Where's the Good in Living When All That You Loved is Gone

By T. Michael Fox

T. Michael Fox was born in Elgin Illinois in 1958 and raised in Southern California by a loving family. But he had a deep dark secret that destroyed his life. Now, for the first time, he has exposed that secret to the world in an effort to try and reach out to persons like himself to offer hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: T. Michael Fox
• Release date: Jun 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301793501

T. Michael Fox

Tom Fox was born in Elgin Illinois in 1958 and raised in Southern California by a loving family. But he had a deep dark secret that destroyed his life. Now, for the first time, he has exposed that secret to the world in an effort to try and reach out to persons like himself to offer hope. Though now serving a life sentence in prison, he works everyday trying to help those around him – handicapped as well as able-bodied alike. A die-hard Sci-fi fan and life long Star Trek fan, Mr. Fox collects autographs for fun and also to have something to leave behind to his posterity. You may find other stories written by him at www.pen.org and at www.100plusts.com. “I always thought I’d end up in some dirty bathroom someplace dead with a needle sticking out of my arm and that would be the end of my story. But, with the grace of God and a loving, prayerful family, my adventure in this world continues.” T. Michael Fox

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WHERE IS THE GOOD IN LIVING

(When all that you have loved is gone)

By T. Michael Fox

Front and back cover art by: Arthur E. Ramirez and Gary Moreno

Published @ Smashwords by

Midnight Express Books

WHERE IS THE GOOD IN LIVING

(When all that you have loved is gone)

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 by T. Michael Fox

Front and back cover art by: Arthur E. Ramirez and Gary Moreno

Smashwords License Statement

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Published @ Smashwords by

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This story is dedicated to all those children in this world, who suffer abuse in whatever form. May they find the courage and help they need, to get out from under the oppression of fear they live through every minute of every day.

And to my mom Dorothy, who has prayed for me all these years.

"When I was a child,

I caught a fleeting glimpse,

Out of the corner of my eye.

I turned to look, But it was gone.

I cannot put my finger on it now,

That child is grown,

The dream is gone.

And I have become,

Comfortably numb."

Roger Waters

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

We all experience very much the same sort of things growing up. As babies we all learn to do certain things. Some things come natural; other things are taught to us. In a very short time most of us reach certain milestones, and benchmarks.

We are taught to use the bathroom, get ourselves dressed, talk, read, and so on. Some things we teach ourselves. Some things are shown to us. One of those things that comes both naturally and is taught to us is sex.

I was raped at the age of six years old. That sexual abuse continued at the hands of older boys, a priest, and two coaches for years. This abuse and the things that followed set the stage for a very scary and violent childhood.

This violent and scary childhood set the course for the rest of my life. Things taught to me and things learned by me during my preteen years pretty much made a foundation that the rest of my life was built on. These horrible, scary things became my norm.

Realizing early on that I was very different I felt and still feel out of place, outside of everything around me. Have you ever felt alone in a room full of people? I have spent many years, a lifetime I guess, trying to deal with all I felt and saw. I’m still trying to forget about those days, and years. I’ve tried, prayed, and failed.

Now I am writing about things I have kept hidden. Some would say that these things should be kept out of sight; stashed away in the dark.

A wise old woman, a good friend and retired school teacher, encouraged me with her gentle prodding and reassuring ways that this story needs to be told.

In writing about my early years, I ran into some problems. People’s whose faces still spring up in my nightmares, their names are long forgotten and the swirling and mixing of those months and years. In some cases I have assumed some names to keep the text flowing. And even though I have used my birthdays and school years as reference points, and spent a great deal of time and thought trying to keep the time line as accurate as possible. Some events as written may actually be off by as much as a year one way or the other.

Looking back the years of my youth tend to blend together in a kaleidoscope of terrible images of pain, loneliness, and fear. Horrible images of death, and fantasies about death sprinkled intermittently with an illusion of normalcy and love. Why is it possible to think we love the people who hurt us?

This is a true story of the blending of insanity and hope, violence and peace, love and despair.

