Sunshine's Story
Child of my Life
My mother died in August, just three weeks before my birthday. Two days prior to my birthday, my friend gave birth to her last daughter. She knew it was the last because she'd had them both Caesarian. She named her Sunshine Brandi. She died 11 years later on 19 Nov. Her mother, who had married young and wasn't prepared for it, had always told me not to have children of my own, I could borrow hers. So I took her word for it. In that funny way that God has in giving something to ease unbearable pain, Kennetha gladly shared her with me. My Uncle Bus thought she was the most beautiful and loving baby he had ever seen and he didn't even like babies. He'd ask me to go get her and bring her to the store so he could play with her. She was special even then. Since my mother died at home and I found her - amongst other reasons, like teenage angst - I didn't want to live there anymore. Not to mention that my sister and I now lived with my mother's unmarried brother and sister. He thought women were to be seen and not heard. That certainly didn't sit well with a hippie chick like me. We couldn't practice the piano when he was home and had to stay in our part of the house. He didn't want to spend the money for a color TV for heaven's sake. My aunt would just sigh and shake her head. So I moved in with Sunshine and her sister and mother after her divorce. The four of us got along famously and I became even more attached to Shiner. Finally, I got married and moved in with my husband.
When she got a little older, her mother had a job in Richmond and brought her to my house so that I could watch her. She was a little confused by all of this and would often call me mama. Never called Rex dada, though. Often times, she'd stay the week at my house while her mom was out being a real hippie with a job - when it meant something. Finally, Sunshine started developing terrible ear infections and I didn't couldn't give consent for doctors to treatment, so she went back to her mom's. That was the only time Sunshine cried and wouldn't stop. It was the only time she ever got on my husband's nerves. He picked her up, held her over his head and said "Sunshine!! Shut Up!!" It startled her into silence and she laid down and went to sleep. It was just that Sunshine was always a happy baby - she laughed, danced, laid back down and slept until around 10 am everyday. Great for me and it was nice while it lasted. I was a mommy.
A few years later, her mother had an opportunity to move to upstate New York to Lyons, near the finger lakes. They lived in a tiny little house with tiny little rooms. By now her mom had enrolled in a tool & die apprentice program at Kodak. Not many women tool & die makers in the world and that's what she wanted to be. It was a two hour commute to Rochester from their house and it left the kids in a jam. So she did the only thing she knew to do - packed up and moved to Rochester. And lived in the only neighborhood she could afford - the slums. Over the years everyone that knew her had come to realize that Sunshine really did have the shine. She took in stray people like others took in stray animals. She told some people I was her mommy and I so proud of her that I didn't correct them. After all, didn't her mother give her to me?? We had visited there 2 or 3 times over the years and stayed a few days.
The place they found was small, but one from which this family could grow. It would have been enough for any other family of three, but not with Sunshine. She hit that house like a hurricane - it was full. Full of Sunshine whirling and twirling her way through it, around it, and over it. There wasn't nearly enough room here for those three, legitimately, not to mention the various strays, both human and animal, that Sunshine and her mother brought there. That time, she came in with a girl who was several inches taller and several years older than Shiner. I thought this was bad news, but when I asked, her mother said that Sunshine became friends with her because she had no other friends. That it was odd didn't bother either of them, so why should we worry either.
They gave ISTEP tests at her school that fall and found that she was in the 99th percentile of all the kids her age. A major intelligence in that one and she was invited to go to an accelerated learning school. It was all the way across town so they moved to a nice apartment. The school bus schedule wasn't straightened out so Mother dropped them off at the babysitter's for that last week at the old school. She walked Cari to class that started at 8 and walked the few short blocks back to the babysitter's. Only she never arrived. The school called the babysitter and people began looking for her. As luck would have it, Cari found her body. In a few days the guy turned himself in and confessed. He said he just wanted to be her friend. "Sadly," her mother said, "she would have been, too."
The last time we went up there she was running out of the house before we had even turned the engine off and threw her self in my arms. She loved everyone. And she WAS that a friend to that too-tall girl. I didn't see them for some time after that because I was out of work and money and struggling. They came down for the summer that year and since there was so little opportunity to take a picture of the House/Cash/McKendree/Chew kids, the grandkids gathered for what proved to be their final picture. And what a picture it was!!! Cari was looking a little annoyed, the littler ones were making faces, or crying, or both, and Sunshine stood at the other end with her head looking up at the ceiling. It's almost like she knew and was saying "Please God, just a little more time!!!" The man was convicted of 3 counts of second degree murder and was required to stay half of each sentence before being eligible for parole, and each charge carried a mandatory 35 to life sentence to be served consecutively. He'd have to stay in for 52 1/2 years as a child rapist. I wanted him to suffer those slings and arrows hard. Now they are changing it and it looks like if he isn't out now he will be soon.
Sunshine is buried on a hill at a local cemetery. It has a cherub statue by the spot her mother picked out. It gets the full sunshine everyday. I miss her everyday and often go visit her when things are troubling me. I don't always get out of the car. Sometimes, I'll pick up a sandwich and go sit by her grave and eat it. Just having lunch with an old friend. I've stopped and listened to a song on the radio, then go on. I don't obsess or hover around. I just pay my respects. Strangely, the only time I was ever scared in a cemetery was in relationship to her grave. At first, her mother endeavored to have things for each holiday for her to share. I really don't know if she still does, but I suspect, in the finest Fried Green Tomato fashion, that the Beekeeper is still charming the bees. It was on Halloween night, just a year after she died. Her mother had put a jack-o-lantern and candle on the grave and wanted it to be burning at midnight. Since I finished work at 11:30, I said I'd go by and make sure it was lit. Of course, it wasn't. And of course, I had to turn off my car in order to go light it. It was nearly midnight. I got back in the car and of course, the car wouldn't start. Every fear I'd ever harbored from Night of the Living Dead came roaring to the front and I wanted to run screaming from the grounds. Silly me. I forgot that Sunshine wouldn't let anything happen to me. Regardless, I rolled the car down the hill, jumped in and popped the clutch, driving madly away. I felt like such a complete idiot and thought Sunshine had a good laugh on me that day.
Sunshine was the child of my life. No one that came before, nor anyone who ever comes after, effected me the way she did. It was because of the loss of her that I returned to college and finished my degree, in psychology. It was because of her that I began working with the mentally retarded for lousy money and the opposite in love returned. It was because of her that I stayed at the developmental center when everyone had gotten smart and bailed out. She is the reason - as I've said - for every thing that I do. Her life, and death, taught me something that cannot be conveyed in these words, but it was profound. The day of her funeral is as clear in my mind as it was all those years ago. The pain and loss are as acute. At the cemetery, her mother hugged me and said, "We lost one today." It was the most profound thing that has ever happened to me. When her mother told me to take her kids, she was joking, halfway. I accepted in the same vein. But all of these years later, it was a gift whose joys - and heartaches - are boundless. Thank you, Kennetha, for the gift of your child. This is my gift in return to you.
