The Whole World Grieved At The Same Time I Grieved For My Mother... I Grieved With The Whole World
By Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee
September 09, 2001... My mother died that Saturday evening.
September 10, 2001... My mama was dead, I wasn't coping well with it ... I was in a deep shock. Pure, raw grief..... I thought of McKenzie never getting to know her... my mom only saw her once... McKenzie, my first grandchild, my only granddaughter was born September 05, 2000.
September 11, 2001... Skip, Tommy, and I were getting ready to go to the funeral home to pick my mother's ashes up... something on tv reached through to me catching my attention.... as the first plane crashed into the twin tower....
I stood there as another layer of shock covered me. I wasn't believing what I was seeing... when... the second plane crashed into the second twin tower.... the third layer of shock covered me..... I was walking in 'another world'.... how I walked in this one... I don't remember, I wasn't aware of how I did it.
I cried so many tears for thousands of people who burned up, jumped from those towers, killed by the planes, trapped in the towers and all the unknown horrors they all met up with..... and I cried for the death of one more person I knew personally, loved with my heart.... my mama who had just died.
My mother had just died... and there was terrorist attack on the soil of the United States of America... something we 'knew couldn't happen'.
Shock after shock.... every September since September 09, 2001... I go through all I write about today... I will share it with you below...............
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Skip and I were shopping at Sam's Club in Raleigh. We were walking around, each looking in our favorite sections to see what was new, then... joining back up together to shop.
I was looking at a beautiful cream, cobalt blue ceramic vase ... the design was cobalt blue flowers on a cream-colored background. I traced my fingers around the flowers... they were 3-dimensional. It stood about 12 inches or more... high.
It held one of our favorite things to have with hot coffee.... biscotti biscuits! I stood there looking at it .... the thought came into my mind... this looks alot like a ... urn. The colors made me want it, regardless. Of course, the inside contents 'really made me want to buy it'....
I picked it up, secured it in my shopping cart. This was going home with me, I couldn't part with it. Though... for some reason, the thought... 'it looks like an urn'... kept going through my mind. Strange... this thought has always come back to me through the years. Maybe it was... a sign of things to come... who knows?
Skip and I met up, I could see he'd picked a 'sweet' to take home. It was a big 'Triple Chocolate Fudge Cake' (I can still see the label in my mind). Not only that... he had one for our neighbors, Bill and Earline... at that time (before our home burned down). We always bought special things for them, we cared about them alot. They loved us... it meant alot to us.
Skip looked in my cart, asked me what did I have? Oh.. he was tickled that inside that big 'vase' was... Biscotti Biscuits! We were looking forward to having coffee right away!
We went home, I saw the red light flashing on the telephone indicating a message. I walked over to press that button...
Pressing that button opened up the most awful sound in this world... it wasn't of this world. It was a high-pitched keening sound of another world... of another world. I'll never forget it to the day I die. At this very moment... I am 'feeling' the grief, pain in my heart just writing these words.
The words that came from that awful, long-drawn out keening were: 'please-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee help-pppppppppppppppppp me-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, Faye-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee................................' I can't bear to think about this any further for now.
One day when I'm 'strong enough'... to be able to write more on this... I will share my thoughts with you. For now... strange sensations are in my heart... it doesn't feel good at all... and it's been 11 years... it does something to me inside when I try to remember .... I know there's more but... for now... every September... I go through this.
I haven't been able to go back to listen to the cassette, again. I have hidden it from... myself. It may be in her Rose Chest... I can't even look in there. I can't even look in Rick-Rick's Chest... I can't even look in... Tommy's Chest. Oh my God, the pain............
I can't bear to play the tiny cassette in the cassette player.... that survived a house fire.... that I ... still have. No one else ever wanted to hear it... they weren't strong enough.. or.... no one heard me when I told them I had it. Skip, Tommy and I listened to it.
Skip made me put it up... he came home one day to find me distraught, 'completely all to pieces'....... I had the cassette tape player beside me... I'd been playing it over and over 'trying to hear more in the background, trying to know what happened'. I don't remember how long I'd sat there in that state of mind...... I am crying ... now.
I feel I know what happened... the dots connected themselves as I watched, listened beginning not even three days after my mom's death. I saw 'purple in her husband's side of the closet'... I 'knew'.... as time went on that some of the things that'd been told to me prior to her death... were true. My mom said 'strange things'. I won't write about this now... it doesn't help a thing here... it's not 'time for that, now'.
But.... one thing for sure... I 'will write about it'... in a story probably with fictional characters... only the very shrewd people closest to me will 'recognize' the characters.... maybe the characters will... recognize themselves.
Who knows? I know that when we chance to meet with one of them named ______, while out shopping.... she won't look us in the face, only mumble to us with her eyes casted to the ground... sounding so hateful.
We treat her.... kindly.... never like sometimes I feel I want to treat her. The strange thing is... I have compassion for her, I don't won't to treat her bad.... am I absolutely... crazy? I feel sorry for her ... I feel she's punished herself all these years 'for all those years deceiving my mother, ruining her last days, 'causing' her death'..... I can 'see' that life has still been unkind to her.
