Remembrance

I love my family, my daughter, life, God, and much more. My name is Roger I graduated with a bachelors of science last december. I have walked a unique path just as everyone we'll ever meet has. It is simply my wish that the people I meet through out my life will know me by the content of my character, and that in their eyes I will be measureed by the things I've done. Below is the first half of the beginning of the story of my life.I used to never show this part of me to anyone, but that has all changed recently. This is my life story.When I was young, life was everywhere. The people I met, the animals that I kept for friends, and even the house I lived in, they all seemed to carry some abbreviation to life. Picture in your mind the ying-yang symbol. It was like I was blindly walking through the white portion of this symbol. Waltzing my way home, and waking up every day just to go out and make part of the world mine. Then I bumped into the little black dot. I looked over my shoulder to see the other darker half of this symbol rising up like it had been there watching me the whole time, waiting for the right time to expose itself. It was always animated out there in the beautiful country. Well, at least at my house. My mother's dream was to be somewhat of a shepard. She adopted what is now a total of twelve children. Quit the herd, huh? We have had a quite a range of different children from different states, with their own different backgrounds and different medical problems as well. The first set of twins we received came from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. These fraternal twins were delivered as if someone left a beautiful gift on our doorstep, rang the doorbell and ran. As a young child, that is how I perceived it. The social worker had a strange stork-like quality to her, maybe it was the way she dropped the kids off, got a few signatures, then hopped into her car and drove off as if it wasn't part of her job to look back. The children were overly intriguing to me being only five at the time, even though I couldn't hold them due to their medical nature. The mom of these wonderful twins was using heavily during the pregnancy, and the babies were born three months premature. They weighed 13 ounces each. We still have the picture of the E.R. doctor holding both of these children in the palms of his hands. Their arms curled up into their tiny bellies, and their silhouettes not even extending the outline of the hands of the man that just guided them into life. The next children to become part of this of this humbling vision were a set of identical twins from Chicago. Formerly Lakesha and Laquisha, now Kesha and Cathy. They joined us two years later, and life just worked it out that they were two years of age when we got them. Can anybody say: four toddlers to try and contain. Well, it wasn't as it sounds. Kesha and Cathy were also succumbed to their biological mother's drug use. They were both born with severe down syndrome and cerebral palsy. Cathy was left with only mild retardation, while Kesha's half of the genes absorbed most of the toxins that got pumped into them. Leaving her restrained to a wheel chair for the remainder of her lifetime. Never to play, only to watch. Cathy also carried her own set of problems, mostly psycological. You see they were put in separate foster homes when they weren't even a year old. Kesha remained in a firm atmosphere, due to her medical dependencies. Meanwhile Cathy got mindlessly sent to a home that inspired and embedded not the emotion of love, but the feeling of an empty vase with wilted flowers of regret. Tragically placing her structure points of emotion on a foundation of fear. No child should ever have to endure the trauma her young brain faced. Being abused by her foster father she had developed an irrational fear of anything remotely resembling a male figure. She would so much as throw herself down the stairs in an uncontrollable tantrum of anger, whenever my father or I walked by or even tried to make contact. And then it happened. We adopted this two-year-old boy from Texas, and life (unknown to me at the time) was about to change. Man, he had a smile that would melt a Roman army into a pile of winterless happy goo. His name was Zachary, and he was a shaken baby. Although, I didn't understand what that meant at first. I guess his mother got angry at him crying when he was but a few months, and shook him until he stopped. Leaving him paralyzed and with severe brain damage. But he was still alive, and still able to feel and hold an awareness of what was going on around him. He could hear your voice from down the hall, and it would ignite this deep bellow of a laugh he had. I can still remember when I was about nine or so, we would sit around and I would play with him, although he couldn't really play back, we kind of met half way. It worked out really well for me, being a child still under double-digits. I could gather my favorite G.I. Joes and play with a kid who didn't care about sharing, or even what I was playing with. Just as long as he could be there when I did it. When I got home from school we would watch his favorite movies, Barney, and anything with Disney in it. He would let out his extraordinary laugh, and I would feed off of it like a clown catching a spark of joy in a child's eyes in the crowd he was trying to entertain. I would chant his name. Zachary, Zachary. With each time I tried to pull that laughter out of him as if it were the only real thing he had, his breath grew shorter and shorter until