INTRODUCTION

As I wrote down the last few words I would ever write in this life, I contemplated what I was about to do next. With no thoughts to anything else, I then tore off a small half inch strip of old bed sheet from my bed. With the help of a bent paper clip I fed the strip of sheet through the heavy metal grate of the air vent above my jail house toilet. When I had the strip passed through the grate and back out again I twisted the sheet and tied a slip knot in the very end. I passed the body of the home-made rope back through the slip knot making a noose similar in fashion to a choke-collar for a dog.

I stood up on the back of my toilet and put my head through the noose and around my neck. My eyes strayed to the words I had written on the paper just a moment before; Where is the good in living when all that you love is gone? Without any further contemplation I stepped off my toilet and dangled in space.

I was surprised how much my body protested against what I was doing. My body kicked and struggled, my hands dug at the noose and grabbed at the air. I watched in detached indifference as the words I had written first blurred and then turned spotted gray. I wondered, How did I get here? How did I get to this dark and final moment of my tortured pathetic life?

I was hoping my world would now fade to black. I was ready for the cold darkness to wrap me like a blanket of peace. I prayed to God to take me, and to keep me from this life I now hoped done, finished, over.

As the words on the paper turned to blackness I felt joy as the jail cell around me went away, but things did not stay black. Instantly I found myself in another place. To my horror I found myself thirty years in the past, in my early childhood home. Was this a distant memory? No! Oh no! This vision became as real as the cement wall I now kicked against, and just as hard to ignore. Truly I was a kid again. I thought to myself, Please not again...

Part 1: In the Beginning

What’s the first thing you remember? Your earliest memory? Can you recall? Is it good, bad, scary, mundane?

My earliest memory is of trying to climb out of my crib. I have no idea how old I was, but from listening to my folks talk I guess I was just about two years old. My crib was located in my parents’ room not far from their bed. My first successful attempt found myself on the ground screaming; maybe that is why I remember it so well. I only remember falling out once, but my mom and dad said it happened regular enough to scrap the crib for a pull-out bed. Then eventually I got my own room.

In those days I had this favorite spot to hide when things got busy around our house. The spot was under the end table next to the couch in the living room. The day my big boy furniture arrived for my new room and the men were unloading the truck I went to that spot, but like a puppy who had grown and not noticed; I didn’t fit any longer. I remember my grandmother picking me up and putting me on the couch.

Grandma Berg, everybody called her Kitty, was from Germany. She had long gray hair that she’d comb out maybe every night. Her hair came down nearly to her waist. After she combed it out she would wrap it up and then the next morning tie it into a bun pinned to the crown of her head. When she talked with me I never really understood her much. Later I was to realize it was because she spoke to me mostly in German.

Kitty escaped from Germany after losing her husband in WW1. Pregnant, Kitty arrived in Canada and eventually made it to the United States where she married a German immigrant and settled in Chicago. Her second daughter was my new adopted mother, Pat. I never met either of my grandpas on my mother’s side. Both of Grandma Kitty’s husbands were gone by the time I came around. I don’t believe I even ever saw pictures of them.

When I was a month old in July of 1958 I was adopted into this family with grandma Kitty and her German and Irish Catholic American Family. The Foxes. My dad George worked part time and was going to school to be some sort of scientist.

George was in his early 40’s dark hair tall and lanky. The best way to describe him would be to say he was the spitting image of the actor, Andy Griffith Sheriff Taylor from the town of Mayberry. The only real difference between the two was not in appearance but in the way they sounded. George was from Chicago born and raised and spoke with a Chicago-Irish accent. Sheriff Taylor was from South Carolina.

The family’s main source of income came from an interest of some sort in a farm run by people working for my grandpa Fox and other investments. My new mother Pat was a homemaker who liked to volunteer for things at church. Pat was a big woman with a booming personality. She loved to sing and could really belt out hymns at church much to my dad’s dismay. Her main interest was cooking and she collected recipes from all over the world. At Christmas time she would turn our kitchen into a bakery. Turning out tins of cookies for all our friends and filling up the cabinets in our kitchen with tins for us.

My dad’s parents’, grandma and Grandpa Fox, were retired and owned two three story apartment buildings in Chicago. Each floor of these buildings was a separate apartment, or as they called them; flats. Grandma and Grandpa Fox lived in one of the flats and rented the others. Their parents, my great-grandparents, came from Ireland and Germany. Both sets of grandparents moved into and raised their families in the Irish and Italian neighborhoods of the South Side of Chicago during the 1920’s, the days of Capone and prohibition.

