Excerpt

Tomorrow I May Be Myself

A reverie by

R. P. Veraa

This isn't the end. It can't be the end, not now, not here. I dictate the first draft of this memoir from the farthest bed of the farthest room on the topmost floor of a nursing home in North Miami, Florida. My bed looks like a huge blue bathtub and sounds like an air conditioner. It's a Clinitron, in which I float weightlessly. From my window, I look out over a parking lot. The area beyond is considerately cloaked in trees, giving one the illusion of isolation and peace. At night a few far buildings show the lights of their top floors. With a little imagination you can pretend they're distant mountain villages.
Closer, across the tree-lined street, a little house is ringed now with Christmas lights. On its lawn, plastic carolers sing silently. Are they silent? I don't know--I can't hear them. The bell by the door is intermittently lit by a flashing light.
I know it's warm outside in the Miami night--air conditioners hum in the building. But the lights remind me of the cold Christmases of my youth, and the house ringed in green and red and yellow lights looks like it would be warm and cozy. I have never appreciated the superfluous fireplaces of Florida, but I remember the ones of my youth in New Jersey.

Tomorrow I May Be Myself is R. P. Veraa's memoir of an idyllic youth and a promising future cut short by an autobobile accident in 1965 and permanent quadriplegia. In a book that reads like a novel, Veraa recounts the struggle to overcome disability and achieve success. becoming an internationally-known authority on spinal cord injury research. In 1985, Veraa was successful and fulfilled. The future seemed bright. Then began a more severe trial than quadriplegia had ever been.
# I remember a fireplace in Saddle River where I sat crosslegged facing a Christmas tree, reading from the second chapter of Luke as Lynn rested her head on my shoulder. The tree had old-fashioned glass decorations and tinsel beside the rough stone fireplace that crackled and flamed with cozy warmth. That was long ago--30 years now. But it's only three years since I sat in my own house in Fort Lauderdale. There was no fireplace but there were delicious smells of baking and lights and live carolers in the street outside, and Debra rested her hand on my neck as I read from the second chapter of Luke. Three years ago. We knew what the problems were then. We thought the solutions were in sight. That was our last and only happy Christmas.

# We didn't know the problems at all. I look around my small and cluttered half room. On a tiny table next to my wheelchair is a small plastic Christmas tree that Debra brought me last year at Florida Medical Center. I kept it with me and the nurses at Jackson Memorial Hospital puzzled over it when I arrived there last July.
"Are you going to be here for Christmas?" they asked.
"I hope not," I replied.
Christmas seemed so far away then. I was sure I'd be home by then--wherever home might be--living happily ever after with Debra and Jassaan. At Christmas I wasn't in the hospital--but I'm not home either. I've been at Villa Maria since October.

# I close my eyes to conjure up an image of Debra, but memories of reality intrude. A year and a half ago I was brought unconscious to a small hospital pretentiously named Florida Medical Center, in Fort Lauderdale. I was naked. Now I wear a hospital gown inscribed "St. Francis Hospital." I don't know where St. Francis Hospital is, but wherever it is, perhaps they have a patient wearing a gown marked "Villa Maria Nursing Center." I daydream about a patient regaining consciousness after an accident and trying in vain to determine his whereabouts from the linen.
When I had the run of Florida Medical Center, I wore blue surgical scrubs labeled "PROPERTY OF FLORIDA MEDICAL CENTER. UNAUTHORIZED POSSESSION CONSTITUTES THEFT BY CONVERSION." When I left, I wore a pair that I hoped to convert but somehow they disappeared into the Jackson Memorial laundry. My sheets are the property of Mt. Sinai Medical Center and I do not own a pair of trousers.