we had to hook him back up to his respirator. But he was happy. Then I started to grow older, and my friends was where my attention to life was getting placed. It was almost as if it were being consumed like a quarter in a casino on some grand opening. My home life felt to me as if it had already been explored. So it was natural for me to want to go out into the world I knew nothing about. A couple of years went by. I had moved out of the house and then moved back into the detached garage, just twenty feet from the house or so. At fifteen years old, I now felt as if I had everything I could ask for. A section of house to call my own, more friends than I knew what to do with, and even the Olympic size pool with underwater neon lights to put those friends in. It was great. Every day was a new party to me with new possibilities to explore. I was a bit wilder than your normal teenage party goers. In the summertime we made sure to get to our usual liquor store by 10:30 am. As soon as we had our juice we could begin to plan one of our never-ending days, that when looked back upon now they seem to only have lasted for a moment. My friend Joe Broady, myself, and a couple of girls that were staying with us for the weekend were coming back from one of our predictably early morning beer runs. As we were coming up our driveway, from a hundred yards away, I could see my sister standing there outside my garage. She was standing with her hands behind her back with a posture that oddly stated there was something she was waiting for. She stood there frozen like a still-life drawing waiting for us to drive up our quarter-mile long driveway. As we approached, I could see her still standing there with a silhouette that was almost as haunting as the feeling I got when she turned her head and walked over to the little black Nissan we were driving. "Roger, Zachary died," my sister uttered insecurely. Almost as if she were afraid of my reply. "How's mom?" I asked, not really sure if I wanted the answer. "She is O.K.," said my sister with even more restraint in her voice. It seemed to me that my mother had told my sister that everything was fine, and my sister just didn't feel like she wanted to question that. As I walked through this house which held so many memories of the way we used to play, I walked into the bedroom, and there lay this hollowed out little boy on the medical bed in which he had spent most of his life. The feeling I got was nothing of what I had pictured over and again in my mind. In my memory, it still feels as if I was crawling at eye level when I was approaching the bed. The same bed that I had been walking past for the last couple of years, and not even stopping long enough for him to hear my voice. "So fragile and seemingly undisturbed this broken child seemed to me." I thought as I wave my hand in slow-motion over this child's body, "how hard he actually fought, and how much pain this young boy had endured throughout his short stay." Then my hand slowly moves up over his heart gradually coming to an infinite stop directly over his eyes. "No more pain," was the only thing I could get out of me to say. I turned "hey Mom how was Zachary's last day?" My mom looked at me with a frightened release in her eyes and said, "our little boy is in heaven now," and then she looked down to the floor with rays of emotion pouring from her eyes, and then she whispered to everyone "May he now run with the angels, and in our memories for the rest of time."I walked back out to my garage, and to what I previously thought was everything I could ask for. Broady, who was a long-time friend, cracked me open a beer and set it down right in front of me, and walked away. I just stared at it for a while. Floating through the old memories, and lost in the possibilities to all the things I could've, should've, and would've done differently if given the chance, like most people do when they lose something unexpectedly. A couple hours passed. The beer that had been right in my line of vision the whole time I was lost in thought, it was now warm and carrying a sense of insignificance. I stood up, walked over to the window, and said to myself "things aren't ever going to be the same, and never were. I let a part of myself die that summer, but only because life showed me how to live. I remained gazing out my window that night into my first glimpse of what life really means. It started raining about 2:00 that morning. As I peered out that window I could only think to myself, "Not only do I see, but I can also feel the rain"Time is one of those things that can usually cure anything that this life has to throw at you. But sometimes that time only gives support to the deeper views of sadness youve grown accustomed to. Life became a drifter, and I was to search for meaning. Many more children were on the way into our lives, and I for one sure had a new outlook to the way I wanted to be noticed. I wanted not to be noticed, but to notice the things Ive helped to change and inspire in others. That was how I could feel deep inside that I was noticed. There was two children that joined us before Zach died, but I never established my connections as a brother, or whatever else I could be to them. I felt it was time for me to acknowledge the real things that held meaning in my life. I looked around my house and there was a handful of children that needed nothing but the reassurance that they belonged. Latisha was a little girl that was only expected to live a year or two. She was diagnosed HIV positive at birth. But the tests are never 