When & Where I Enter

This is when and where I enter. At the beginning he came to me first as a dream whispering quietly in my ear as though he had a lot to say but not a lot of time to say it. Delirious with sleep and confused about my whereabouts, I felt the warmth of his breath and I just listened. Listened and tried to understand what he so desperately wanted me to know. In this dream I was sitting in my old velvet chair in my favorite part of the house staring intently at the weeping willow tree I affectionately named Sunny when I was just six years old. I could tell he had been watching me for a while. I felt his presence long before he came to me. From across the kitchen he watched me as I looked out of the window. I was deep in thought as Sunny’s drooping branches whipped violently to the east as though they would snap from the increasing wind and rain. This weather always scared me because I hate storms. But Sunny made me feel safe.

I could feel him walk toward me. He walked quietly but with a sense of urgency with his bare feet softly striking the granite floor. I knew it was him by the rhythm of his gait. Light, quick steps. And I could smell him. That familiar smell of Marlboro cigarettes, clean clothes and some of the best smelling cheap cologne I ever smelled. I had mixed emotions just knowing he was in the room. He made me restless but comfortable at the same time as strange as that is to imagine. He rested his hand lightly on the side of my chair. I knew he had something to tell me. I turned slowly to look at him and the wind began to howl. Scooting to one side and patting the soft fabric on my well-worn chair, I invited him to sit beside me. I wasn’t sure exactly want he wanted but I might as well get this over with, I thought. He slid in beside me and smiled as he began to speak softly.

“You are at the beginning as though you are being born right here, right now,” he whispered hurriedly. “You can choose to spiral downward as I did, or you can choose to rise, fly, soar. The beauty is that the choice is yours and yours alone. You don’t need permission to make the choice. You just need to desire and the will. Now what are you going to do?” Suddenly the back of my head started to sting. Did he slap me upside the head in my dream? No, now I know I made that part up, adding a little extra drama to this already bizarre dream. I heard what he said, the question he posed, and felt his presence all around me. It was so comfortable to sit beside him again. I missed him. Everything about him, well, almost everything except the bad parts of course. I missed his laughter and his sarcastic wit. I missed his charm and his even his impulsiveness. I missed the way he called me his little lotus blossom and the way he would balance my little body on his feet and swing me high into the air as I yelled with glee as any little girl who had her dad’s heart and undivided attention would. I missed having him in my life until the day he went away. And I can still remember the eerie scene as though it were yesterday.

“Old man, get out of the way,” the shooter yelled at my grandfather as he aimed his 22-caliber pistol, ready to take my father out. My grandfather had a bewildered look on his handsome face as the man in the green 1978 Oldsmobile instructed him again to get out of the way so he could have a clear shot at the person he was obviously most angry with in this world. They were standing in my grandparents’ backyard talking and gathering tools from the garage to fix my father’s car when we were confronted by the man and the moment that would forever change our lives.

My grandmother, brother, cousin and I raced to the window when we heard the screech of tires followed by the yelling. Now my father was known to be loud at times when he playfully messed with a neighbor’s kid just for the hell of it or when he bossed his older sister, Carole, around. But when we heard the commotion from inside the house, we knew it wasn’t my father’s usual antics. We knew something was wrong. Very wrong. From different parts of the house we each raced to the window to see what was going on. That’s when we witnessed my grandfather duck as the man in the Oldsmobile recklessly fired shot after shot, attempting to hit my father.

Granddad didn’t even have time to run when the man started flailing the gun and shooting wildly first hitting the side of the house, the garage, the large oak tree just outside the gate and finally hitting my dad right in the abdomen. My dad, with a look of sheer panic, ducked and tried to run as my grandfather hit the ground for cover. As fate would have it he couldn’t escape the wrath―or the bullet―of the man who wanted him dead. My father lay dying on the sidewalk in the backyard of the house he grew up in as the man in the green Oldsmobile threw the gun in the backseat, shoved the gear in reverse and sped backwards down Carpenter Street. We watched my grandfather who lay on the ground thankfully unharmed scream for help. My grandmother’s hand shook while she frantically called the police. For a few moment I sat there in disbelief. I didn’t know whether to try to force my fear-stricken 13-year-old legs to run down the back steps of the house as fast as they would carry me so I could try to help my dad or if I should wait by my grandmother’s side so she could tell me, all of us really, what to do next. For these moments we were all completely paralyzed with fear. Then something told me to walk to the front of the house. I didn’t walk, however, I ran. To the window to see the man who shot my father. He was sitting on our neighbor’s front porch looking straight ahead, just waiting. That’s when I realized the man who shot my father wasn’t some stranger and this wasn’t some random criminal act. The man who sat on the steps while my father lay dying was my grandparents’ neighbor, Ron Silas. I watched him with disbelief. My young mind couldn’t reason this one away.

This was the day my dad’s life slipped through our fingers like grains of sand. The way it played out was unbelievable to us all—a small, close knit family from the South side of Chicago who never had a run in with a wayward killer or the law. We all suffered through this incredible loss and I felt especially sorry for my grandparents who should have never been faced with burying their 39-year-old son. I felt sorry for my older brother and for myself too. We never got to say goodbye our father and not having him in our lives affected us both tremendously and the cracks would eventually show as the years passed.

“Why?” I asked my self over and over again when the paramedics came to take my dad to the hospital where he fought for his life, when I was told my father died at the hospital and several days later at his very sad funeral. “Why did he leave me like this and what was I to do without him?” Throughout that sad summer during my most private moments, I wallowed in self-pity and fell apart alone in his apartment, holding a shirt that still smelled like him. Around others, however, I tried to be strong. Laughing, playing with my friends, talking on the phone as young teenage girls do. But my conversation was different. My interests were different and slowly it began to show. Indeed the beginning of my downward spiral.

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