Growing Pains

By 
Ashley Morris

I have known pain and loss since earlier than any child should have to…

When I was 5-years-old, I lost my father to a drug overdose. That was my first big loss and experience with death. Shortly after, my just barely 30-year-old mother turned widower with six children under the age of 5, gave each of us away with the hopes that we’d have a better life without her in it. That was my second big loss.

My parents were both drug addicts, their parent’s alcoholics and so the story goes for generation and generation before them. My mother thought she was doing us a favor. Little did she know the life-long pain this would cause my siblings and I as well as the trust issues that would transcend our own relationships as we grew into adulthood.

The event that separated my brothers from me, my third big loss, will forever be engraved in my heart and still haunts my dreams today. After learning of my father’s death, my mother lost it. She left me, the responsible 5-year-old that I was, in charge of my five siblings so she could disappear to drown her pain in the puncture of a needle. I did my best to feed my siblings, keep them entertained and distracted, change their diapers and put them to sleep each night, easing their worries. Everything was going to be okay. Mommy would be home soon.

Each night after they were fast asleep, I would sneak out to the fence that separated our apartment building from the freeway, hands clenched to the metal fence as tears blurred my vision peering through the triangular holes, I hoped and prayed that one of those headlights on the dark freeway belonged to my mother’s car. They never did.  

It was late in the evening on the 5^th day of my mother’s absence, when there was a knock on the door. For a split second my heart fluttered, mommy was home. Just as fast as hope poured in my mind, it vanished when an unfamiliar voice yelled, “Open the door, it’s the police.” I ordered my siblings to be quiet and hide. I didn’t want my mom to be disappointed and I didn’t understand why the police were at our house, I was doing a good job! I got the baby and hid myself. After what felt like an eternity hiding in the closet, I heard the door break down.

It was a whirlwind after that, as I watched the police offers pluck my siblings from their hiding places against my pleading screams. They were put in the back of a patrol car and taken away. As I watched the flashing red and blue lights disappear into the distance, I didn’t understand what was happening. I was doing a good job and mommy would be home soon. I was put in a different patrol car and taken away with my 6-month-old brother still in my arms. Thoughts raced through my mind, where are they taking them? Where are they taking me? What was mommy going to think?

It was a quick ride. The officer opened the back door to the patrol car and instructed me to go inside. We were at the police station. As the doors opened to the station, I saw my siblings anxiously sitting in the chairs that lined the hallway and they cried and ran to me as I walked in. I embraced all 4 of them with the baby, Christopher, still in my arms from hiding earlier. For the first time, I was afraid. What was going to happen to us? The police wouldn’t tell me anything, I was just a child they said, I wouldn’t understand. Little did they know.

My life as I knew it spiraled out of control after that. All three of my brothers were adopted by different families. These families changed their names, moved out of state and erased all memories of their biological family from their lives and their future. I have not seen or heard from my two youngest brothers since that day. That was 24 years ago.

My sisters and I spent the next 13 years in foster care. It was especially difficult as we were raised by a black woman in an all black, low-income community that was anything but welcoming to three little white girls with Boston accents. I remember thinking to myself often throughout middle school and high school, you call this a better life? I wanted to scream at my mother; if only I knew where she was.

My mother would come in and out of our lives during this time. This only caused more pain as she made empty promises of taking us back one day and finding our brothers. With the taste of hope in our mouths and our hearts, she would then disappear without word for years.

Growing up our relatives who lived back East would occasionally call us, apologizing for not being able to take care of us and send gifts and money to make up for their guilt. Despite this, there was a curiosity to know these people. They were the keepers of information about our parents, our biological family and the life we could have had if our parents didn’t make that tragic decision to move 3,000 miles across the country to hide their own addiction.

Both my mother and father’s side of the family had addiction problems. My mother’s mother was an alcoholic and my mother’s brother, a drug addict. My father’s parents were alcoholics along with his two sisters and older brother. My father’s youngest brother died in a fatal car accident a few months after I was born. It seemed my family was doomed from the beginning to a life of tragedy, death and pain.

In high school, we re-connected with both of our grandmothers. On two separate occasions they came to visit us and for the first time gave my sisters and I hope that we weren’t orphans and we had family who loved us. This was short lived. A few years after re-building those relationships, it all crumbled and life returned to the same tragic story we knew too well. My maternal grandmother passed away from liver problems and two days later my paternal grandmother died of Cirrhosis.

Over and over again, I promised myself that I would have a family one day that I would love and cherish and never put through the same pain and loss I experienced. This was my mantra, create your own life, create your own happiness. When I turned 18, I moved away to college and to begin my new life, free of pain and loss or as much of it as I could control.

While in college, my father’s oldest brother, my uncle Jon, reached out to me and we became pen pals. At first I was hesitant. I was adamant on controlling my life and keeping it free of any more pain; I didn’t have the capacity to experience any more loss. But Uncle Jon was different. I loved talking to him. His voice reminded me of my father, it transported me back to my childhood growing up in Boston when things were happy and we were all together; now a fleeting memory. He would tell me stories of my dad that would replay in my mind hours after we hung up the phone. A few months after reconnecting with my uncle Jon, he died of a brain tumor. At this point, I lost count of the losses. It seemed relentless.  

More recently, I began wondering about father’s father and a month ago I decided to write him a letter. I introduced myself to him and shared stories of my life. I poured my heart out, telling him of my sisters and my successes, despite all the tragedy and obstacles, hoping he’d be proud, this man I didn’t even know. Not certain I had the correct address I dropped the letter in the mail and asked him to call me if ever wanted to know his eldest granddaughter. To my surprise he called me a few days ago and left a message saying he loved me, thought of me often and wanted to talk. I didn’t call him back in time. My aunt called me yesterday to tell me he passed away.

Now in my late 20s, I have managed to build my own relationships and create a family of close friends. I am comfortable with this because I can control it. But there is always a lingering fear of losing those close to me, which prevents me from getting too close to anyone. I have learned to keep people at arm’s length. I’m going to lose them too, so what’s the point of getting too close? As I grow older, I don’t want to experience any more loss or pain.