100% accurate, not until the child is at least 18 months old. Around that age she was tested again, and the tests came back negative. It is a really strange experience; the way you thought somebody was going to die. Then somehow by nothing more than what Im convinced is pure luck, they manage to come out perfectly fine in the end. Never really knowing how close they really were. Yet they grow up just as any child. But I remember the uncertainty, and the seemingly see-through hope we were putting into the awaited results of that test. But oddly the part that sticks out in my memory the most, is the way we had already accepted the soon-coming death of this child, and the way it never came. And the other child that was hanging around while the world was spinning fast for me, was a little boy named Marcus. He came to us from Chicago, Illinois. The main reason I hadnt grown to this little guy for his first couple years, was that there were medical dependencies raining down all over this poor boy. When my mother went to pick him up at the hospital in Chicago, he was ordered by the doctor to receive 2 liters of oxygen due to being born extremely premature. Well the doctors mustve had a lunch appointment they were late for, because he left the hospital with only a liter of oxygen. The nurses even reassured my mother that everything was in order. By the time they got back to our house, this little African American boy was as blue as a smurf; he arrested half an hour later, and had to be rushed to the hospital. Barely making it there alive, he suffered minor brain damage, and severe lung trauma, which led to him getting a tracheotomy.( the operation where they insert a tube into your throat to hold open your air-ways, and help you breathe). It was absolutely necessary to get this trach, because his lungs couldnt hold themselves open. They would collapse at the turn of a cheek. Yet again. The little guy never quite understood how close he was to falling prey to someones mistake at work. But after a few years when he was about four or five he was able to get his trach out. He was a bit behind the kids at his age, so we had a lot of catching up to do. It was weird watching him go from 24-hour nursing to having his own bed in the room with the boys. Just like Pinocchio, he finally became a real boy. He was finally free. Free from the respirators that held him back, and the confinement of his crib. It was time for him to breathe all on his own. A gift given to these children; a tremendous head start into the world of understanding. Our home life had so many odd quirks, and so many different angles to perceive life. Think about it. With having Zachary as a brother, they were able to not only experience the cycle of life, but they were also so close to it that their understanding of lifes tribulations came naturally in their home environment. Death is one of those touchy or uncomfortable subjects that people most often try and avoid. Many people shelter their experience in life by avoiding these undesirable situations. Ive even noticed many parents that try and keep the realities of this second half of lifes cycle from their children, as if they were protecting them somehow. But honestly, I feel that to give proper respect to the gift of life, we must accept all sides of life as valid pieces to our puzzle of understanding. Death is just as important and beautiful as birth, when played in the great symphony of life. They couldnt be complete without each other. Ive had a good few people look at me odd (but in a good way) when my opinion about death gets brought to surface. It is if at first they dont believe me when I say that; to me death isnt something to be feared. It deserves our utmost respect. Death is like the climax, to the symphony of the most beautiful orchestra to ever compliment the great gift of life. I am very thankful for the life I live, and I want nothing more than to live a long endured life, but I can not deny what waits for me at the end of lifes off-ramp. I hope when my time comes that I will be able to accept the gift that Christ died for, without feeling as if I didnt earn it. When I approach the lord I want to be able to say I did the best I could, and nothing less.You know sometimes, there is what appears to be an abrupt personal re-analyzation of the flow of life. Almost as if part of life were taken before its time, and leaves you questioning life. I think this is lifes way of bringing you down to ground level, and asking you to admit that you know nothing all over again.My mother always wanted an even dozen, that is to be the number of little Christians that she was to send off into the world. Maybe it was the number twelve that gave her that sense of completion, the feeling that she had a full carton. Or perhaps the giving of love is in the essence of who she is. A compassionate mother whos job isnt just to care for her own, but also to care for all those without.The next addition to our family, was a little girl who we named Arianna Mark Sievers. She was handed to us all the way from Atlanta Georgia. She traveled quite a ways for a new born so that she could come join our family. Ari was also born H.I.V. positive. You see her father had contracted the disease known as A.I.D.S. I guess the story goes; he impregnated Aris mother without even telling her. He went on with himself, and told no one. He died a short while later, taking with him to the grave this tragic secret. The mother was left with three children, and the most painfully tragic disease a mother could ever possibly