# Thirty years ago, when Lynn was my love and I was prepared to set out and win the world for her, I wandered around New York City on a warm autumn afternoon. I browsed in a little book shop and bought some used paperbacks. There was a little park across the street from the shop--just a couple trees, a basketball hoop and a few benches--and I sat down to read before walking uptown to catch my bus back to New Jersey. As I sat reading, a derelict walked up and asked me for a quarter. I mumbled something negative, still reading.
He said, "You should help a guy. You never know when you'll be down and out."
I looked up annoyed, and said, "Hey, I can't help you. I haven't got any change."
He said "That nice jacket won't always be new, kid. I used to be a lawyer in Quincy, Massachusetts--had a nice house, good practice, and a great family. Now look at me."
He stood before me, waiting for a response. The only thing I could think of to say was, "What happened?"
He shrugged and said, "Things didn't work out. Sure you haven't got a quarter?"
I shook my head no and he walked away. I didn't believe a word about Quincy, Massachusetts. New England lawyers just don't end up bumming for quarters.

# Practically all the things I see around me are gifts--handouts I've received in the past year and a half. There's a Miami Dolphins doll sitting on the window sill that was given to me by a fellow patient at Florida Medical Center. Next to it is a limp stuffed pumpkin given to me by a respiratory therapist, and the Santa Claus that Debra brought me last Christmas. Most of my books were given to me by visitors--when I was in Fort Lauderdale and still had visitors. The TV set was loaned to me by a nurse. At the moment I am speaking into a little recorder that was given to me by a church group in Ft. Lauderdale. On the window is a crucifix that was given to me by the Eucharistic ministers of the same church. A year and a half ago I wasn't even a Catholic. I have a talking book machine that belongs to the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Disabled. Even my wheelchair was given to me by the widow of a quadriplegic. I lost four of my own wheelchairs-- three electric and one manual. I don't know many people who can claim to have lost three electric wheelchairs. It occurs to me that I've owned nine automobiles in my life. One was sold, one traded in, and the rest just ended up littering the countryside behind me. Debra even got rid of my bed before the house went.

# For twenty-three years, I've feared entry into a nursing home as the final defeat, the very end. There's hardly anything left of anything, and I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not dead yet.

#
I would graduate at the end of summer term, in August, and I carefully calculated the money I would need for the rest of the term. If I took out a bank loan for a down payment and if I got $600 trade-in on my Simca sedan I could just barely afford a gran turismo Volvo P1800-S. I phoned imported car dealers in three states and found a white one in stock in Montgomery. The valves on the Simca had been making lots of noise so I adjusted the rockers and got them ticking quietly. It was the best that engine had sounded in a long time. Then I drove to Montgomery.
I'd never closely examined Volvo's sexy looking little two- seater coupe before, and it was even more impressive than I'd dared to expect. I'd been used to sports cars that were lightly built with thin fragile bodies like the Austin-Healey--even the civilized Jaguar XK-E had doors that seemed of little substance. But the doors and hood of the Volvo slammed solidly shut like the walk-in freezer at the A&P. Thanks to its monocoque design--eliminating the old rail chassis by using a sturdy two- layer body as the structural frame of the vehicle--it weighed exactly the same as the Healey. Monocoque automobiles were revolutionary in 1965. The Volvo engine was rated at the same power as the Healey, and this was accomplished with just one liter less displacement.
The upholstery of the Healey was rudimentary, with lightly- padded buckets to sit upon. They were well-designed, to be sure, and you could drive all day with none of the fatigue engendered by the seemingly comfortable overstuffed sofas popular in American cars. The Volvo, though, had a supple red leather interior representing the best of both worlds. The seats were soft, but so well shaped that they fitted like a garment. I had never sat in such comfortable seats in or out of an automobile.
The salesman, a retired peddler of Pontiacs, didn't know how many cylinders the Volvo had, and I pointed out the principal features of the car to him. He offered me $750 for the Simca and promised delivery the following Monday.
On Monday, I had just reached the city limits of Montgomery when the rear tires shrieked and the Simca came to a sudden halt. The engine had stopped, and when I tried to restart it, I discovered it was solidly seized up and wouldn't turn. I walked to the nearest store and called for a tow truck. Thus I arrived to pick up my new car, with my trade-in hanging from the end of a tow truck. Nobody thought it was particularly funny.
The salesman wiped the top of his head, concerned about his commission, while the mechanics pushed the Simca into the shop and proceeded to pull the head to see the extent of the damage. Fortunately it turned out to be just a thrown valve that had jammed one of the cylinders. No other damage seemed to have been done. Apparently in my zeal to get the valves as quiet as possible, I had not left enough clearance and one of the exhaust valves wasn't seating properly. It had burned out and dropped into the cylinder, jamming the piston.
They reduced the trade-in offer to $600, exactly what I had hoped to get in the first place. The Volvo was as marvelous to drive as it had been to look at. A race with the Healey would have probably been a fairly even contest, and running flat out they handled about the same. But at 90 per cent of full speed--or even 70 per cent--the Healey was still a lot of work to drive. The Volvo eased along like a club car on velvet rails.

