting to adopt for seven years.  Then I shared with her my mother’s advice, that if she chooses to become a mother, from this day forward she would have to learn to accept the good with the bad, and that she would have to guard her heart from growing harder during hard times by teaching herself to pray harder.  But I added one thing, I told her, you won’t be on your knees alone no matter what you decide, I will be there with you every step of the way, kneeling, standing tall, whatever it takes.

Author's Note

Any and all feedback is appreciated.

Reviews

[darkgurl]

So nicely done and set up well. Wonderful detail, imagery and use of punctuation. The feelings are easy to capture. I find this sad. Amazing read!

[A.E. Surdam]

Such a sad yet wonderful story. I so enjoyed you writing your story and sharing it with the world. And I hope you have been able to move and find love and begin a new life. :) I would love to read another chapter.

A.E.S