Wait Till I’M Dead

By Eva M. Crone

Wait till Im Dead is an eye-opening memoir, using both poetry and prose, for anyone who has ever wondered about their own self-identity. Through the authors journey as a child questioning her mothers love to the loss of a twenty-year relationship, to the memory- and self-esteem-destroying effects of epilepsy, she draws the reader into a world of pain and heartache. Using poetry to describe the intense emotions of her thoughts and behaviors, Eva shows how she overcomes that pain and leads readers on a journey to better understanding not only her life but their own.

From her violent and painful childhood to the sexual abuse she experienced at the hands of a family friend, she draws us into her world so that we understand who she is and the struggles she has overcome to get to where she is today. Raised by a mother who finally accepted who she was as an adult and a father who was not emotionally involved, the author poignantly chronicles her life up to the present.

The poems in Wait till Im Dead are intense and the stories heart-wrenching, but the way the author surrounds herself with life is amazingreaders pull for her every step of the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491714850

Eva M. Crone

Eva Crone is a poet and writer from St. Petersburg, Florida, who is haunted by memories of her youth, her relationships, and the ever increasing challenges of her fight with epilepsy.

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Copyright © 2014 Eva M. Crone.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-1487-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-1486-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-1485-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013921277

iUniverse rev. date: 03/11/2014

Front cover photograph by Patty Highsmith

Book title recommendation by Leslie Tucker

Contents

Introduction: My Story

Return Me

One : In the Beginning

On Crider Road

Telling Truth, No Waiting

Love Is Not Crider Road

Fast-Forward…

Walker Avenue

Dusk

Red House

Wheaties’

Mom’s Diary 1966 (My First Grade)

Wish

Waiting for the Whistle

Mother’s Diary Notes

Then There Was God

Mother’s Diary

Mom’s Life

Mom’s Diary

Worth It

Mom’s Diary

Superwoman

Mom’s Motorcycling Diary Notes

Mom’s Knowing

A Mistake, I Thought from God

Mom’s Notes

As It Was

Two : Angels Both Ways

Cherokee, North Carolina, 1973

Mom’s Diary Notes

The Cherokee Wedding

Near Midnight

Mom’s Diary Notes

Mom’s Notes

Mom’s Notes

A Different Day

Mom’s Words

Intensive Care

Not Prepared

Accident Night—1973

Mom’s Diary Notes

Window Watch

Months Passed into Years

Mom’s Words

Truth Hurts

Saturday with Mom

More, Finally

Surprise Visit

Cast Away

Face Full of Nuts

Mom’s Diary

Self-Ordained at Eight

Three: Reason It Out

Mom’s Writing

Mom’s Diary

Mom’s Diary

Florida Life

A New Life

Four: Learning the Long Way

A Misunderstanding

Eva’s Diary Notes

Yarn

Signs

Open Wounds

Spilled Milk

Still Here

Lost Value

Reflection of Then

Selfish Hole

Yet Why

Love or What?

Going Back to Ohio

Don’t Notice

Finding Life

To Survive

Lost

Reflection

The Breakfast Table

A Summer Day

At Last I Knew

Daily Newspaper

Getting Through

Mom’s Diary

Five: Living on Paper

The Mother Wheel

Finding Cherry

Who Is This?

Take Highway 101

Self

Chatterbox

After Therapy

Not Oxygen

Christmas Day

Inside This Home

Working on It

Still Fear

Outside Me

Not Quite There

A Good Day

Apple Tree

When It Began to Pour Out

Shown the Way

Mother

Lost or Dead

Untitled

Him

Condoning Behaviors

Seizure View

My Own Jabberwocky

The Jabberwocky

Lies to Save Me

Eva’s Diary Notes

What I Cannot Believe

The Mighty Mississippi

She Passed By

Always

Back to Little Eva

What I Am Finding Out

Figuring It Out

Little Girl

After the Fight

I Cannot Put My Finger on It

Well, Here We Are Again

Onionskin

I See It

Daybreak

Home, Finally

Carbon Copy

Grow

I Am Almost There

I Get It

Love

The Process

Mom’s Diary

Mom, Where Are You?

Learning about Mom

Well, Here I Am Again

My Mother and Me

Standing Still

Stand Up

Six: Travel Far Enough

North or South

I Said, She Said

Her Turn

Gap of Healing

Disassociation

Flight

First

I Asked

I Know What It Is

The First Day of Me

First to Mom

These Routines of Seizures

Seiz-Ure Life, Eva

Unseen Moments

Truth at the Dinner Table

This Time

Seize the Moment

Pass the Soap

Good Bits of Me

Right Behind

Kiss Me First

Our Silent Language

Springtime

Bonnie Drive

Winter

Finding Herself

Remember Me

Seizures

NO!

Today’s Realization

Clear Bell

What

Well, Fear

War

I Know

Invisible

Train Wreck

Blink, Blink

Alone

Bam!

Day 90

Erase

Martyr

No Reply

The Exposed

Never, She Said

Hey!