# Then August came around. It was the week before finals, on Thursday of that week. I had no classes that day. I got up late, ate brunch and decided to go over to Dave Jones' Gulf station and wash the car. In the afternoon I would do some studying. I remember getting into the car and driving away. But that's all I remember.

# I had a terrible headache. I was lying flat on my back under bright lights and people bustled around. There was a thick bandage on my forehead with tape holding down my right eyebrow so the lid partly obscured the eye. A girl in a white dress asked if I knew where I was and what had happened. I said I'd been hoping she could tell me. "This is the Auburn University Infirmary. Don't you remember the accident?"
"No. A car accident? Is my car okay?" It was late at night and they wanted to know the phone number of my parents and someone in town they could notify.
Then the doctor told me that I'd had a concussion. He said it didn't seem serious but he was sending me to Columbus for observation. Then they put me on a stretcher and wheeled me into the ambulance and started driving to Columbus, Georgia. The back of the stretcher was gatched all the way up and it faced forward so I could see through the windshield over the driver's shoulder. Since I went to Columbus every weekend, either to play bass or to listen, I was able to give the driver directions for the fastest route. I remember my hands, which worked perfectly normally, as I pointed out turnings and so forth and I am quite sure I was able to shift my legs around normally until we pulled up at the Emergency entrance of Columbus Medical Center.
Now this was 1965, when virtually all ambulances were special-bodied Cadillacs. But I remember noticing as they unloaded me that the Auburn University ambulance was not a Cadillac but was nothing but a converted 1957 Ford station wagon. It was the first time I'd ridden in an ambulance, and I felt somehow cheated. I remember twisting my head around to look at the big round tail light. When I did that, I lost consciousness again.
I woke up three days later, on a Stryker frame, paralyzed, with Crutchfield tongs in my head to apply cervical traction, weights and pulleys and tubes running in and out of me. I remember things were hazy for awhile and some strange things happened that were obviously hallucinations, like my father pushing the Stryker frame out of the hospital into the midst of a gang war where leather jacketed hoods armed with chains and knives threatened to kill me if I didn't give them my ice cream. Then the designs on my draperies seemed to be characters in a Western movie who came to life, acting out their parts.
Then things settled down and I was aware of my mother next to me insistently asking me questions. Apparently I'd been comatose with my eyes open, and she'd been talking to me for a long time. She wanted to know things like what my name was, where I was born, who the president was and so on. I was worried and said "Good grief, Mother, have you lost your memory?" It was the first thing I said.
She began to cry and said, "Oh, thank God, oh, thank God." She asked me more questions but I was groggy and just wanted to be left alone to sleep. Then she asked me to recite "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service," a poem I always liked for the sound of its language. When I finished she said, "Oh, thank God, I knew you could, I knew you could."
Then she disappeared for a second, coming back with a doctor in tow. She said the doctor wanted to hear me recite "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service." I remember wondering what was so urgent about a silly poem, but I did as my mother said.
"You see," she cried to the doctor. "You see--you call that brain damaged?"
The doctor patted my shoulder and said, "Praise God, you're all right."
By then I was becoming really and truly conscious and I realized for the first time that I couldn't move and the frame I was strapped to was terribly uncomfortable, and there was something holding my head. I wanted to move, to make a gesture so I could ask a question and I couldn't talk without an appropriate gesture and I couldn't move and I was getting ready to scream. The doctor kept telling me that I was all right and then another doctor came over and they were talking about brain damage. I couldn't understand why they kept talking about brain damage--that had nothing to do with what was wrong with me. What was wrong with me, as I was learning with rising panic, was that I couldn't move. I struggled to see what was holding me down. I pulled so hard to sit up that my body shook, and the shaking rattled the frame and the equipment attached to it.

