What started out as a typical day: the birds chirping in the sky, the squirrels in my trash can. The children running to catch the school bus. Then I was transported…
As if I was present but with my eyes, I was reliving a moment, felt like yesterday. The air was bitter cold. My teeth chattered. I saw the window she’d climb through to get in my bed for a quick nap and go back out on the street.
We all knew she had a drug problem. I was about twelve years old at the time. Sneaking my Aunt through the window. My mother said she needed tough love. I disagreed, but I knew not to talk back to her or that would be a quick slap in the mouth.
It went on for months, tapping the window, I’d let her in. She’d be crying saying that she didn’t want to die out there in the street.
Krissy pray, for me, would you?
I don’t think I was the right person.
I said to myself. Why didn’t she go to a pastor or Rehab but I tried.
I said Lord help her…
That was the end of my prayer watching her strung out. Climbing in and out of my window. And when she didn’t come home.
I’d say, mom. She’d answer: I know, she’s missing right.
We’d all get in the car and drive to abandon houses where crack addicts slept in the gutters of dilapidated property’. Then ask around at gas stations.
And we went home that day without any progress.
The next morning, mommy said she was going to check the hospitals and sure enough, we found her.
She could barely talk, out of a full body cast.
What happened?
Aunt Trisha: I was at a gas station: I was going to get my life right. You know, change for good. That’s when I asked this man for a ride home. He said yea. So I hopped in. But the second he pulled off, he pulls out a gun.
Now we are on the highway I-80, going eighty miles per hour. He says to take off your clothes and I yell Jesus I’m tired, I’m tired…
I unbutton my shirt, as I pushed on the door as hard as I could. I jumped onto the highway. I saw an eighteen wheeler headed straight for me. I ball up, just started rolling and rolling. I just knew I was dead. I knew it…
I didn’t feel my body hit the pavement.
I didn’t feel not one bone brake…
It’s no way I’d survive this.
For the next few months, Aunt Trisha came home to live with us. Every day before and after school my sister and I washed her. Bathed her down in medical solution and ointment, wrapped her up as best as possible.
I watched her skin fall off in my hands, her flesh was raw and opened. She stunk really bad. The whole house smelled like her – rotten mold decaying by the second.
After eight months she could use the crutches. My sister and I were no longer her live-in nurses.
Aunt Trisha: I wanna thank you, girls, for taking care of me. And for my big sister letting me stay here. I’ve signed for rehab and they’ve got a spot for me. She sobbed…
All we could do was wrap our arms around her.
Have we failed God? Surely I have…
My aunt Trisha cleaned up her life for a moment but in a few years, she was back out on the street. It wasn’t until she found herself expecting her first child. High once more, she flagged me down in the driveway.
Krissy, she shouted but her belly met me first. She started sobbing, pray for me I don’t wanna to do crack and have this baby.
This time I’m older, I lead her through the prayer of faith… God move this mountain. When we are weak, be strong in us. When we fail, help us to go harder after you…
Needless to say, her daughter is turning eighteen this year. Trisha has been clean for fourteen years and counting…
The ups and downs of walking this life of faith:
simply keep going. God does the fixing. We keep believing and that goes for me too.
~your kindness sister Krissy Mosley signing off…
(true stories from my life and I have more to tell) thank you for reading …♥
Laughter is
A Poet's Vision 