The Beginning of the End of the World as We Knew It

If you asked most people to identify the moment their childhood ended, they either would not be able to say or they would give some traditional rite of passage, such as getting their diploma, voting, starting or finishing college or becoming a parent. I was six-years-old when it happened to me & it took three simple words to end my childhood.

I had lived with my mom & maternal grandparents since birth. Because of my mom's disabilities, she was more like a sister to me & her mom was more like a mother to me than a grandmother. I adored my grandma. She was a big lady, with big hugs & an even bigger laugh. She thought I was the best thing since sliced bread.

Things were not perfect in our home. In first grade, I was already falling behind my peers academically. I had been tested for special education but my grandma refused to let me enter the special ed classroom. Beyond school, there were other problems. Mom changed boyfriends about as often as she changed clothes. She kept hoping that she would find me a daddy. Grandpa drank too much & frequently spent all evening in the bars downtown only to come home muttering or yelling unintelligibly. Grandma protected me from a lot of this ad kept Mom & Grandpa in line as much as she could.

Then came that fateful December night when everything changed. My aunt & her family were over for dinner. The adults were eating around the kitchen table & the children were enjoying their supper in the living room. I remember emptying my plate & going to the kitchen to put it in the sink. I stopped at the table full of adults & gave my grandma a hug before being sent back to the living room with the other kids.

I was playing with my three cousins when their was a sudden commotion in the kitchen. I looked up & it was clear that something was wrong. I could not tell what, but the adults all looked terrified. It soon became apparent that my grandmother could not breathe. I watched in horror as she started to turn colors & the adults lost their heads. Finally, one of the grownups called the paramedics. I was very confused when my preschool teacher, one of the paramedics, came in the ambulance.
Someone eventually realized that the children were watching their grandmother choke to death & we were ushered to my bedroom & told not to come out. We sat on the floor & cried & prayed & asked God to keep Grandma safe.

One of the adults came in & told us we would be going to stay with some family friends for the night, while Grandma went to the hospital. We all assumed that meant she would be okay & we packed up. I was unable to sleep all night because I wanted to see my grandma. I lay in a sleeping bag between my cousins & watched the Christmas lights outside the window blink off & on.
The next morning, my uncle came to pick us all up. The family friend who had taken care of us all asked him when he entered what had happened. In the next moment, he said the three words that ended my childhood. He took a deep breath & said, "She passed away." He had intentionally used a term he thought the children would not understand. Unfortunately, it was a term my grandmother had often used to talk about death & I knew all too clearly what it meant.

I remember shrieking & running. I fell to the floor in the living room & cried even after I had run out of tears. I felt like I would throw up & like I would die. I was certain the world would end without her. In some ways it did.

Less than one month after that, my mom & I were in a homeless shelter to protect us from Grandpa, whose alcoholism spun out of control after Grandma died. Mom agreed to place me in kinship care with the aunt who had been there that night. This was the first step in my inevitable entry into the foster care system.