There’s no one left to call anymore

about these scars left over from childhood.

Raised in poverty, neglect, and abandonment,

the future looked bleak from where I stood.

One year and a month it took for my family to die.

No pause in between for a breath.

Every day I cried and six months more

while wiping away tears from so much death.

My middle sister died first and no one really knows why.

Was it a blood clot or heart attack? Or both?

I will never know now.

This is as bad as it gets and I thought nothing could be worse.

I was wrong.

It just hadn’t happened yet.

Her life was full of trauma,

fueled by booze, drugs, and marijuana.

She hoped it would ease her pain,

but it only added to the drama that her life contained.

Shawn was her name.

One day she called to say she’d been clean,

‘For a month now and a couple of weeks,’

but, it was hard believing that knowing from where she’s been.

She became my ‘rock star’ that day

and I told her how proud I was of her all of the time.

Nine months later, she was found dead in her bed

by her daughter April, on the 11th of July.

Shawn was 53 years old; five years younger than I.

I kept wondering why her and not me?

I’ve already lived more lifetimes than most.

I would’ve traded places easily,

so she could finally live life without dope.

It took the rest of that summer, fall and winter too

trying to find a ‘new normal’ that I could settle into.

The following spring I began to smile again

when one bright, sunny March morning my cell phone kept ringing.

I answered; it was my sister-in-law Pam,

asking if I’d spoke to my mother lately

and “Oh yeah, did you hear about Stacey?”

I replied, “No, I haven’t talked to either in days,”

and felt my stomach drop to my knees.

What she said next is still hard to believe.

No one had heard from Stacey for a few days, a week, maybe more,

but the morning our mother was scheduled for surgery

and a risk she might not make it back home,

there was one thing left she must do first that no longer could be ignored.

She called the police to do a welfare check

and they found Stacey on the hallway floor.

She’d lain there for a week like that,

unable to get up or walk anymore.

Her husband left food and water on the floor for her

before going to work every day.

When I asked him, “Did you think she’d get better like that?”

He had nothing to say.

And about how I thought he was treating her?

Like she was his dog or some kind of stray?

Wounds formed on her left side from not being turned

while stage four leukemia gained momentum inside her

like a tidal wave churning.

A few things to know about Stacey are

she was born developmentally disabled.

That’s what the ‘experts’ said and how she was labeled.

She could read, write, and spoke intelligently,

In fact, she was just like you or me.

Her only shortcomings I discerned was her beautiful naivete’.

She’d trust anyone at face value and believed what they say.

I’d offer my insights to keep her from being led astray.

But her kindness, mistaken for weakness made it easy

for others to victimize her this way.

When I’d bring it to her attention

with her lopsided grin she’d say,

“Oh Cyn! There’s nothing to worry about. Everything’s okay.”

But it wasn’t.

She took up her husband’s distrust of Western medicine

and now I visit her grave.

I searched for a cure hoping to save her life,

but God had plans of his own.

I cursed Him, I screamed and even tried bargaining.

I’ve never felt so alone.

Again, I looked to the heavens and cried,

“Dear Lord! If you hear me, please save her!”

Intrinsically knowing it’s just a matter of time.

I was summoned home from hospice on the 12th of July,

the death rattle had settled in.

I hated to leave, but her husband was there

until the very end.

A few minutes past midnight that night

I, in the bathroom washing my face,

Angry, weary, broken, resigned praying for Peace

as her life nears the end,

while crying and pleading,

“Dear Lord! Give her wings to fly from this place of pain!”

He heard me; I KNOW this because that’s what he did.

And the beautiful misery of what happened next

I can never erase.

My head started spinning so fast and hard

I had to grab the sink for a brace,

to avoid falling backward and hitting the floor,

I sat down in my chair just in case.

Startled by the sound when my cell phone rang,

the time was 12:04.

It was the hospice nurse calling to say Stacey had passed.

The pain she’d endured was no more.

And that spinning I felt so hard in my head?

Well, that’s never happened before.

I believe Stacey’s soul passed through me to say,

“I’m not gone. I’m just not here anymore.”

She died at 12:03 in the morning

on the 13th of July

One year and one month after Shawn had passed

She was 10 years younger than I.

Regarding our mother, I simply don’t know where to begin.

To shed light on such darkness where nobody wins.

Her lifestyle and choices wreaked havoc within

all of her children; gifts from God she’d been given.

But we were her burdens, her baggage, her wages from sin.

Most of her wicked she inflicted upon me,

unwanted; born from rape I am told.

For decades I tried to get her to see

the person I was becoming and wanted to be,

but she could care less.

I would always be the child she loathed.

I finally grew up, then gave up

when heard a voice in my head say,

“You can’t expect something from someone

who’s incapable of giving.”

She never returned home from her operation that day,

unable to care for herself on her own.

Pam took her out of the facility she hated so much

and put her in a hospice home.

One month and four days after Stacey passed,

Mom died in her sleep all alone.

I’ve cried a river of tears for my sisters.

For my mother, not even one.

Those tears were shed so long ago

for the mother she’d never become.

I don’t know where all of this will take me

while I try to make sense of it all.

These childhood issues will still come up

Now there’s no one left to call.