Both my mom and dad attended the same Catholic school and after my father came back in 1947 from serving in the Army during W.W.II my parents were married; soon after they started planning for me.

My mother was unable to have children of her own, something that weighed heavy on her and seemed to disturb my dad who was worried about his blood line. So in 1951 adoption was put on the table as an alternative. For years they searched for just the right baby. In 1957 they moved to a little village called Fox River Grove, about 50 miles North West of Chicago. Fox River Grove was a quiet out of the way place. A sleepy little hamlet on the Fox River it was surrounded by forests and rolling hills and remains so to this day. The family had an eye on some property in a town called Woodstock a farming community about 20 miles away. Soon after my adoption was completed my mom, dad and grandma Berg (Kitty) moved there.

My father made arrangements with the farmer who owned the land to clear just enough corn to get the trucks in to assemble the house. He picked an area on a slope between two majestic oak trees that stuck out of the corn. From here there was a commanding view of all the rest of the property.

The house was brought in on trucks in pieces and assembled on site. From the front after the house was finished it looked like a typical one story ‘L’ shaped house, painted yellow with white trim and dark green storm shutters. But if you were to walk around the house from the front on either side to the back, the ground sloped away downhill. This exposed the basement on the backside of the house making it look like a two-story house from the backside. This side of the house and basement were done up in glass giving a view to the fields and forests beyond. After the harvest the farmer helped my dad plant a lawn from the road to just past the house on about 2 acres. At the bottom of the hill was still plantable land and the rest of a working farm.

When we moved there, maybe some time in 1959, Grandma Berg came with us not only so she wasn’t alone but also to help with me. My parents’ pets also came along. An old black terrier mix named Stubby, a 15-year-old bird dog raised in the inner city. And an old mouser cat named Bandit.

Bandit got his name from the black mask he had that made him look a little like a raccoon. Bandit the cat didn’t last long. A family story said shortly after arriving at the farm he ran away. I knew him only from pictures. Stubby, on the other hand lived till I was about three. When he became intolerant of me and most everything else, painful arthritis was the reason my folks put him down. I really didn’t understand all that, at the time, all I knew was they had killed my dog. I felt sad and confused. I just couldn’t understand why my dad would kill our dog, especially since he’d been a pet of my father’s for 15 years or more. To this day, I can’t believe people can put their dogs down like that. Oh, I understand why they do it; I just don’t understand how they can live with themselves after doing it.

As I grew, I learned more and more about the farms in the area. I started taking an active role with regular chores when I was in nursery school. Grandma liked getting up to take care of all of us. Soon I was helping grandma. Grandma would ladle off the cream from the milk we got right from the source, and pour some of the milk over ice to get it cold for breakfast. I’m not sure if it was still warm from the cow, or from pasteurizing, but I’m inclined to think it was right from the cow.

By the time I got back from nursery school, grandma would be on the porch knitting or churning butter. I’d do my chores around the house like emptying the trash and if grandma was making butter I’d help with that.

I guess I was about to turn 4 years old when the big freezer came into the basement and our milk started arriving in the mornings by truck. We had another freezer for pork and other stuff like homemade sausage. Mom and grandma still canned the stuff from the garden, and made homemade jams. You would think we were a family of 10 instead of just 4. However family tradition and something to do with my dad’s lodge dictated that we keep up to a year’s worth of supplies on hand at any one time. To this day, I’m unsure why.

On my 4th birthday in June of 1962, I was given a puppy and kitten from a farm down the road. They were the last two left from their respective litters and had become buddies. Crying for each other when separated, they came as a package deal.

The puppy was a little dachshund with a golden buckskin color and little white boots on the front legs, and the kitten was just a regular old ordinary tabby all striped like a little orange tiger hence his name, Tiger. We named the dog Charlie. I was still in my last year of nursery school, and don’t remember much about the next year. I was still trying to find my place and make friends, looking back I guess I was a little shy and reserved. Making friends never came easy for me. Even, in the beginning.