#
When Jimmy Carter was running for president, he promised that he would do something about the alleviation of spinal cord injury. He made several similar statements about several scientific areas that he was interested in. When he entered the White House, he revamped the Office of Science and Technology Policy under Frank Press and made it a meaningful arm of government.
The main thing OSTP found out about spinal cord injury was that it was addressed by no single source, and no discipline existed for its consideration. The main OSTP recommendation was for the establishment of a high level committee on the subject made up of the foremost experts that the administration could find. An office was set up under Elizabeth Fetter to make this selection through consultation with acknowledged authorities in the field.
She called me several times, and at first I was highly flattered to be asked for input to this process, and I named people I thought would be appropriate and listed their qualifications and reasons why they should be chosen. I was periodically asked for input and as the choice was narrowed, I was even more flattered to find that I was included among the potential candidates. When the final selection was made I was deeply honored to be among the twelve in a panel that included Silvio Varon of the University of California.
The panel was chaired by my friend Elmer Bartels, who was by then Commissioner of Vocational Rehabilitation for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As with so many things in my life, the honor was just that, an honor and nothing more. By the time this commission was chosen, Carter's term was ending. The new administration did not see fit to utilize the expertise of the council, and no meeting was ever called. We all received beautiful but empty certificates of appointment bearing the Great Seal of the United States. It seems a shame to have gone to such time and expense to identify what seemed to be a national resource and then never utilize that resource. No doubt the Reagan administration decided it didn't need any more groups of experts telling it how to spend more government money, but it seems that much of value could have come out with the interactions of this group.