contract. Ari wasnt as lucky as Latisha. She was diagnosed with full blown A.I.D.S just a little while after her 1st birthday. I almost felt as if it were lifes way of whispering into my ear and saying, Dont worry, it isnt something you are supposed to figure out, as if the beauty of life was being presented to me as an abstract thought of entropy. That things in life will continue to tend towards randomness, and that there will be many more events in life that will most probably remain in mystery until we meet the designer of life itself.Funny how life works huh.I can still remember the day Aris worker brought her to us from down south, with the softest skin, and cutest chubby little chocolate cheeks. I mean this girl seemed as if she was a precious moments angel that fell straight off the shelf, and turned into a little girl on the way down and landed in my arms. The social worker looked up to my mom that day with something in her eyes that I will never forget. I could almost see her feel like a person feels when they are watching something in the back of a two-way mirror, and it looked as if she saw the big-hearted tender person she herself always wanted to be, perhaps the very reason she chose a career in social services. What this social worker was seeing, was the love that one has for a child when you are expecting that child to die in the near future. It is such a devoted love, with much longsuffering. There is a special breed of people who can see past their own sorrow, to ensure that this child will have the love her makes it whole, the love that she might not have gotten otherwise. That is, if she had remained a child of the state, and lost in the pages of some countys adoption book. At least the real issue had been dealt with. The love..So here I sit on the roof of my house, where Ive always felt as if I couldve been safe. I started thinking to myself. Going over all of the variables and all of the preconceived reasons I had concocted over the years, the very reasons of why these children had wandered into our lives. And will you put yourself in a place to understand the frustrated anger that pierced the innermost sections of me, because of what I thought humanity should represent. This anger was stained with uncertainty. It violently shook everything that I thought to be the moral way of life. How could you ever lay a hand of anger upon the face of an innocent child, or pump poisons into your unborn child all the way through your pregnancy; just to drop the child off at the hospital, as if they were clothes at a good will. What the hell have we become as humans, how could a man bring a life into this world knowing full and well that he was breaking that childs sail as he pushed it out to sea. Perhaps ignorant to the consequences, or wandering in denial, but the fact remains because of his self-indulgence in his own lusts he brought a little girl into this insane world. What is to happen when she starts to ask these questions about life, or wanting to have a first boyfriend, or even bearing the meaning of having a child to treasure and love. Nothing in this world could ever occur to create the worth of this price, nothing is worth the cost of her being robbed of the chance to be her. Who would do this? What would a mans heart contain that would enable or allow him to do this? But most importantly who didnt stand up to say something to any of these people or the other hundreds of thousands of people who are repeating these same mistakes over and over. There wasnt any answers to these questions that fiercely pulled these tears out of me spiritually and physically. I didnt feel inside for some reason that I was able to talk to any one about all this. My mom was at the hospital, my dad was off with a friend, and the nurses didnt really care for me at the time. So on my perch I sat bringing question to life. With every set of questions is the structure of a test. I looked to the sky to see the clouds taking the form of something I knew I wasnt prepared for. Getting ready to sit right above me, crashing down transforming through the air, all the way into the rumble it forced through my body. I could feel my teeth shake. The flashes spontaneously piercing the sky down to earth, the brighter the sky became within each moment I felt as if the skies could see right through my clouded eyes right into who I really was. It amplified the emotions I went up there to get away from. The drops slowly came upon me, for I was there to welcome them. I lied down to rest upon my back, staring upwards into the steadily angering rain. The drops started to feel like needles that were being dropped from heaven. From a place of love, and from what I was convinced was gods way of bringing me through tribulation to find who I really was. To understand that I am alive in this world, and that for my creator to whom I owe everything even the pain caused by these daggers of rain. The thunder was now colliding with the speed of sound, and in that moment, it was as if the world could feel my uncertainty and my anger for all the things in my life I could not control. I closed my eyes and uttered my final prayer for the world, and deep in thought I didnt even notice the rain slowly fading away. I looked into the air and I gave thanks out loud with tears coursing through the architecture of my face, even though I knew that no one was listening. .. I climbed down, and went inside and kissed Arianna on the forehead, I could tell she was about to wake from the storm that was now passing. She let out a sigh, cuddled back down, and