Don't take what I am about to say, as being mean or that I did not love my Dad. This was the way it was for us.
My first memory is setting on mom's lap and her reading to me. This light kept flashing. For years I could not figure out what this was, until one day when I was a teenager and I came home at the beginning of a thunderstorm and found mom sitting in the corner of the couch with Mary in your lap reading a book. Then it hit me what this early memory was. Mom was reading to me during a thunderstorm. Everyone who knew mom, knew she was terrified of thunderstorms.
I have some memory's of just me and mom. Then while we lived on the farm outside of Greenville, Tennessee, Debra showed up. We moved around alot.
I remember the first separtion. Things got so bad in the fall of 1960, while we were living in Union, South Carolina that mom called Granddad Haddock (her father) and he sent her the money to go to Clarksville, Tennessee. We caught the bus. Debra always sit in mom's lap, but I got to sit in the seat beside her unless the bus was full and then I sit on her right leg.
Uncle Luke (mom's brother Luther) met us at the bus station and took us to Granddad's house on Golf Club Lane. Dad did send enough money that mom rented a house a few doors down, from Granddad. Dad did not show up till just before Christmas 1961. I had already started to school.
Dad moved us out to Cumberland Heights. Things got so bad, that Uncle Luke rented us a house on the creek on Attaway Road. Between Cumberland Heights and Attaway Road, mom learned to keep cooking oil and 5 pounds of flour and 5 pounds of cornmeal. Attaway Road is where the rabbits showed up. Uncle Luke, built the cages and brought the rabbits and show me how to kill and clean them. When times got bad we always had rabbit to eat with cornbread and rabbit gravy.
After we moved upon the hill on Attaway Road things got better. Uncle Jim (mom's Uncle Jim) let dad run his service station. Things were good. This was the best that I remember our lives ever being.
In the fall of 1970 dad went back to his old ways and Uncle Jim took the station away from him. Dad packed his bags and left for South Carolina. This was the second separtion. In May of 1971 Dad called an ask mom if she wanted to come to South Carolina and she said yes. For the life of me I never have understood why, so off to Spartanburg, South Carolina we went.
I got a job at a service station and the man paid me in cash. I would walk in the door and just hand the money over to mom. After all there were mouths to feed and dad was drinking his money away. I done this right up till the time I got married.
After Mary finished high school, things got so bad that I moved mom and dad into my house. Got dad on Social Security Retirement and helped them get an apartment in public housing not far from were we lived.
After Dad was killed on December 22, 1997, mom just seemed lonely.
I moved in to take care of mom on July 1, 2009 when she started getting sick. I took care of her till her death on January 31, 2017.
Mom was the backbone of our family. No matter how bad things got, I could always count on my mom being there for me.
No one will ever understand how much I will miss my mom. She was my rock.
Rest In Peace Mom. You deserve it more that all the Angles in Heaven.
