Notes on a broken heart

Here I sit, contemplating whether or not to put this down in words for the world to see. I know several psych majors and writers who would tell me to go ahead. That it has been too long and that I finally need to get on with my life. It is that all-encompassing fear of retribution and shame that prevents me from writing, or really talking about it, in any way other than dismissive. Something from my past slips and instead of creating some fabrication I tell them the truth, but in such a way as to make them think that I am over and past it. To them I will say I am sorry because that was a lie. I’m not over it, not in the slightest, and it still haunts me today.

I was 17, still living with my mother, and just trying to get by after I had quit high school the previous year. It would be another year before I finally got off my dead ass and got my GED. I was pseudo-dating a girl from Seymour (rather she was leading me along because I was wrapped around her little finger so tight I didn’t know my head from my behind) and she had just relieved me from duty as her whipping boy while at an under 21 club in Springfield. While I was chasing after this girl, her roommate, (whom I shall name Jane to protect her identity) had become smitten with me, and had been trying to get me to dump the other girl for her for quite a while. That night after we all went back to my friend’s house in Aurora, Jane came with us since she had moved out of the other girl’s house the previous month. I was hurt, angry, and just stopped caring about the world. In a moment of depression and small higher brain functioning, Jane and I had sex. Unprotected sex. It was the last time I would make that mistake.

She was all a-twitter that she had finally bagged me. To this day I still don’t know why she felt so strongly for me. I felt no such feelings for her, and did not keep that a secret from her or anyone else. I didn’t stop hanging around the house because of this, she lived with my best friend at the time and I wasn’t going to go away because of a one night mistake. Oh how wrong I was. She came to me in April, about a month afterwards, to inform me that she was pregnant. She. Was. Pregnant.

My entire world fell apart. At first I was in shock and would not believe that she was pregnant. It took another pregnancy test from the doctor to convince me. We talked and talked and talked for what seemed like days non-stop. We talked about abortion, giving it up for adoption, and everything else, but she would have none of that. She was going to keep it and tell it that I was its father.

I went home that night more frightened than I had been before or since. More so than the time when I was 11 that some punk kid several years older than me tried to run me through with a machete. My mother would stay in the dark about this until June or July. You see, my parents had made the same mistake when they were slightly older than I was. Nine months later my sister was born. I couldn’t stand to look at the disappointment on my mother’s face from this blow. I knew I had been disappointing up to that point, what with abysmal school performance due to a lack of caring that ended in me quiting, and getting in trouble with the law previous to that on several occasions. I was not the model son. I was sure this would be that final blow. When I finally told her she was supremely disappointed but not so much that I was no longer welcome in the house.

The next several months went by in a slight haze. I know at some point I told her that if the child was mine I would marry her. This made her happy, and if she ever was anything but happy with me at the beginning she never let on. If only I would have been able to do the same things might have turned out differently.

On December 29, 1996, just three short months after my nephew was born, my son was born. I was in the room the entire time. Jane had gone in with contractions, had dilated to some small degree, but her body eventually stalled. She kept talking about wanting an epidural, but fate was not on her side as the nurses said they would probably have to induce labor since she was already dilated to such a degree. I thought that it would be some kind of complicated procedure the way they were all talking about it, but in reality it wasn’t. What inducement of labor was in this case was a simple plastic hook they inserted and punctured the placenta. They had hoped Jane would stay at her current dilation long enough to get the epidural in, but no. Almost immediately she shot to 7 or 8 centimeters and the anesthesiologist did not have enough time to administer the epidural. Natural childbirth was in her very immediate future.

The entire process was a miracle. And I swear the doctor came in with just enough time to catch the boy, but in reality he was there for a good fifteen minutes before the head came out. There was lots of heavy breathing, grunts, shouts of encouragement from me and everyone else in the room, and finally everything went quiet for a few seconds. A cry pierced the silence as my son trumpeted the release of his first breath of real air. Everything just happened so fast I was completely unprepared when the doctor looked over at me and said, “come here and cut the umbilical cord.” I stood there stunned as the nurse handed me the scissors and the doctor pointed to a spot between two clamps for me to cut. I steadied my hand for a moment and cut, rather easily, through the tissue. The nurses rushed around him, cleaning and wrapping under a heat lamp, and finally they handed him to me.