At some point my father gave me two rows in the victory garden next to the house to try and plant things like squash, pumpkins and watermelon trying to get me interested in making things grow. Things like melons, squash, and sunflowers worked really well. The biggest thing I ever planted was Peruvian corn. The stalk can grow to nearly 20 feet or more tall and the ears of corn it produces are a foot long, and the kernels are bigger than a thumbnail. I think this corn or something like it is where we get corn nuts.

Dad was always doing things like this to get me interested in stuff. One time he even brought home a telescope so I could check out the stars and planets. I didn’t really know what I was looking at, and I was still too young to read any of the books, however I did enjoy looking at all the pictures and star charts that came with the telescope. It was also neat looking at the moon or watching deer come out of the tree line to bed down in our alfalfa fields.

One day I was checking out a distant tree line from the balcony on the backside of our house and found an old windmill mixed in with the tops of the trees. This windmill became a curiosity even for my dad. I talked him into hiking out to it, though I’m afraid my dad did most of the hiking, I spent a lot of the trip on his shoulders. What we discovered in the woods just beyond our property line was the remnants of an old farm. Foundation stones, low rock walls some crab apple trees and that old wind mill suspended in the trees that had grown up all around, lifting the top of the wind mill into its branches. Ever since, I’ve loved exploring and looking for what has come before me.

A year later, after the winter snow stared to melt in April or May of 1963, we left on vacation. We went to all sorts of places, Connecticut, Maryland, and New York. We stayed with one of my dad’s army buddies, a guy with the same first and last name as my dad.

We were in New York the longest. We saw the Statue of Liberty, even went to the New York State World’s Fair. Even though I couldn’t read I did recognize certain symbols and company logos. My favorite was the big green dinosaur that was the logo for Sinclair oil. Lots of the companies my dad talked about were there. My dad said that a lot of these companies were planning to get together and form bigger even better companies. He seemed really excited by this.

I turned five on the road and had a birthday cake at a restaurant not far from the Liberty Bell in Pennsylvania. I was just turning five years old and my world was about to be turned upside down.

Not so much of a whisper was spoken about the changes that were taking place on the farms around us while we were gone. From then on all we planted was alfalfa. Other people I didn’t know from some other farm were doing the work. My dad was finished with school and had gone to work full time at the Oil Company who was putting him through school, Pure Oil. After going to work full time as a research technician he invested in a brand new company forming out in California, a company that would eventually I believe become Union Oil.

That summer we finished by planting small trees in an imaginary fence line separating us from the road and the neighboring properties. My dad said eventually the trees would grow and hide the road and other houses from view. He seemed bitter and happy all at the same time. Some thing was troubling him. He and my mother were sitting for hours going over bills, and looking at maps and talking to strangers who came by the house. Some thing was going on, but I just couldn’t figure it out. The one time I did ask my dad what he was doing I got this look that I never had gotten before, and was told that little pictures should be seen and not heard.

A year later just after my birthday in June of 1964, I became aware of the family that lived across the street. They had a few kids but they were all older than I was. Around the same time a new family moved into the house next door. If all these changes were not enough, something else was about to happen that would set a course for the rest of my life.

We had mulberry trees and bushes along our property line on our side of the road, one of my favorite places not affected by all the changes. I went out there with my pail to pick some berries. Though I was on a mission for mom and grandma, most of the berries I picked most days ended up on me, or in me, rather than in my bucket.

Not long after I was there, two boys came from across the street. The younger one was about 10. I think his name was Tim. The older kid that came after him was maybe about 16 or 17. I don’t remember if I ever knew his name. They seemed to be interested in what I was doing and even picked a few berries. The older one was really friendly and even lifted me up on his shoulders to get berries that were over my head. He pinched me on my butt and commented how pretty my blue eyes were as he collected the little one over his shoulder and went back across the street. I had met lots of people in my first five years. People at church, nursery school, harvest parties and Christmas parties but never had I ever been creeped out before. There was something about this older kid that I just didn’t like.

