Keeping the Puzzle Together

The time was July, 1968 in the town of Tupelo, Mississippi. I was born to a poor family. Barely had food to eat. We lived with my Grandma Martin. My dad was an alcoholic, wife beater and even beat on his mom and dad, he never touched my sister or me. In 1969 we moved to Portageville, Mo. A small town in the bootheel of Missouri. We still had not much food. No matter what the situation my mother always came through for us. At times she would have to feed fifteen people with what she had not what they would bring because there wasn't anything. The thing that sticks out in my mind the most is when I was about three years old my dad had come home drunk and my mother was cooking my sister and me something to eat, when he started beating on her she finally made her way back over to the stove, grabbed the hot iron skillet and I think if my uncle Bobby, my dad's older brother wouldn't have stopped her, she would have killed him. But not long after that, about one and half years later my dad lost his life to Hodgkins Disease.
That broke my heart because no matter he has done, he was still my hero. Life started getting worse for us. We moved to Gideon, Mo. where we all three still live. Mom had no money, no friends or no skills for work. She didn't know how to drive a car, if she did we didn't have one.
We had moved to a house further out into the country but it was free, but it had no running water or electricity. We ate flap jacks and drank water for a week at a time. This went on for months. Then I remember getting some chickens. I saw my mom out in the yard chasing after a rooster. She had caught it and then commensed to ringing it's neck. I believe that was the best meal I had ever eaten. Now looking back that is probably why fried chicken is my favorite.
Mom had met this one lady that had some rent houses in town of Gideon and she let us rent one. We went to town. There we found many friends, but still we were poor, but that really matter to us at this point. My mom new if she could make it through what had transpired in the last few years what else could go wrong. I had a hard time still over my fathers loss, I remember at the age of eight, either lying on the bed or in the back yard leaning next to a tree just crying yelling out for my dad, dad where are you when are you coming back, why did you leave us, but I got the response I was looking for, but what I would get was probably better, my mom would come hug me, kiss me, tell me son it’s ok we will make. Daddy’s gone to a far better place. She told me, son the day right before your dad died he said he saw Jesus in a picture on the wall, but there was no picture on the wall. For some reason this always made me feel better.
Time went on and as I got older the less I thought about the death of my dad. But the more I thought about the woman that has kept me alive all this time. Was survival nothing short of it. Now she was trying to figure out how to keep my sister and me up with the other kids in school. She worked as a bartender afternoons and nights six days a week and during the days she cleaned houses. Us kids cried for her because we didn’t have any time with her. Now we understand that she had to do what she could to survive. But at the time it was very hard.
Now entering in junior high a time when kids were really hard on each other. They were really cruel, I guess she understood this before I said anything because that is when I think she had to suffer the most. She started buying me designer clothes and shoes, but for her, I can’t remember time she bought anything for herself, not one.
More than anything else she got down in the floor with us and played as if she were a kid herself. I guess, maybe, she missed out on her childhood. She had to take care of her little brothers and sisters, on top of that they moved around a lot not growing up with their parents because neither could support them.
Now my sister and I both graduated high school. My sister third in her class and me, I faired not so well but still about seventeenth. Now given that neither of her parents took care of her or her siblings, she still stood beside them both till their deaths. My grandpa the most. This is what really defines the kinda person she really is. For the last twelve years of my grandpas life my mother was over his finances and his well being. She would go to work every morning then after work goes to grandpas just to spend time with him and then back to work. All this was done on foot since she didn’t have a vehicle. The walk was about one and a quarter miles, everyday six days a week for twelve years from the age of thirty-eight to fifty.
How will I remember her if something were to happen. A vibrant woman standing by her loved ones. She would stand by at dinner time waiting for someone to need something.