There he was, my son, wrapped up like a giant burrito in my arms, and I instantly fell in love with him. I could not imagine why I ever thought he could be someone else’s child. I stood there, stared into his face, and the world just went away for a few minutes as I burned the image into my mind. Before long the world came back to me and I heard Jane asking to hold her baby. I took him over to her and laid him in her arms. I have never been filled with so much love in any of my short years before or since. We named him Drakkar Harley, both of which are old names from my family. Harley from my great-grandfather, and Drakkar from much further back before the Mayflower when the family line was still in France. We always called him either Drakkar or Drake. That night as she slept, I held him in my arms as I laid back in those fold down chairs they have in Cox and told him about his family. I told him who he was and where he came from and the long line he was the heir to. We both fell asleep in that chair.

Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly sad and hopeless, I go back to that moment right before I fell asleep in that chair with him, and it all goes away.

The first of many mistakes to follow occurred that morning when I neglected to put my name on the birth certificate. But there he was, my son, all big brown eyes and wrinkled up body. The truth that he is my son came on the wings of a paternity test called upon by the state’s family services division when Jane went looking for aid.

Things were okay at first. Well, as okay as two teenage parents can be. She found a job first, a graveyard shift at a nursing home, which left me at home with the kids. (I may have forgotten to mention she already had a son.) At first I was really alright with this arrangement. I took care of the kids and she made the money. I did not, however, take very good care of the house. Most of the time it was trashed beyond anything that one person could handle. I was an extreme procrastinator in that sense. But I always took care of the kids, made sure they were washed, fed, and were allowed to play. I wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the means, but I did my best: calling my mother or Jane’s mother when I ran into something I either wasn’t sure of or couldn’t natively handle.

I didn’t have a driver’s license. I got it suspended when I was 17 after getting far too many speeding tickets on my license in a year. I didn’t know there was a point system attached to your license until then. So I was quite literally stuck at home with the boys. Jane had the only car and would sometimes work until noon. Furthermore, she would not let me drive the thing to go look for a job. Since she went to sleep pretty much immediately after she got home, It was near to impossible for me to go looking for a job in the mornings without taking the kids. I don’t know if anyone else had this experience, but it was almost exactly like the scene in Mr. Mom where Jack takes his children into the interview with him. They are a hindrance to getting the job. You can’t leave the children in the lobby for someone else to watch and the interviewer wants to get the interview over with as quickly as possible to get you and your brats out of his office. They do not get a good feel for you as a possible employee. Plus bringing your children with you on an interview could show your possible future employer that you will have difficulties procuring reliable childcare, which just shows you as a risky employee they will not want to invest in.

After a couple of months of this, Jane and I started fighting about various things. I needed to get out of the house without the kids on occasion. She told me I needed to find a job. I explained to her exactly what I said in the previous paragraph. We didn’t fight all the time, but when we did wow were they big. There was one time we were in the middle of a good fight and she balled up her fist to take a swing at me. I caught her arm in mid air and told her that if she was going to hit me like that then I would respond in kind. Thankfully I was never tested to keep my word because it was a completely empty threat.

During those first several months and through the entire time we were fighting, we had found an apartment with one bedroom. It was so cramped but it was all we could afford. Her son in his bed and our son in his crib and our tiny twin bed in a room that was only designed to sleep two people at most and that was stretching it. We had also been keeping up on our doctor’s visits pretty regularly. I don’t think it was very long after we got into our apartment that we got the first visit from the Division of Family Services

When DFS showed up at my house the first thing that ran through my mind was, “oh god they’re going to take my son!” I showed all the protective bravado I could for a scared eighteen year old without a clue. I asked for a warrant, the police officer that came along with the case worker said he didn’t need one and if I didn’t let them in I would be arrested. They couldn’t have come at a better time. The house was trashed and they had actually woken me up so I had not fed the children yet. Jane had been asleep for about an hour but at least she was there. I was so stunned by everything that was going on I didn’t pay much attention to what she was saying, but I could tell none of it was good.