I told my parents of my encounter and they laughed and agreed I did have pretty blue eyes. I felt betrayed somehow, and a little isolated, and a feeling of being outside everything looking in, started to build inside me. The two kids, maybe they were brothers, were both big kids compared to me, the youngest was twice my age and he was only ten. They came by a few days later with a pie from the lady across the street; she was at the very least the mother of the little one. They also had a basket and asked my mom if I could go on a picnic. My mom said yes, but only if we all stayed on our property. Between the 5-acre fields of alfalfa that separated our place from the farm behind us, was a row of old oak trees. These trees looked as if they had been there a 100 years. We hiked out to them, still on my property and not out of bounds it was still as far away from everything else as you could get.

In and under the trees my two new friends placed a blanket. Then the older one took off his shirt. Asking me, Aren’t you hot? Take off your shirt. This was more of a demand than a suggestion. I guess I didn’t respond quickly enough, for it was then that the little one grabbed me. They both forced me to the ground striped off my shirt and pants and raped me. They were both on me for a time but then they seemed to finish and got off me. I tried to run away. The big one grabbed me and through me down. He then stomped on my foot and ankle, and rolled me over. They took turns with me and with each other making me watch.

When it was over they produced my cat from a bag in the basket and smashed his head with a rock telling me they would get my dog next if I told anyone. I was horrified, angry, and hurt; the feeling of being alone and isolated and helpless grew. The older one had to carry me back to my house. Telling my mom when we arrived that I had fallen out of the top of one of the old oaks. My torn shirt was wrapped around my foot like a bandage. My mom believed them. My injury was deemed a sprain and left at that. My cat was left in our driveway and after finding it a day or so later my dad thought he had at some point run over it with the car.

These two kids would come over often helping my folks, doing chores for my dad and bringing stuff from their mother to mine. They could do no wrong. I tried to stay close to my mom, grandma, or dad when they were around but from time to time they would catch me by myself in the trees or out and about on the property. I’d turn up with bruises and scratches or the occasional black eye, and my dad would say things like, Boy it looks like you had a good time today, when are you going to learn how to duck? One time my grandma said something in German and cleaned up my busted lip. I didn’t dare say anything. I was frightened for my dog and scared it might make things worse. My dad seemed to think it was good that I was ruff housing as he called it. I came to believe I was alone in the world, even feeling that same way in a room full of people. That’s the way it was for me the next year or so.

I started kindergarten but kept to myself. It was hard for me to trust people, to the point where I would argue about participating in group activities. One day on an outing to someplace away from school, I picked a shady spot under a tree and refused to play with anyone, despite constant prodding by other kids and the teachers.

My memories are a little sketchy for that year after the attack, but Christmas time was different; everyone remembers that Christmas.

A storm was building in across our area and everyone was getting ready. As we ate dinner, it started to rain. The rain soon turned to sleet and frozen rain. I went to bed worried whether or not Santa Claus could fly in weather like this. I went to sleep hiding under my blankets for the big old oak tree outside my window was looking like it would surely be blown away.

To this day, I’m unsure how my dad pulled it off, but out of no place, it seemed the living room of our house was filled with gifts, just as though Santa had come. I was awakened by the sound of sleigh bells and singing coming from the living room. It was dark, the wind outside was howling. I made my way towards the singing. None of the light switches I tried along the way worked, I remained in the dark. There was a funny kind of glow coming from the living room. The whole area was awash in golden flickering light.

As I turned the corner, the first thing I noticed was the cookies we set out for Santa were gone and the milk that was set out with the cookies was more than half gone. I looked around the room and to my surprise even the lights on the Christmas tree were off, and all the light was coming from oil and kerosene lamps placed around the room, and from a large fire in the fireplace.

It is unclear to me where the extra money came from but my dad must have had some sort of wind fall for the presents spilled out across the floor, some of the boxes were quite large. I wasn’t able to make a list yet and the only thing I had asked Santa for was a new sled.

Mrs. McDonald was there from next door. My folks explained that the power was out so Mrs. McDonald was there keeping us company. Could she have been one of Santa’s helpers? She did help pass the gifts out from under the tree. And sure enough, the one from Santa was my new sled. It was shaped like a large triangle and slightly bowed with handgrips attached on two of the three sides. I couldn’t wait to try it out.

I guess at some point I fell asleep and was carried to bed by my dad. There was a picture of him in the family album taken as he almost lost his balance carrying me down the hallway. The picture was sideways and so