The Reason Who I Am Today

Today I have been stress with homework and freaked out. Yes, call me a cry baby. I cried. I was so stressed and I hate when this happens to me. When being stressed and crying people usually think about things that make them even more sad. To feed that sadness that crushes you, but for some reason you find ways just to feed it. It is the same with anger I and I believe everyone can agree with me. But when I was thinking about things that make me even sadder I began thinking about my mom. Gosh I miss her. December 14, 2001 and January 21, 2010 she has been gone. This year it will be nine and then next year a decade. Gosh. I just feel terrible. I came out pretty good living with a father that's a drunk and only talks to us to yell at us for not doing the work he should be doing. Since he has been unemployed all he has been doing is sitting his lazy ass in his room and watching TV and gabling his money away on Full Tilt Poker online. Stupid shit. The bathroom upstairs is still unfinished. It hasn't been finished in 5 years now and won't be finished until he realizes going downstairs to take a shower or a piss is too much of a inconvenience to him. Gosh I really hate him. But I can't say that. Not after I have said it to my mom. I don't think people know why I am the person I am today. Why I am more emotional than others and why I seem to cry more than others. Here is my story.

From a very young age my mom, Lisa Marie Beliso Pagan, taught me it is good to let out my emotions. To let them out whenever I was sad or they would just keep gathering inside my soul 'till I couldn't hold them anymore and I would burst into a reign of chaos. I remember one night when I was in Kindergarten or first grade that I woke up in the middle of the night thinking of death. I walked out my room and sat on the wooden chest that looked over the stairs, like a shepherd over his sheep. I sat there crying, loud enough so my mom would hear, but low enough so I wouldn't awake the beast that she slept with. She came out in her pajamas with her leopard print hair curlers in. She asked me what was wrong and sat next to me, rubbing my back.

"Mommy, I don't wanna die," I cired.

"Oh Drew, you won't die for a very long time."

"What about you mommy? I don't want you to die either."

She gave me a promising look. "I won't die for a very long time Drew."

"You promise?"

"I promise I won't die for a hundred years."

Feeling reassured, she led me back to my room and rubbed my back until I fell back into a deep sleep.

On December 13, 2001 there was a play going on at Good Shepherd School. The play was the Nut Cracker and I was one of the devious Mouse King. Even though I didn't have any talking role, I did have the role of fighting the Nut Cracker in the end and squeaking as I marched in. I remember as I was fighting the Nut Cracker I could see my mom in the back, next to my dad and little brother who was only in Kindergarten at the time. How proud of me they must of been. She felt my eyes on her and she gave me a warm smile. Gosh she was so beautiful that night. I won't ever forget her face that night.

That night she was getting me ready to go to bed. The daily ritual was to take a bath, get dressed in my footsie pajamas, and tick me into bed. For some reason that night I was very cranky. I was so cranky I told her for my first time in my life that I hated her.
"I hate you!" I yelled. Her, being tired, just tucked me in and left with a kiss on my forehead and a goodbye. I didn't reply. I wish I had told her I loved her.

The next morning I woke up to the screaming of my dad. He was yelling my mom's name and yelling for us to run downstairs. I jumped off my bunk bed and ran down the stairs. I sensed there was something wrong. I walked into my uncle Lenny's room and saw my mom faced up on the floor. Her skin was pale, her brown eyes wide open; Lifeless. She was gone.

"MOMMY! WAKE UP! MOMMY PLEASE WAKE UP!" my brother and I screamed, tears running down our eyes and onto her face. She was crying with us.

The next thing I know is the ambulance coming in and taking her away. I held her hand all the way to the ambulance.

"Mister, can you please help my mom?" I said silently, scared of the answer.

The ambulance worker looked at me with sad eyes. "Kid, if I could, I would."

That day my dad sent me to my brother's baby sitter's house where I sat at the dinner table with a red and blue crayon, a piece of lined paper, and a heart full of sorrow. I felt nothing, for the tears had leaked all the emotions out of my body onto mother earth. My heart is all I felt. It was empty. I wrote the work 'Mom' as many times as I could without leaving a spot blank. My brother's baby sitter came in.

"That's good Drew. Now write daddy."

I just looked up at her. My eyes heavy. I looked back down at my paper. I wasn't going to write his name anywhere.

The date was December 14, 2001. The day my childhood ended.

That's my story. The main reason I feel the way I do every day of my life. Living with the burden of knowing the last words I ever said to my mom were 'I hate you'. For years I thought I was the reason for her death. Killing her with a broken heart. I found out that the years of stress left her with a heart of a 60 year old. She was only 41. The years of stress from my dad's cheating, gambling, and drinking had gotten to my mom's heart and killed her. I'm so sorry mom.

The last dream I have ever had about her was about a week after the cremation of her body. I was walking outside of my house and looked to my left to see her walking around the corner. Star strucked I ran to her and embraced her.

"Okay Drew. I'm back. Where's my body?" she said.

"Mommy, daddy burnt your body," I sadly replied.

"Oh..." she hugged and kissed me. And slowly walked into a mysterious light. She was gone.

Today, the only way I remember her is through the necklace with the her wedding ring that I keep on my neck at all times, and through the many notes that she wrote to my dad. When I open the box I get a whiff of what she smelled like and how her penmanship was. I have a DVD with her very last Christmas with us. We were all sick in that video. Gosh. I miss her every day and I was I got these letters early. I just got them less than a month ago. In the first letter I wrote she said she loved me so much it scared her. She called me the greatest gift she could ever want.