To this day I do not know the exact reason why we had the visit in the first place, but like all good little humans, I can speculate. I remember Drake’s pediatrician saying that he wasn’t gaining any weight. I also remember during another one where his doctor said he had lost a little weight. I specifically remember the doctor saying that he was concerned about Drake failing to thrive. I believe the doctor’s office called DFS because Drake wasn’t thriving like a normal child his age should have been, and so they were required to call DFS about a possible case of neglect.

We were given a full-time caseworker with weekly visits after the initial one. We took Drake off of breast milk and put him on formula and Jane and I took a more active stance on keeping the house clean. We did our best to get our act together because I was for damn sure going to get DFS out of my children’s lives. It went slowly and we eventually got downgraded from weekly to bi-weekly, then to monthly, and then to unscheduled surprise visits. This is when the story begins to get weird.

I thought we were doing extremely well and were following the “plan” DFS had given us fairly well. A couple of odd things happened in relatively rapid succession: first, we had to give up our phone, and second; they sent us a letter about how they were no longer going to be sending any more caseworkers by.

We had to give up the phone because we couldn’t afford it. It was either pay the utility bill or pay the phone bill, we chose to have electricity and heat rather than the convenience of a phone. Somehow though, this was an unacceptable choice for DFS. Apparently DFS does not like it when you lose your phone, and it prompted another surprise visit from our caseworker. We tried in vain to explain our decision, but to no avail as the situation still counted against us. The only reasoning for this I can think of is if we had to call 911 for some reason. But we lived in an apartment complex with about a half dozen people and even if all of them happened to be gone there were other people in the vicinity to call on for help.

It was at this point we got a new caseworker. Things did not go well with this caseworker. Probably because of the phone, but I’m not for sure.

(Take note; all of the preceding happened over what I recall over 8 months starting about mid-January of 1996.)

In August of that year, I was told my great-grandmother was nearing the end of her life and that if I wanted see her before she died I had better go soon. I remember my great-grandmother was the most kind and bright women I will probably ever know. She always had a smile on her lips and was always grateful to see anyone she knew as kin. So when the opportunity presented itself to see her in the beginning of September, I took it. The first regret I had was deciding not to take Drake with me to see his great-grandmother. I believe Jane and I decided it wouldn’t be a good idea as Drake wasn’t feeling well and with DFS being strange they may not have been alright with me taking him out of state. Oh how I wish every day I would have gone ahead and taken him.

This is the part where my life fell into shambles. My mother and I left on a Friday heading for Illinois where my great-grandmother lived. I distinctly remember the house being in a slight, but not dangerous, shamble when I left. The biggest thing that was bad had to have been the pile of dishes I left in the sink. I told Jane about this long before I left. It had been an extremely late night packing the children up to stay with Jane’s mom for the following morning between when I had to leave and when Jane got off work. Jane’s mother had left with the children roughly 20 minutes before my mother showed up, so there wasn’t any time to get any cleaning done as I had hoped. I didn’t want to leave the house in the shamble it was for fear that DFS would come over while we weren’t there and give us even more bad marks, but I had to leave and hope for the best.

Mom and I drove for seven hours and stopped in at the nursing home where my great-grandmother was living to say hello to her and to let her know we had arrived safely. After seeing her and being reminded of what a wonderfully bright person she was, I was entirely ready to take on whatever could be thrown at me. She was the type of person who just brought out the best in people. When mom and I arrived at the hotel room, I called Jane’s mother to check in on Jane and the kids, but no one answered the phone so I left a message. The next morning I called again to check in, but no one answered the phone then either and by this time my internal alarms were going off like you wouldn’t believe. I finally calmed down after thinking that Jane probably went back home with the kids and her mom was likely at work. Mom and I spent several hours that morning with my great-grandmother and left her to get some rest while we went to see some old friends of the family. We went back and spent several hours with her again that evening and finally returned to the hotel room later that night. Again I tried to get in touch with my family to no avail. I had started to freak out at this point because I had not been out of touch with them for so long before. I remember at some point Jane’s mother answered her phone and gave me some excuse about the phone having been weird for the last several days, but that Jane was at work and the kids were asleep. I’m pretty sure at this point I was lied to very heavily.