#
Having been in jail for a month, Debra accumulated a few new friends. One was Valerie, an exceeding beautiful girl of about twenty-two with short blonde hair. She was a crack addict who financed her habit by prostitution. I had spoken to her on the phone a couple of times when Debra had called from jail. She seemed intelligent and witty, like a girl that had everything going for her. She was released a few days before Debra and called me that night telling me she had no money to buy food. She asked me if I had twenty dollars or so to spare to feed her baby. Her voice had an overcast to it that I had noticed in Debra when she was high. When she had been clean she sounded like a college sophomore--now, back on the street with a head full of cocaine, she adopted the voice and inflections of street meat. I told her I was sorry but I didn't have any money.
Valerie had a little boy named Johnny, about two years old, who spoke volubly but seemed incapable of linking two words together without a connecting profanity. He stayed with us a few days when Valerie had disappeared and her old man didn't want to be bothered with the kid. He was terribly afraid of the dark--afraid even of being left alone in a room. I cannot even begin to imagine what kind of a person such a child might grow up to be. Later, Valerie stole Debra's good red shoes.
Another friend Debra made was an armed robber named Leon Jenkins. His cell was directly over Debra's and they would talk at night through the ventilator. He was accused of beating up a derelict for a few dollars. He insisted he was innocent, though he did admit that he enjoyed beating up people, with or without weapons, and that he did it often. His only hope was that the victim wouldn't be available to testify against him.
When Debra got home, he would call her collect six or eight times a day. We had phone bills of a couple hundred dollars a month. Debra took his calls in the living room so I wouldn't hear, but the content of the words didn't matter. I could still hear the tone as she giggled and cooed like a teenager. In addition to hours a day on the phone, they would exchange letters and she went to see him every visitor's day.
I couldn't complain--after all, she was cheering up a prisoner--but as I write this I haven't seen her in seven months, and she's never sent me a letter or even a Valentine or Christmas card. She had a plan for Leon to come and stay with us when he got out of jail. She said we could fix up the garage as a bedroom for him. He would be handy to do work around the house. I could just imagine myself with another keeper.
Jassaan told me his mother was going to marry Leon. He said she had told Leon that. I told him I thought she said that to lots of people. Leon was held without bail for over four months before his preliminary hearing. Debra tried to get her lawyer, Rick Garfield, to defend him. He declined. The public defender petitioned for the charges to be dropped but the motion was denied. Bail was denied.
That evening Debra put me on the phone so he could explain that he had been unjustly used. He said that the judge had discriminated against him.
"I saw that motherfucker take a look at my Mohawk and I knew he was gonna fuck me. All them bastards see is my Mohawk. That's why they picked me up in the first place--just grab the dude with the bad haircut."
"So why do you wear it?" I asked.
"Huh?"
"You've been in jail for four months--you could've let it grow out by now."
"Shit, man. You fucking crazy."
"Look--you say the judge won't give you a fair deal because of the Mohawk--so don't wear it. At least till you're out of there. Then you can wear your hair any way you want."
"You crazy, man. You want me to look like a straight motherfucker? I don't kiss ass like that. Shit, man. Lemme talk to Debra."
I am sure the Mohawk was just part of it. I've never seen Leon but Garfield said that he was an enormous man with a menacing demeanor that would scare people even if Leon was asleep. Jassaan said he looked badder than Mr. T.

# I hadn't used the CB radio for ages. Suddenly Debra took an intense interest in it. She became Foxy Lady and was always calling for someone whose handle was Backdoor Daddy. Lying in bed, I would hear her call at all hours of the day and night. Backdoor Daddy was a radio-dispatched mobile home-delivery crack dealer. Every time I would hear her call I would pray that he wouldn't hear her--but he was usually there. A number of users that Debra knew only by CB handles, Dolphin and the Watermelon Man and several others came and went. When the doorbell rang, Debra would shut the bedroom door before letting them in.

# She didn't get me out of bed often anymore. The days and nights passed. I watched the daylight appear in the morning and grow dim at evening. "I saw your brother sitting in a car down the street," she said.
"Sure you did."
"What are you people cooking up?"
"Debra, my brother's in Maryland." My head always ached during these mad conversations. I didn't look at Debra, but gazed dully at the wall, speaking in a monotone as Debra grew progressively more shrill.
"You think I'm stupid. Look here, Rich Veraa. I don't give a shit what you and your precious family have up your sleeves. You'll never hurt me."
"Nobody's gonna hurt you, Debra."
"You're fucking right, nobody's gonna fucking hurt me. My father's in the Mafia. You know that, don't you? Wherever you go, they'll find you. You know what they're good at? They're good at killing people real slow. Real fucking slow and painful. You'll be sorry, Rich Veraa. You and your fucking pansy smartassed family. Think you can play games with Debra, do you? You fucking asshole. You just wait."
She'd go on and on. I'd sit in bed looking at the wall and not respond. It infuriated her that I didn't yell back and that only amplified the tirade, but I was too sad and numb to respond. Jassaan would come around, wondering what the noise was about. "Don't look at his eyes," Debra would tell him. "He's an evil man." She would yell and threaten, and hurl objects around the room with making great crashing sounds, but she only hit me once, when she bounced a dinner plate off my face and I bled all over the sheets.

# I'm sure the neighbors could hear us and thought there was murder going on. A few times investigators from the state Division of Adult Services came to interview me and make sure I wasn't being abused. I was too embarrassed to tell them the truth--and, if the truth be known, too afraid of Debra--so I would insist that nothing was wrong, that we were just a normal suburban family. I would ask who had complained, but it was always an anonymous informer they couldn't identify. I'm glad they couldn't tell--if Debra had found out, that person would've had a handful.

