I’m about seven years old. Living with dad, just the two of us, after awhile everything became fairly routine. It’s amazing in some ways in which I was able to adjust to life after the divorce. This is the time when I the son get to be center stage. My dad and me, living alone together, spending time together, all great. Yes the toys kept coming. I was fairly happy. Then it happened. There was to be a new arrival in my life. We, my dad and I were standing at the airport watching the planes come and go, all very exciting. On the drive there, my dad explained that we were going to meet a woman. This woman was to be my new mom. Hold on when did this all happen? Did I fall asleep and only now wake up. When did dad meet this new woman? How come I’ve never met her? Why are we meeting her at the airport? I’m so confused. I’m so excited. I’m scared. I’m curious. What if I don’t want to meet her? To late. The plane has landed; people are leaving the plane and are starting to walk across the tarmac. My father points her out. She is pretty. She is to be my new mom. Things started getting weird for me. I’m dressed in a suit and tie; our house is full of my dad’s friends. Some I know, some I don’t. I am walking around to people holding a silver tray with food on it. It’s a big day. Everyone is happy, celebrating. My dad and the woman I met at the airport are now married. Husband and wife. So, this is really going to be my new mom, it’s official. This is the day the WAR began between my step mom and I. For what seemed to be forever, I had my dad all to myself, and now there was an intruder, an outsider, that had come between us. My dad and her started spending great amounts of time together. All the attention no longer belonged solely to me. I was no longer number one in his life. I became mean, obnoxious, a dark little tornado spinning out of control through their lives. The more my step mom tried to be nice to me, the more I disliked her. When she tried to do kind things for me, I rebelled harder. But when she tried to show me that she could love me, I tried to destroy her. I really escalated my mission of rampage in both their lives the day I found out that my step mom already was the mother of a little boy and that he was to come and join our family. I remember clearly the day he arrived. I came home from school, I walked into the room they had set up for him, and there in the crib he lay sleeping. A chubby, yet strongly built little boy of perhaps two years old, blonde golden hair, blue eyes, Chris. He was to be my brother. For a little while things were okay, as all this was so new to me. Curiosity can only hold it’s own for so long. I started to be mean to him every chance I had. How my parents put up with this I can only imagine. Around my own friends I made him an outcast. Even though I could see this hurt him I did not stop it. He would look sad, maybe cry and then suddenly a few minutes later come back smiling and try to play with us again. This would happen over and over again. In the mean time my step mom got pregnant and had another boy. This time this brother to be had dark, thick hair, Rob, and a totally different out look on life. From day one he was very much his own person, naturally kind and willing to please those around him. My two younger brothers got along great. I on the other hand was still a demon, and so life continued on. All this time my step mom hanging in there trying to be my mom, to appease me, trying to please me. Not to say there were no good, fun times. There were, and I wasn’t always a bad person. I concentrate on the not so good events because at this time it is necessary. I suddenly remember an event in my life. I am perhaps eight years old, and my father sends me with a couple he knows to Switzerland to live with a family. I believe this came about because we were going to live in Austria, and they sent me ahead, as they would catch up later. So, off I go on my first real adventure, scared and excited at the same time. I leave South Africa, warmth, sunshine, to land in the middle of winter in Switzerland, to live with a family I don’t know. I do remember the family had a daughter, and she was nice to me, treated me just like her own brother. She used to take me out to feed her rabbits in the snow. Which was a whole experience in it’s self. It was the first time I saw and felt snow. It was also the first time I saw a TV screen. For a while there they couldn’t drag me away from it. I would sit and eat my dinner in front of the screen, with my eyes about five inches away from the screen. It is no wonder I now wear glasses. Anyway my parents catch up and we live in Austria for a while on my dads parents farm. Great fun. Somewhere, along the way we decide to move to Canada. We arrive in 1967/68 in Montreal, by ship, the Alexander Pushkin. I believe it is during the world Exposition. From there we start crossing Canada to the west coast by train. My father meets a German conductor, and he lives in BC, on the coast, the lower mainland of Vancouver. We are invited to live with him, his wife and many daughters. I now have what I can only describe as a variety of sisters, and two brothers. We settle in and we start life again. After a while we have our own house, I’m generally happy, however I’ve become more selfish, and there are still the mean streaks against my blonde brother Chris who is now five going on six, so kind, yet very stubborn in his ways. My other brother Robert is as he always is outgoing, loves everyone, and has a great zest for life. It is at this time my father builds our first home, and shortly after we move in. We’re all very excited. All is going seemly well for us; Christmas