What Doesn’t Kill You…

My mother is a unique example of someone who gains strength from every hardship and obstacle she faces. Hurdling each impasse with an awareness of her actions and the true fault of those that inflict or attempt to inflict emotional and physical pain on her. She is approximately 5 foot nothing but strikes a much larger shadow of determination and perseverance. Her childhood was a constant state of chaos. A father that scuttled the tiny family from one Texas trailer park to another and migrated from job to job after his turbulent Marine Corps service. He was an unsettled human and by extension so was his wife and daughter. On a seemingly routine day my mother, who was only six years old arrived home to an empty lot. Nothing but the tire track impressions of their mobile home remained in the dirt. As the school bus left and she turned around, only then did she see them waving from a park across the highway. She knew to expect the unexpected and accepted it. Making her space anywhere they would allow her to, whether she had an actual bedroom or just some form of refuge in the hallway of a bullet trailer. She was still capable of developing some nature of balance, investing time and energy in activities and people everywhere she resided, establishing some form of permanence the best she could. She began piano lessons and eagerly attended every practice for an upcoming recital. Her mother diligently and lovingly sewed a special dress from old flour sacks for her to wear to the event. Envisioning a night of accomplishment and focus on just her as any little girl would, her father abruptly decided to pack up the family again and moved them just prior to the recital date. This may seem minor in the scope of life’s tragedies, but it left an enduring imprint of how my mother would feel about her father. She excelled in school to the point of graduating early and soon after she married a man whose father also belonged to the same Masonic Temple as her father.  She was content with life finally and began living what she thought was her destiny. 

Blessed with soft baby blonde wavy hair similar of her father’s and gentle hazel eyes, she was a tenacious and self-sufficient wisp of a girl. The independence was sometimes buried by her desire to be connected to someone, anyone…which in turn would allow her to be mistreated at times. Most evenings as a young couple, they would go to clubs and meet friends. One night after they returned home from a local bar, an argument erupted and he began to berate her for drawing too much attention from the other men. Not trying to escalate things, she calmly unlocked the front door and entered the house. Without giving him the pleasure of her attention to the matter she walked over to the record player and turned on a CCR record as he continued to chastise her. When she returned to the door where he had remained standing his handgun was pointed directly at her. Frozen, unable to move or speak, the only sound was the ominous click of a misfire. With no hesitation he fired again and the excruciating searing sensation of the penetrating bullet ripped through her midsection. Instantly falling to the floor but still conscious, she begged him to help her. She placed her finger in the wound as the blood seeped out around it saturating her floral dress. 

Whatever his intentions were, she was still alive and desperately needed to get to a hospital. His first priority however was to persuade her to concoct a cover story for him. Ignoring his self-serving pleas for the time being she demanded he take her to the emergency room. Just a short ways down the road the tire went flat. Remaining calm as one could be in that scenario, she got out and tried to flag down another passing vehicle. Who in their right mind would stop for a hitchhiking, blood-covered woman at night in downtown Dallas? Astonishingly enough a gentleman did stop and as she entered the passenger side she realized he was traveling with his young daughter and her friend. Immediately aware of how traumatizing this might be for them, she tried to make casual conversation with the girls. All the while the singeing hot metal of the bullet was obliterating her insides. 

At the hospital the true devastation of his actions became vastly evident. The bullet had entered her abdomen, exploded, and shredded not just some of her internal organs, but her femoral arteries as well. It rested next to her spine. Barely missing completely severing the cord, so complete removal of the remainder of the bullet was not an option. Just prior to her entering surgery her husband had arrived and was promptly placed in a holding cell located in the basement. She told the responding officer that it was an accident and she had shot herself cleaning the handgun. This story allowed him to be released and she was then taken for her long operation. He promptly left the hospital showing little concern for his wife’s fragile state and returned to their house to retrieve the gun. He methodically dismantled it and dropped over a nearby bridge into a river. People argue passion, lapse in judgment, temporary insanity, all sorts of things to explain why husbands, wives, girlfriends or boyfriends commit violent acts towards their partners. However, this action proves there was method to his madness and he was very much in control of his faculties.

The surgeons were able to repair the damage and replaced her arteries. A wire binding was put in just beneath the surface of her abdominal wall to pull her back together and hold everything structurally back together. Neither her family nor his fully believed the explanation of events she was telling. Just being 19 years old and the time period she lived in made her choice for her. She continued to tell her parents, the doctors, and the authorities that she was cleaning his gun and it went off. His relief was her burden. Her father however could not allow there to be no punishment for his actions. He met with her father-in-law, another high degree Mason and simply said, “Are you going to do it or should I?” Her husband was in the midst of joining the Masonic temple and at their next meeting his own father blackballed him. Probably not the most satisfying judgement and punishment for many, but in their world it was fairly effective and far more legal than a vigilante killing that was her father’s preferred first choice. 

After three months she left the hospital but would return a short time later for another lengthy stay. She had become very ill; gangrene had set in and the emergency room doctor immediately recognized the danger. He had her bite down on a leather strap and sliced her side open right there. Stopping only to change gloves several times due to the immense heat of the gangrene melting them as he scooped it out of her. The physical scars from this would be extensive, but the emotional ones profoundly deeper sparked an eventual epiphany. 

Nevertheless she did return to him afterwards. The final provocation would come one evening at a dinner party. While still recovering and not yet able to fully mobile her, she requested his assistance to stand up from her sitting position on a sofa. He refused and told her she just wanted the attention. She preceded to do it the only way she could on her own, she slid off the edge of the seat dropping to her knees and then to her hands to crawl to a table and pull herself up. It was in that profoundly humiliating moment the realization had come that she may not ever feel completely secure with herself, but she did have some pride. She left him and filed for divorce. He was engaged again before it was finalized.

My mother would marry once more, this would be a very short rebound relationship. Leaving this husband in California just as he was set to deploy, she would then join the Navy herself a short time later. It was at her school near Memphis that she would meet my father. At the time he was a Staff Sergeant in the Marine Corps post Vietnam tours completing his B-Billet as an instructor. As the students entered his classroom he ordered my mother to remove her cover (hat). She confidently exclaimed, “Females do not have to remove their covers indoors,” with which he asked her to accompany him into the hallway to talk. It was at this point, my father asked my mother out for the first time. Within weeks, they were living together. Approximately five months later my mother found one of his standard notes on the wall, stating he was going to play softball. Although, this time there was an added notation, in the form of a marriage proposal, signed of course…”Joe DiMaggio”. Days later They went to the courthouse in their respective uniforms and stood in front of an inebriated judge along with two strangers pulled off the street for witnesses and recited their vows. This would begin the union that lasts to this day.

I never knew the shy girl that was an afterthought to her father and a target to her first husband. I only know a loving mother and grandmother with a fiercely driven and unapologetic fortitude, this formable woman that always has a voice. She is vulnerable but not because of someone, she is compassionate but not because she is weak. She is who I know, not what they tried to make her.