# When we weren't being complained about, we were doing the complaining. Debra always patrolled the house, gun in hand, suffering her drug-induced delusions. Often she came into the bedroom late at night whispering about prowlers in the yard--or the garage. She would pick up the phone from the corner and beg me to call 911. I rarely argued with her in the best of times, and never when she was out of her head with the .32 in her hand. What I feared was being merely wounded by the little pistol.
A courteous voice always answered, "Nine one one emergency."
"Hi," I'd say. "I'm sorry to bother you, but my wife thinks she saw someone in the yard." I'd give my name and address, and a few minutes later we'd hear the police car and see the bright flashlight as the officer walked around the house. Always, he'd ring the doorbell, but Debra never answered. A moment later the phone would ring, and the 911 operator would say the officer found nothing. She'd suggest letting the officer in to check inside and take a statement, but I'd tell her my wife wasn't dressed.
Sometimes that would happen several times a night.

# It was after nearly a year of this kind of existence that Debra first came into the room and actually did cocaine in front of me. She had a soda can with a hole in the middle of the side and she put a rock of the stuff on a bed of cigarette ashes over the hole, and burned it up with a continuous lighter flame while she sucked in the smoke from the pop-top opening. What impressed me was the total lack of any evidence of enjoyment or anything else. I had been told there was a rush of good feeling a few seconds after and I expected some kind of divine ecstacy, some joy or other or even some look of satisfaction--but there was absolutely nothing. The effects, apparently, are contained entirely within the skull.

# Debra had long since ceased to be the attractive, sexy young woman she had been, but my obsession was as strong as ever. I felt that all the ruin that our lives had become would be worth while if only we had sex. Conceit made me try to believe it could be so good she wouldn't need cocaine. Other times I pouted that since she was sinning all the time with crack, a little sin with me would be insignificant. But still she made me shut my eyes when she wasn't fully dressed, and laughed at my advances.
On February 28, my birthday, Debra felt exceptionally good. She got me up in my chair and I went back to the Florida room to try to make sense of the heaps of unopened mail. Debra bustled around the kitchen and found enough food to make us an excellent lunch, and after lunch, when Jassaan had gone out, she sat on my lap and we kissed.
"I know what I'm going to give you for your birthday," she said. "Me."
"That's all I've ever wanted since we met," I said.
"I know," she said. "We've gotta start doing something different, and this is it. We'll be good together. When I woke up this morning, I said to myself, 'It's over. I'm never ever gonna do that stuff again.' And I know I won't. 'Cause otherwise it'll kill me. Oh, Rich. . . all I had to do was hit bottom--and I did. It's uphill from here."
For a few hours I tried to believe it, but then she said she was going to Xtra to get some food for supper, and I knew as she went out the door that the brief dream was over. There was no supper that night. She came back about eight, heaved me into bed and paced the house for a while. Then she went out again. She came back with one of her friends and they silently did crack in the living room. At one point she came into the room and I sullenly reminded her what we were going to do that night, but she just went back out, closing the door behind her. That was the last time the subject of sex came up between us.