fell back into the dream she was almost pulled away from. I kissed her again, then shut off the nightlight. I walked down the hall to my room, and turned out my own little nightlight. As my heavy thoughts started to pull down the lids of my eyes, I felt a reassurance that no matter what this world brings, if I walk in spirit, the longsuffering that I will endure will be but a privilege to take in the name of my creator.The next few years I really kind of wandered off. I was there, and yet in retrospect I didnt have much to say about where I was going in life. It might have been that I had reached a point where I didnt want to be in control anymore. It might have been that the way I patterned my lifestyle just to get people to notice me. It might have been a master collection of all the things that can direct a confused young man away from himself, and into the welcoming hands of the people that will teach him how to destroy himself. There are many different possibilities, but to be sincerely honest I dont have much to say about those years in my life. I was a young man who didnt care much for other people, or myself for that matter. I did a lot of partying and fell off the plane of reality deep into drugs, between the ages of sixteen and my early twenties. They were rough years for me, but something I didnt notice at the time was, they were also very rough times for my family, my mother in particular. It was around September of 98. The hierarchy of the family support structure had finally accepted its defeat. My parents had reached a point where they felt like two strangers sharing a mailbox. They had tried to make what they had work, but unfortunately most of the effort came from my mother. She truly put an effort into keeping the marriage a thing that the childrens eyes would fall upon and deem the right and proper thing to do when one grows up. My father, it shames me to say left the family (my mother mostly) at the precise time that his support was needed in the home. The September fall after Zachary died. Though in a truly objective view I would have to state the frustrations in my fathers life that led him to walk away in the path he chose. My father is a man that lived much of his life in regret. Given the many times I glanced into his eyes, just to see him fluster a bit before he looked away, I can tell you his regret was a wound that he had received in his early childhood, and never really figured how to successfully deal with. The only other piece of context we need to catch a glimpse into the reasons he left his family was the plain fact that he was a broken man. The regret that I mentioned was a consistent deterrent on him standing up and leading his family with strength and courage. He hardly knew what it meant to be a man, and to worsen the unseen wounds, throughout the latter half of the marriage, my mother was always the leader. She lead the family spiritually, She held up the strength to keep the family close, even though she was the one spent the long hours waiting in hand of one of the children bedside, She was the one who held all of the emotional burden of the trials encompassing a parent, a parent who deals with life and death issues every day. A parent who had the responsibility of rocking her child to sleep for the last time. My father for some reason or another was not able to stand up to my mother or him, and in turn it built up, and built up until the day when he felt as if he finally stood up. The day he finally forged a direction for himself in this world. The day he said Ive paid my dues, and now I am gonna take some time to think about myself. He did, and that was the separation of what I previously remember as a family. When the whole divorce was being processed, our parents came to each one of us and asked us what we thought of it, and how it would make us feel. I remember telling my father that it didnt affect me much. I told him that it didnt feel as if he were around much anyway. I guess I was really just trying to hit him where it hurt because my Dad was leaving the family. And then came the drugs.Waiting for something big, something that would change my current of left behind emotions into something I could say was unique to me.Something Great.Ill write honest of the experiences I encountered, for these acts of my past are certainly destructive and undesirable, but none the less they are as much of a part of me as any other experience Ive been through. The things I found in my younger years were powder cocaine, rock cocaine, magic mushrooms, micro-dot acid, grateful dead acid, blue gel acid, liquid acid, methamphetamines in unfortunate amounts, heavy booze binges, laughing gas from the dentist, and there are probably a few more things I tampered my internal chemistry with that I cant recall right now, but you get the point. I pushed my limits through every avenue that was presented to me. When meth became an influence in my life, it started in so subtle and was so inviting to a kid who with all honesty just wanted to show the world how unique he was. If you havent much background on methamphetamines I suggest that you seek to understand it, because without a doubt it is one of the major problems the next generation is going to face. I wish I could translate in words just how deeply infecting of a drug meth is. It is a poison that stimulates unnatural brain chemistry, causes the ability to go through nights without any sleep at all. Meth is also dangerous in the aspect that it can be derived from multiple sources. Anhydrous ammonia is one chemical