Tying or Dying

Truth Is

Run

Hold On

Recall

What Comes After

The Results

That Is Packed

Light On

My Personal Note

I dedicate this book to my mother, Martha Jean Crone, who left her diaries for my discretion, knowing I would move forward with this book revealing our difficulties with one another.

We met in real time, at the right time, and I am forever grateful.

I love you, Mom.

INTRODUCTION

My Story

It is funny how your mind works when it wants to shut down and not let you see or hear or feel what you are experiencing at any given moment. I have spent a lot of my life that way, always trying to escape things both real and perceived. But perhaps never as much as in that moment.

My mother had died, and the state required that someone identify the body. Not being able to decide who should do it, my three brothers, Doug, Jeff, and Les, and I decided we would do it together.

There she was lying on the coroner’s table, frozen in a grotesque pose exactly as she had landed when she fell over dead of a heart attack. She would have been horrified to be seen this way. She was always particular about her appearance. She had been dead for a few days before my brother found her, and she was in early stages of decomposition, her face flattened and bruised on one side. Her tongue was stiff and stuck out of her mouth in a horrible, mocking way. Her right arm was raised, as if she were ready to strike someone—something my brothers and I had seen too many times to count in our younger lives.

That moment. And when I was desperate to escape seeing her like that, my mind—as it had so many times before—took me to another place.

* * *

She had come to visit my girlfriend, Kathleen, and me in our rented cabin in the Smoky Mountains. Mom and I had become such good friends by then because we had learned to accept each other in spite of ourselves. In spite of our bitter and tumultuous past, we had become so very close. I was sure I could tell her things now that I could never tell her before.

I told her I was going to write a book. To my surprise, she was delighted. What kind? she asked quickly. Is it going to be a travel book? Is it a book about dogs? A book about—

No, I’m going to write about my life… growing up. My words came out in a backward gulp.

Oh, she snapped, one of those books! She was looking at me. I could feel her. She wanted me to meet her eyes. No, I have to be strong—do not look at her, do not look at her, I begged myself. Do not do it!

No matter; I had to. My mother had strong eyes. She has always made us kids look at her when she was disappointed or cross. Look right into her eyes, and she will tell you all you need to know about yourself and then what she thinks about you.

Not this time, by God. I held her gaze, and my eyes boxed hers back. "I am going to write this. I am going to tell the story. It’s—"

You! She cut off my defiant words with a warning. "Wait till I’m dead!"

I’d known I was going to write this book since I was fifteen years old. I’d lay on my second hand bed and stared at a bare white ceiling with tears streaming out of the corners of my eyes, mustering the courage to speak about my entire world someday.

Every other time in life that she had spoken this way, I had wiped those baby tears away right damn now and rubbed a sleeve under my nose and said a Fine. Fuck you! (in my mind, if nowhere else). And then, by God, I’d have spat on the ground and moved on.

Not this time. This time, I lay on my bed, deflated inch by inch, and did not stop crying until teardrops soaked my shoulders. I wanted to die. And I wanted to fight for all my worth at the same time. Not much different from other times in my previous fourteen years, but this time, it went beyond the physical and emotional. This was my soul, the spirit of me, the very inner me. I did not know what to do but lie there and pray myself to melt away.

It had happened only an hour ago. I was home after fighting with a classmate, a boy named Ernie, and my mom was back from town with the groceries. I had to tell her. I was sure the entire community, our little farming burg in the Midwest, that quiet little nothing-happens place, all knew about me by now.

I sat prepared for a blow—a fast smack across the face or a running-bull charge to scare me to the ground, where Mother would pin me to submission. I had prayed about it and concluded that Mom and I were at our closest. I could probably tell her, and she might just hug me. I mean, she had told me once about her friend from college.

The more afraid I grew, the more I needed my mom, and so I just got out of bed and said it. It rolled out nervously but not any more so than telling her I had tried her red lipstick. Mom, I think I am gay.

She glanced my way but never stopped filling the pantry with new cans of cheap food. I do not know how long I stood there, silent and waiting, wondering if she’d even heard me. Louder now and standing my tallest, I declared, Really, Mom, I am gay!

She never looked at me. She simply said sternly, No, you are not! Her voice told me the discussion was over.

I retreated to my room and lay there, and I cried and felt alone. The pain was so deep it cut me worse than any physical pain I’d ever endured. It was then I realized I had too much inside. I needed to shout. Thus, my lifetime of writing began. It saved me then, and it saves me still. It is the place of my truth and my deepest pain, yes, but also of my victory in loving myself enough to share without shame.

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?

The world would split open.

—Muriel Rukeyser

Return Me

It is time to go home now.

I do not want to, but I must.

All those places,

Events, and catastrophes.

The pain and dropping on knees,

The bending over.

Love and hate pulled to extreme.

Why return?

Except I need to.

The place has grown so large in my brain,

It consumes me, and I need to remember,

To see for myself.

That place was so small,

Insignificant even.

Yet it flickers in my head

Like a warped slideshow.