Who am I to say... she deserved them... and more? I'm not a judge. I can say this.... I am a real person with real feelings... sometimes, even feeling as I do... I feel such anger.....
The story will.. be told ..one way or other. You were very bad people, especially you, _______... I would hate to have on my conscience that I hurt, destroyed, caused your mother's death because of 'my creature comfort needs'....... needs that were so selfish, nasty, shameful.
I have so much to write... until the day I die. I haven't begun writing yet. I haven't been able to get much further past the grief of my only child, my son ...Tommy's death. My life has been filled with a constant grief, pain... that's been the 'one consistent' thing in my whole life.... I can write about grief, pain... I know it ..only too well.
This is another story for one day.... strangely enough ...I'm not wanting to hurt anyone ... who hurt my mother in the deepest ways.
I'm not wanting to cause grief, pain to anyone else... though they truly deserve it. I said that... Those people are all broken in life... they aren't strong enough for any extra 'bad' things to happen to them. No, I honestly don't even... wish for bad things to happen to them. This comes from my heart. I can feel the anger, but... I can't feel the desire for...revenge, nor wishing 'bad' things to ____, or anyone else.
Do you know that there are 'crimes' that aren't considered crimes unless proven... crimes that go unpunished.... yet, words can't just prove them... one has to have evidence? People commit crimes every day when they mistreat others... yet, who can do anything about them? Who is going to run and tell? If they did... nothing will protect them when they are weak, sick, defenseless.
My mother's death is an example... because my mother ... took drugs, too. She hid it from me, but... I knew, but... didn't want to... know. She once hid smoking from me.... everyone else 'knew her life'... I didn't. I was the... different one. I would have been truly loved if I had done alot of the things I'm writing about at the moment.
I just couldn't... I just couldn't do them. I couldn't 'sell myself out'... just to have things, all my needs met. I'm hated because I really tried to be good. In my much younger life, I could have continued roads to being a very 'bad' person... I didn't choose to travel on those roads, to stay around people who were influencing me. I could have had everything I wanted in life... but, I look back and think.... 'yes, I could have... but, at what price?'
I'm not wanting to 'point fingers' to the very one who ... in her way 'caused my mother's death'. I have wondered if her fat belly from all that food, her drug/cigarette habit, her mean mouth..... has been satisfied. She can't get anymore free money, food, shelter... now. She helped my mother along her way... to 'get out of the way'. You know the saying.... 'only the strong survive'. Even if they are 'weak-strong'.... the 'stronger one' survives.
I forgave you long ago, _____. I used to love you, before.... I knew. You weren't the only one... yet, when they all came to live there... you were 'one of them, you all were .... friends'.... amazing... you all were sleeping with the same man, eating his food, living in his house, spending his money supporting your drug habits, getting a new outfit from time to time.... sometimes ... they were ... purple.
It got you all 'down the road to ..now'... from September 09, 2001 until this year... 2012. My, my... how you all were 'carried until now'.... 'who' picks your load up now? Who will carry 'you' ... now?
Not just one person, but... several. Their motives being to get money to survive, to buy drugs, to buy gas, food.... they 'sold their bodies for it all'... before, after my mom's death.
Anyway... this story may be written during a cold, snowy day when I feel warm, strong enough inside to be able to do it. I may consider putting the 'sound of that cassette tape' here, also. I will need help from Ms Nancy, or someone who knows how to do it.
The voice ... my mother, my mama. My mother was begging me to please help her..... that's when she was ............. dying. That sound on our answering machine was ....... by what we were told........ 'after'... she died.
This is what the month of September means to me.... since year 2001. Also, my Grandma Alma died in the month of.... September... she was my mama, too. September is a month of 'pure grief'............ though... I see something else.... it's the month......
That...... I know means 'Fall Time'.... my most favorite time of the year! To some, it may signify dying.... to me, it means 'life'. It means happy, warm colors, possibly a wonderful surprise around the corner, cosy times wrapping up in a jacket, snuggling under warm blankets, riding with the cool air on one's (my :))) face.... happy times.
September ..... I'm so thankful to be this far in the future from 'then'. The strange thing is that .... it still affects me so much 'now'. I'm going to find the little cassette with my mama's voice on it.... at this moment I had to take several breaths thinking about it.... I may or may not play it. I 'just need to know where I hid it at from myself '.
Isn't it strange? I can't look in Tommy's Chest... I can't look in my mother's Rose Chest... I can't look in Rick-Rick's Chest... each holds their ashes, photos, and I ...... can't remember what else... I couldn't ever look in them again... to see. One day I will.... I will share with you 'then'... I'm so glad you all are here.
Tommy's Chest doesn't have his ashes.... Taban's mother has them.... it does have some of his things... and there's a little plastic box in there.... it makes me cry now.... there's 'that'....... little plastic box in there................
September 2001..... until 'now'....... this is what September means to me each year. It was a tragic time not only for me... but, for thousands who died... and for the whole world who grieved at .... the same time I grieved for my mother, my mama, my mom. I, also, grieved with .... the whole world.