used, lithium, cold and sinus medication can even be used. It doesnt have to be imported. I have seen it within the span of 6-7 years, this poison completely bring down good peoples lives to ruin. This was our idea of good time. A few friends and I had a for-the-hell-of-it bet, and we wanted to see who could penetrate the most days without sleep. This was my experience towards the latter half of my part of the bet. One day I was hiding out in my garage/room when a nurse named Lisa Best, who worked with my family came out to check on me as she often did from time to time. She pleaded with me, Roger, Please go to bed man. And naturally the teenager in me asked what for, and she replied cause Im afraid I might actually lose you. I found myself crying thanksgiving from somewhere really deep, an appreciation for someone looking me in the eyes with that bottom-of-the-soul concern. She asked me if I would just come stay the night at her house and chill out for the evening. I acted almost entirely out of instincts in going with her that night after her shift was over. I guess you could say it was all due to a feeling of relatedness. She welcomed me into her house as if she had found me lying wounded in the field needing care. She took me in without question or judgment of my current state. It was a really positive experience at a time when I only felt a state of jurisdiction. I woke up the next afternoon feeling dead from the inside out. I got out of the bed and walked over to the kitchen about ten feet away and then opened up the fridge. I literally felt pain shrieking through my mouth, throat, and mid-chest as I swallowed a tall glass of water. It was weird, as I put down the glass and walked towards the bathroom I knew that when I looked in the mirror it was going to scare me. Although that wasnt the exact response, there was fear in the realization that I was closer to death than I had ever been before. My eyes were darkened, Lisa weighed me and I was at 105 as compared to my usual 160. The fear that I felt was a glimpse of the fear a man has as he is lying down preparing to die and realizes how he is about to lose everything, everything that is important. I received a phone call from one of my roommates at the garage, and they were also checking to see my condition. I was then told that the night previous was the 12th night that I was awake from that poison. The second stage of fear sank in. I realized that I had whole days in my mind unaccounted for. What if I did something so bad that I couldnt ever come back to my family? What if I did something to my family that I would regret? Surely I saw the tears in Lisas eyes the night before. I knew that anything couldve happened. That event couldve been tragic, and I have thanked the lord that I was met with the compassion I received from Lisa that day. Compassion is such a powerful virtue. In its true state compassion is something that does not seek compensation. Its nature is to simply nurture (not a psychology pun). I wish there was some kind of monumental statement that I could make about compassion, but I honestly feel that compassion is a constructive device used primarily on the individual. Though its effects do not stop there. After being nursed back to health I found myself wanting to show that same compassion to somebody else. I wanted to emulate that. I saw it as something where I could look myself in the eyes and be proud of possessing that characteristic. Though the execution of those ambitions would not come about till a few years later, I know in my soul that the seed of compassion was sown in, that day with Lisa.Even in light of the deeper revelations I was digesting, the most eminent force that I was trying to please was the people that I would now describe as the crowd. To be continued..
So now, here I sit trying to put together the rearranged insides of the man I am today. Things seem to have been scattered scenes of life, love, loss, and unimaginable meaning, but yet they have drifted out just as fast as they entered. I’ve attempted to pick up where I left off last chapter, but found it to be of little importance. Though there were events that no doubt shaped the mold that created me, there were just so many things that I did that contradict who I am today.Today: I am 24 and recently graduated from college with a Bachelors of Science Degree in the creative field, I have the privilege to be the father to a beautiful 7 year old girl named Hannah, my faith is unmovable, for it is placed in Christ, I am willing to stand up for and be laid to rest for what I believe, but most importantly today I am not ashamed, I am proud of the man I am today.I’m grateful that my earlier years didn’t kill me, because they almost did. I have a prayer for all those who search through people, drugs, and the world for the purpose in life that they desperately seek: My prayer is that God will come to you in whatever way it is that you will accept him. For when you do dear friend, Life will begin.As for the rest of my story, I’m gonna stop trying to write it down just so the world will have my book. It is my turn to go out and write my next chapter out onto the world. For the next chapter I write will be written upon the hearts and memories of those who know me, or whom I have yet to meet. A wise man once told me that if we are able to hold the love and the memory of our most endeared relationships near our heart, that we alone contain a wealth that is so large that no one can lift it from us.Well here I go………
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