From a Note to a Novel

Falling into Place My children are fruit of my labor. Everything I do, they see. Everything I say, they hear. And anything they become is a direct result of the teachings they receive. Ordinary people do extraordinary things every day. But usually, there is no media attention to those people, and the things they do go unnoticed. My life is an adventure, and I treat it as such. No day is the same, and I like it that way. I need spontaneity. I like figuring out what to do, whom to see, and where to go next. To some, it might sound frustrating and complicated, but to me, it spells ADVENTURE! When Marcus passed away, time stopped. All the plans we made stopped. All the places we would go stopped. All the things we would do stopped. IT WASN’T FAIR! Nobody asked me anything about anything concerning Marcus never coming home again! I was just left with the result of a decision. God, didn’t you know how much I needed this man?! Didn’t you know how much my children needed their father?! How were we to survive?! Who was going to take care of us?! Why! Why! Why! Immediately following the news of Marcus’s demise, family and friends made their way over. My house was flooded with mourners, well-wishers, deceptive personalities, information seekers, and people just wanting to know or see how the kids and I would handle and manage the loss of our loved one. It wasn’t at all a good day. In fact, it was quite disheartening to finally see how much certain family members loathed me. This was the time I needed them the most to stand with me and hold my hand. Some of my in-laws began removing items from my house without a thought or care for how I would feel about it. There was a time I thought I would have to get totally out of character to be understood. The coroner brought over Marcus’s personal effects in a big manila envelope. It seemed cruel that the bounty of his beautiful presence was reduced to a few almost insignificant items in the bottom of a manila envelope. I instructed my sister to put those items in the drawer of my nightstand for safekeeping. Inside the envelope was his Citadel ring, his wallet housing his checkbook and credit cards, and his belt. Marcus was a buyer at a manufacturing plant, and the limit on his work credit card was in the millions. It was all I had left, and I wasn’t in the frame of mind to concentrate on what little the items seemed to be in that moment. Amid all the chaos of people rummaging through all the drawers in the house, looking for God knows what, I began to remember the things Marcus shared with me concerning a certain someone feeling like I was trying to trap him into marriage, how he shouldn’t marry a woman who already had a child, how he could do so much better with the girl they loved who attended their church years before. By the way, they were acting as if it opened Pandora’s box, and every spiteful situation I was ever the butt of came rushing to the forefront. In fact, two weeks before his death, Mare masterminded a plan to have an old girlfriend call our house looking to speak with him. I felt totally disrespected. She gave no thought to what she might be doing to hurt me. From the start of our relationship, she remained disrespectful. I wouldn’t have minded Marcus catching up on the phone with his old loves—HE WAS MY HUSBAND, and I was secure in my ability to please my man. It was just the way she went about it. She was notorious about calling Marcus, asking for money and hoping it would be a transaction made without my knowledge. Hello! Mare handled the money in her household. Nobody but nobody was ever going to pull anything from their finances without her knowledge and consent. I required the same respect from her. She always tried to use “That’s my brother, and I can ask him for anything!” My response was always “You can ask, but we’ll both give you an answer.” She always thought her position in his life was far greater than mine as his wife. I wondered how women with husbands can feel that way. My resolve was everyone will get a turn at the wheel. We were experiencing my time and I was determined to go through the turbulence of that time as a good soldier. That part would have been fine by itself, but my time was fused with having to look over my shoulders for every move I made because, friend, I had an enemy in the camp. And that enemy was trying very hard to take me out. He died early Palm Sunday morning. By Tuesday, friends and family were being received at the grandmother’s house where he grew up, as if that was now my husband’s home. Here I was, experiencing the biggest heartache of my life, needing so much support from these people, when all I got was a turned head and blatant disrespect. Mare even brought an old girlfriend of his to my house and gave her a tour of the house and how we were living—how crazy was that? It gets better . . . On the afternoon of his death, at the beginning of making funeral arrangements, I asked the funeral director if I could see him one more time before they did anything to him, and he granted my request. After I made my request known, everyone else wanted to do the same thing. I wanted to look into the face of my loved one once more and try, if I could, to imagine by the looks of him what he had gone through in his final moments. As you might guess, it was a sorrowful event.