# When I lived in Auburn, I had bought a .303 caliber Enfield rifle from Sears Roebuck for eleven dollars. I customized it by cutting down the stock and hung it on the wall. I used various small objects for targets at a sand pit on the way to Opelika. The last time I had a piece of 1/8" steel, and punched a hole in the steel at a hundred yards. I had a few boxes of ammunition and kept a clip loaded. I don't know what had happened to the rest of the ammunition but the clip, loaded with soft-point hunting rounds, showed up in Florida after my stuff had been moved following my accident. I kept the clip in my desk drawer and the rifle itself hung on the wall with the rest of my little collection.
Jassaan took it down once but I had told him he mustn't play with it and had him put it on the desk. When he was gone I did some experiments of my own. It was shortly after I learned that Debra was using cocaine. Now that this gun was down and I could reach it, I tried working the bolt and discovered that if I pushed the muzzle against the wall, and pressed on the bolt with all my strength, I could close it. Then I set the butt of the rifle on my foot rests with the muzzle facing up, and, leaning forward, just managed to aim it into my mouth, pointing up. It would be good, I thought, and quick. A soft point bullet would empty my skull before I knew the gun had gone off. I couldn't reach the trigger in that position, though.
I had a stick about two feet long for grabbing things I couldn't reach. At the moment, the stick was over in a corner where I wouldn't reach it either. But I knew that with that stick I could push against the trigger, firing a bullet up through my head. I set about plotting how to get my reaching stick and a bullet all at the same time. I plotted the way prisoners in escape movies assemble the materials needed for their break.
When Debra came home, she hung the gun back on the panel I used for a rack. As it happened, I wasn't alone in the back room again for another couple of months, sometime after my father died. Meantime, I got the clip out of the drawer--which was quite a task in itself as it was buried by all sorts of miscellaneous junk. I worked one of the cartridges free. I was surprised at how tightly they fit in the clip. I never noticed that when I was able bodied and slipped them in so easily. When I finally had a shell loose, I put the clip back into the drawer, put the shell in an envelope and put the envelope on a shelf where it would be handy.
The stick turned out to be a bit harder. In the spring I had a janitorial service clean up the whole room and without my noticing it they put the stick in the garage. I tried to think of other things that could replace it for reaching the trigger but could think of nothing else. In the fall when I got home from the hospital, Debra was still to be in jail for a week. I finally had my chance. I had the aide that was staying with me get the stick out of the garage. I hung it from the edge of the desk where it would be handy if I ever needed it.
I could use the stick to catch onto the rifle and pull it off the hooks so it would fall onto the desk top. Then I would get the shell, load it and use the stick one last time to push the trigger. I had all the elements I needed and was ready for the time when I was desperate and happened to be alone in the house. If I'd had all the elements the summer before I would have probably gone ahead and blown my brains out then, but now that Debra was in jail and presumably clean I would give it one last hope that everything would be all right. I prayed that it would but if not, I had my out ready.
But by then Debra was home on Community Control and I was in bed most of the time. The base-heads were coming over and getting high in the living room now, and I was stuck in the bedroom. I would hear a car in the driveway, and Debra's hand would reach in to the doorknob, slamming me shut in the room for the night. I was ready to end it if I could only get up and get to the gun. I would be so grateful when that gun went off in my mouth. I was ready to do it at the first opportunity when Debra would feel well enough to get me up.

# She agreed to take care of Johnny, Valerie's little kid and he and Jassaan were running all over the house playing and I was glad for the distraction. It was something new to look at even though Johnny used strings of profanity every time he opened his mouth. Then they were playing with my stick. I told them to put it back with such intensity that they probably thought I was mad. They never did and ended up either breaking or losing it--I never found out what happened to it. The chance passed and I never worked out an new plan. I am alive today as a result--but oh, how I hated to live during those days.

# How I do feel now? Unsure, certainly not suicidal, certainly glad to look forward to a future of some sort. I am a lot less happy than I once was--somehow in the hospital in the past year I built up a fantasy of how it could be if only Debra could change in a way that she can't do--if only we could be what we're not. Now that I am facing that fact and reality, I feel a great emptiness where Debra used to be. Through the worst of times at home, I reminded myself that I was at home--that I still had my own house and lived beneath my own roof. At least, I wasn't in a nursing home--the prospect of all things that I dreaded most. Now, I've lost my house and I am in a nursing home. I hope and pray--for what?

The long road back, and Veraa's wisdom and good humor in the face of the worst adversity is an inspiring and enlightening journey.

-- Copyright 1996 by Rachel P. Veraa
All rights reserved.

Return