is just around the corner, and then it all changes. Outside there is a foot or two of snow on the ground; it is around eight in the morning, I sit in front of the TV watching cartoons. I don’t know what Rob and Chris are doing; my parents are just getting up. My father gets out of his bed, makes his coffee, heads back to bed. He calls me in to the bedroom and asks if I can go down the street about two miles away to get him cigarettes and a paper. I’m happy, I decide to try and ski down to the store to get the things he wants. My brother Chris wants to come with me, I don’t want him to. I as usual get angry, then mean, then irate. As I’m bigger I push him down, I throw him against the wall, he cries, I verbally abuse him, my dad gets angry, but I win my way, and leave with out him. I’m almost home from the store. I’m about a block away from the house. I look up at the sky and see huge plumes of smoke hanging over the neighborhood. I start to speed up; I want to see whets going on. By the time I am almost at our house I see it all. There are people, neighbors, everywhere. There are fire trucks, people running, screaming, crying, I catch a glimpse of my father running in front of our house. Our house is totally engulphed in flames. There are flames everywhere, smoke, flames, more smoke. I am once more frozen in time, and then suddenly someone grabs me and I am taken across the street to a neighbor’s house. I sit in the middle of the living room floor on a stool, I try to look out the window at our house, and someone stops me. I just sit there looking down at the floor, numb. I hear moaning coming from a bedroom in the house, I look towards the sound, and see a man walk down the haul way with a black bag. A woman tells me it is a doctor. She tells me he is giving something to my mom to help keep her calm. I get up I want to see my mom. She takes me down the hallway, and I stop at the bedroom door. I see my mom lying in bed; she rolls her head over and gazes at me. All I can think of is I’m almost eleven, I have to be strong, I have to help her. I walk over, stand beside her bed, reach out my hand to hold her and completely fall apart, falling into her crying heavily. She holds me tight telling me it’s all right; everything’s going to be all right. Someone gently pulls me away telling me my mother needs to rest. They take me back to the living room, they tell me, someone tells me my dad will see me soon and they are bringing my brother Rob to see me. The last words I hear are that my brother Chris is dead. He has died in the fire. We stay with the family we first lived with when we arrived in Canada. There support is beyond what I can describe. The entire community becomes an extended family. It is about a year later and my father has had the house rebuilt in a somewhat different style. We move into it, we try to forget what happened, we try to continue our lives. My parents and my brother are out visiting friends; I am alone in the house. I am downstairs in the carport on my knees building something, the door leading into the basement hallway from the carport is open the lights on. As I’m building away I have the feeling someone is watching me, I raise my head look around and see nothing. I go back to my project. Again I get the feeling that I’m being watched, only this time stronger. Once more I look up and then face the hallway door. I freeze. In the hallway doorframe opening I find myself staring eye to eye with Chris. He just stands there looking at me. He smiles staring at me. In one brief moment I become so scared I run out the other back carport door, across the street to stand under the street lamp. There I wait till my dad, mom, and brother return home. I never tell them about that event. I never forget that event. Looking back at these events was very hard. In writing this tears were flowing pretty hard. When I finished the above paragraph I had the distinct feeling of Chris being in the room again. I believe what happened so clearly demonstrates one of the biggest lessons my Soul was at that time given and I never even clued in completely to how strong the lessons were, until now. I think back at how I treated Chris through out his short life here on earth, and am so ashamed at myself. Yet, I also see him teaching me what Real unconditional love means, and is. Time after time no matter how badly I treated him, this little Soul with the blonde hair the blues eyes would always wish to be with me, to try and be my brother, to love me and I thank him, and one day when it is my turn to leave the earth plane I will meet him and I will Love him as much as I do in this very moment. My step mom. No my mom. No matter how bad a kid I was to her. How much I tried to hate her. How much I tried to disrespect her. She showed me what it is to never give up. She always, always, kept on giving me encouragement to be the best I could be. In any thing I wanted to try, anything I wanted to attempt. My mom that encouraged me in my art. When she took an interest in my artistic drawings, in those moments I felt as tall as the empire state building. She never gave up trying to love me, and then one day the wall broke and crumbled and while she was in her deepest pain, having lost her own son, she still reached out to comfort me, to give me strength. There were times later on in life when I wanted to do things that she knew might hurt me, times when she was dead set against my actions of trying to prove myself to the outside world. To my friends, to others, she let me find out for myself what happens when I make certain choices, take certain actions, and the consequences of those actions. Mom thank you, I Love you and always will.