The next morning I went through the same round of unanswered phones. We spent the morning with my great-grandmother again and then left for home. It was the last time I would see her alive. Two or three months from then she died.

When I finally got home the house was in the exact same shape it was when I left it the three days prior. This did not make me a very happy camper. My children and my fiancée were no where to be found and it appeared they never came home at any point in time while I was gone. Becoming more and more livid as time wore on, I set out for Jane’s mother’s house hoping to find them there. What I found there did not help my state of mind in the least.

I found my soon-to-be mother-in-law, her son, and my fiancée all waiting for me. I think they had been taking some time to come up with the story they were going to tell me at this point. Jane came over to me as her mother asked me to sit down. I asked them where our kids were and Jane finally broke down into tears. She said in a blubber that DFS had taken them.

My world shattered. I tried to remain calm while I told her to tell me everything. She said that DFS had come by the morning I left and found the house a shambles. She then said the caseworker persuaded her to give up the kids because if she did the judge always looked more favorably on a parent willing to work with the system than against it. What an utter fool she was and what an even bigger fool I was to believe her.

My son had been taken from me while I was out of state. His mother and her family tried to hide it from me until I came home. I was betrayed at every turn and it was not going to be the last time either.

What occurred over the next year defies my higher brain functioning, but it happened. We were told several things that had to be done before we could get the children back. We both had to be working, we needed to get a domicile that had at least three bedrooms (one for us and one for each child), we had to keep both of these things for what I believe was at least six months before they would even consider giving temporary custody back, and we had to attend parenting classes. It was that last point on the list that really got stuck in my craw.

I went at first, being all too eager to jump through whatever hoops they threw in front of me to get my son back, but it became increasingly apparent that this woman knew nothing of raising a child. Even with my short 18 months of experience (between Jane’s first son and the time we spent together, about 18 months) I and everyone else there could tell she was full of it. I believe it was a 12 week class and in my fourth week I finally raised my hand and asked her if she had children of her own.

She chuckled mousily and replied “No, but I have a degree from SMSU that is state recognized as capable of teaching the proper way of raising children.” I sat there, dumbfounded, as did at least three quarters of the class.

I got up and left.

Jane did not follow me.

I waited out in the car for her to get done. I would have left entirely and just come back for her, but she had the keys. When she got to the car, I stood there and stared at her, the hate and mistrust welling up inside me. I don’t remember speaking to her the rest of the night, but the next morning we had such a huge fight the neighbors actually came over to check if everyone was alright.

I will admit that a lot of what occurred after this was a blur. I know that I ended up back down in Aurora, but I can’t remember the exact circumstances that caused it. I think it was because we lost our apartment. I remember I couldn’t find a job because I didn’t have a car and everywhere I went wouldn’t work around the bus schedule. Jane had lost her job at the nursing home long before this and was having difficulties finding work herself. We were still together but barely seeing each other. At first I moved in with my best friend at the time, back into the house that Drake was conceived in. I stayed there and looked for work, being unsuccessful as ever. Eventually he sold the house and moved, but I stayed there for a while longer even after all the utilities had been shut off. I had become a squatter.

I dumpster dove for unopened cans of whatever food was available, and sometimes I would show up at my mom’s or my sister’s and get some food. When I got back to the cold and very empty house I would light a small fire on the stove using brush from the yard or whatever waste I could find and cook the opened can right on the fire. My family didn’t know I was essentially homeless at this point and neither did Jane. After about a month of this, somehow my mom found out and showed up at the house. She told me to get my stuff and that I was coming home.

I eventually found a job after moving back in with her. Working back at Sonic in Marionville. Luckily they were able to give me a shift that coincided with my dad’s shift at his pawn shop in Springfield so for the better part of the next 8 months he took me to work and picked me up. On Thursdays I would go on up to Springfield with him and I would walk to Jane’s apartment so we could go see the boys together. It became so much of a routine I could walk the entire way and never look up once. Her apartment was a tiny little efficiency that barely had a bedroom and was definitely not fit for three people, let alone two. But she still had one up on me, an apartment of her own as well as a job.

I don’t know why I never moved back in with her. Probably because I needed to keep the job and couldn’t come up to Springfield to find another. I know we talked about it, but I still can’t for the life of me remember why I never did.