I cannot write fast enough

To keep up with then.

I need containment of my past.

And I need to go back home,

To find it.

Note:

In the stories that follow, several names and places have been changed to protect the innocent and the families of the not-so-innocent. I still love you all and thank you.

ONE

In the Beginning

Your goal is to find out who you are.

—A Course in Miracles

On Crider Road

His grab of my shoulders,

The sudden ramming from behind

Or on top,

It happened, no matter,

Down by Molly’s bait shop,

Beside the Mifflin Lake,

Out in Wheaties’ gravel pits

In Lexington, Mt. Vernon,

Even Sault Ste. Marie;

Inside the chicken coop or

In an unfamiliar woods

On an Ohio riverbank.

And even

While I was throwing up.

No boundaries.

Not once.

Don’t ask.

Telling Truth, No Waiting

It has taken me years and years to understand there are boundaries in a relationship.

It has taken two continuous decades of straight love to my heart and gentle coaxing of my mind and soul. It has taken an understanding in my bed when the undeserving side of me was in drag. It has taken constant therapy to my insides to believe I am worth any of the depths of love Kathleen has shared with me. Then I think, Of course, I am worth it!

I fight about it, because I still have problems believing it myself. Prove it! comes out, but not because I want it to.

I am a good woman. Yes, I am. If only I could know it, through and through. I have had difficulty with my own space and hers… and the word no. Then of course, there is the tremendous shame of it all. A shame that resides in my darkness, which is so much bigger than I am at times. Then she and I get caught at opposite ends of something that is problematic for me; I still too often have a difficult time releasing… back then, so it becomes not now.

No brings fear. I do not know why. It exhausts me at times, and I am afraid I am unloved and will always be. I am so anxious internally; I make no sense. My emotions kick in full bore, and I think, I better run. I should leave! I am so afraid, but of what? Love or unlove, I don’t even know the difference. At times. Much too often. More than I wish to admit.

Run, run, run . . .

I grow consumed in it until drawn back in. And that’s what I need from her—to draw me in… or I will go nuts. At least I feel like it.

She continually tells me, You are safe with me.

Still, my thoughts are to run, or to fight back. It is what I have done since the beginning of my life and throughout my life. Now, I have not had reason for these last twenty years, but my emotional growth has proceeded in fits and starts. I have trusted in small spurts. I have met me in the shadows—even though I have stayed, living together in the same home.

My laughter, followed by a washing wave of fear, and my intimacy, followed with guilt. Guilt and I am not guilty, except I do not know when to stop. Stopping only means love has ended. It is walking away. I am not worth it. That is the real guilt.

It has taken a long, gentle stream of pure love to my subconscious for me to understand that and plug it in. I am worth real love.

Love Is Not Crider Road

Kathleen asked me to address my fears after my first real breakdown in front of her. It was not that long after we’d met. I was so embarrassed that I was even having a meltdown that I handled it through what I knew, bullying.

I was in love with her; how could I possibly have a problem with fear or shame or any of those feelings from when I was a kid? I could not comprehend the connection. I refused to let it in. Except to write about it and then bury my shameful letters. I had a new life. I was happy. I was working a career in cartography, and I loved it. I was riding my motorcycle daily. We traveled extensively. There was no reason to tackle anything from way back then. Except… that it kept popping up.

I could not give it serious thought at all without immediately feeling fearful that my spirit would wither in the disgrace of it. I did not have a clue, then, what that blanket of degradation would do to my own self-confidence and personal understanding over the course of our years together. I have been able to admit only a little shame here and there, and then I would not be able to confess it again for a good long while. It went on like this for years as I hid and ran from myself in great degrees. It was only when I was overwhelmed with the self-loving thought that I am good that my past was kept in place.

Fast-Forward…

I have longed to share my story all my life, but let me clarify; it was not to be my story so much as my mother’s. My mother was the one who was the damaged soul. Mom, severely and sexually abused as a child, hated herself as a grown woman. Her wrath spread across the household as she fought to reclaim any part or all of her. That was my story. I had decided it when I was still a child suffering in the midst of her anger.

Now, I am writing her story in a way that is true, but I know it so well only because I turned into my mother for a long while in my own confusion to find me. I am not proud of that fact.

I have worn my shame coat, oh, so very long for my own fear of being exposed.

I will be naked, I thought, of being without that coat. I had no clue that self-love would provide a new coat. So my hordes of shame coverings are now cast into the rag pile. I am wearing a coat of honest warmth now, settled in my own household. Still not wholly believed, which is all too familiar. That is nothing I am proud of either. Yet I am here. We are both still here, and that is a start.

Kathleen was the one who guided my mother and me to the real love within us. That is the big one. Mom and I actually found enough love in ourselves to love each other, in spite of the wickedness and trauma of our… back then. Because of Kathleen.

She has never stopped loving me or seeking to find me somewhere buried in my shell, while I have not stopped looking for Mom. Somehow, it came together before Mom died, although I continue to work on releasing that ugly aura that likes to spook me still. It is not