Holiday season evokes emotions in everyone, especially those who have lost loved ones or experienced hardships during this time of the year. This hits home for me in more ways than one. I will break down the holiday months according to all that has happened throughout my life.
They say "tragedies" or "occurrences" happen in 3s. If I start with the month of November, we can go back to the year 2006, a year after Hurricane Katrina left her destruction in southeastern Louisiana.
November 27th: my grandfather's birthday. My family lost our home to the storm through the ceilings caving in with the loss of our home's roof. It was a slow decline, but I watched my mom become more and more depressed day after day when we realized the house was unlivable. She stayed home mostly and health kept getting worse and worse. She was a lot like me, putting everyone else before herself, which inevitably was her downfall. It was the Monday after Thanksgiving week, and her and I drove to get my sister from school. My mother was visibly upset by how her body had changed, and her weight was causing her other problems, that she finally talked about with me. We safely got back home and she was walking back to the trailer in our backyard, when she fell. She was very heavy and her knees gave out, causing her to get stuck between the trailer and the fence (less than 2 feet). My dad came to help her but she wanted to get herself up on her own because she was in pain. He cursed her out and left her on the trailer steps then went back to decorating the house for Christmas. I stood on the trailer steps with her the rest of the afternoon until about 7 p.m. She would not let me call the cops, until it was too late. She tried to pull herself up using the fence, but, sadly, I think that stress aided in puncturing the blood clot we did not know she had in her lungs. She passed away that night. After an autopsy was done, we found out she had heart disease and a pulmonary embolism which is what had made her breathing funny in the end. I still blame myself to this day for not getting her help sooner, since I saw warning signs but, I cannot change the past. I miss her more and more each day, even if it has been 15 years now.
November 14th: one of the coldest nights that the city ever had. My home situation at the time was not the best, living in a gutted house since Hurricane Katrina. There was no central heat or air conditioning, but we had a space heater. I got way too cold and turned the space heater up which was too powerful for the power strip that sat on my clothing unit in the living room. It arched the wire and caught my clothes on fire. We had no idea it was an electrical fire, so my dad said to go get water. As soon as I threw water on the fire, my whole clothing unit was engulfed. With having no walls or ceilings, the fire took to the oxygen and the house was fully in flames in less than 10 minutes. We barely made it out and lost 4 of our 5 pets, the oldest dog running to me, so I could get her out. There were some odd events that happened within those 5 to 10 minutes, but that may be up for discussion at a later time. The 14th of November now aligns with other emotional memories, including my younger cousin's wedding anniversary, which they changed to a year later on the same date in 2015. They had no idea the fire was going to happen, so that was coincidental. The 14th was also the birthday of his younger sister, who recently lost her fight with covid at the age of 16. It was hard to hear that and unbelievable. We had lost contact with my mom's side of the family after my grandmother passed away because she was our last "connection" to the foundation of that part of the family. Lives went as they did and this tragedy brought us back in contact with some of my mom's relatives. It is sad it took all that for it to happen, however, I hope to keep communication open with them more from now on.
It was difficult to write this, but I wanted to start the process of voicing things I have been through to help myself move forward from things that have shaped the person I am. There is a lot associated with the above tragic events, which will be shared soon. If you want to comment or ask questions, just respond to the post. I will reply to all and yes this makes me feel very vulnerable, however, I want to be transparent with everything going on and how I am handling my day to day struggles as my mind continuously tries to process all that my life has included. I am not looking for sympathy but just understanding with the hope that me sharing my experiences helps others to open up about things they have also gone through.