It wasn’t long after we started doing this that I came up one day and she wasn’t at her apartment. I spent all day looking for her, and when it came time for the visitation, I just went hoping that she would be there. My expectations weren’t wrong. When I got there she was already waiting; with another guy. This was when I realized another simple truth: friends garnered through significant others will never truly be your friend. He had been a pretty decent friend while her and I were together, and now that I think back, it wasn’t very surprising that it happened. Even then I wasn’t very angry with her. Oh I yelled at her and called her a whore and demeaned her in every way I could, but it was only for show. By the time this had happened any feelings I had for this woman were completely gone.

After that, another blur came and went as I tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do. My contact with DFS dwindled as I believe I was set aside as someone unimportant. I remember at one point I tried to hike to Springfield to see my son because I couldn’t find a ride. I fell over somewhere around billings because my feet had blistered over so badly. I tried everything I could to keep up on what was going on, but I was kept out of the loop for some reason. I would give them updated contact information, new phone numbers and new addresses, but it was to no avail.

At some point during the summer my dad, bless this man, bought me a car. I was partially free. I started looking for work in Springfield and found it working graveyard at Hardee’s on the corner of Elm and National. At first I was driving back and forth between Aurora and Springfield, staying with my good friend Rick during the week and heading back to Aurora on my days off. It wasn’t long before I was finally able to find an apartment. I got a roommate (who didn’t last very long), and found a new job making much more money at the Best Western Coach House Inn as the night auditor. Things were finally starting to look up and I redoubled my efforts to keep DFS updated to my status.

I should have known I was screwed when they canceled my visitations because, if I remember correctly, it was too much of a hassle to bring the children in twice in a week. Wanting to seem as compliant as possible, I agreed.

I will never forget the day in August when I got the letter from my court appointed attorney telling me that my court date was coming up. I made an appointment with him and we met a few days later. I explained my situation to him, I argued, I pleaded, I tried everything I could, but it was to no avail. He vehemently recommended that I voluntarily waive my parental rights. He wanted to save me from having to go through a long and embarrassing court episode where the prosecutor did everything they could to vilify me. After three hours of this, I eventually relented and signed the papers.

It was the worst mistake I have ever made. I went home and cried for hours, I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore, until every single tear I could ever shed was spent. The physical tears stopped years ago, but the emotional and psychological tears have never stopped. I have celebrated his birthday, December 29th, every year since he was taken. I keep him in my heart wherever I go and as cliche as this sounds; there is not a day that goes by when I don’t thing about him. I pass children on the street and wonder if it is him. I wonder if he’s still in the state. I wonder if Jane lost custody too or if she still has him.

This last thought was an extremely sobering one and only came to me a few years ago thanks to a now ex-girlfriend. There is a possibility Jane still has our son and if that is the case, what, if anything, has she told him about me? I think I almost ran into her a few years back. I was at the Andy’s Frozen Custard on South Campbell, enjoying a small butter pecan concrete She has a very distinctive voice; a slight speech impediment that I always found to be one of her more endearing qualities since it made some of what she said sound cute.

I should have put this down in words ten years ago. Drake, if you ever read this, please know that I did everything I could, but it wasn’t enough. I am so very sorry. I don’t think anyone will ever really know how guilty I feel over what happened. I wish I could take it back. I wish I could go back and change something, tell myself to take you with me to see your great-great-grandmother, tell myself not to walk out of that stupid parenting class, tell myself not to sign those damned papers, or tell myself to simply try harder. I failed you, I failed as a father, and I failed as a human being. I don’t ever expect you to understand, nor do I expect anyone else to, but I at least needed to put this down in my own words.

The lawyer, the caseworker, even my parents all told me that I couldn’t hope to give you the kind of life you deserved. The last time I actually prayed, before giving all that up, was with a hope that I did the right thing. You have been in my thoughts every single day since then. I have never forgotten you. But even if by some slim miracle you haven’t forgotten me, even if you hate me for what I did, or even if I am nothing but a casually dismissed memory; no matter what you may think of me and no matter what anyone tells you, your father still loves you. I always have and I always will.