Tragic Victory: Learning to Navigate Life in Tough Times

By Diane Davis

Tragic Victory: Learning to Navigate Life In Tough Times is an intimate and transparent memoir of how one mother discovered her own inner strength while enduring the heartbreaking fight for her children's lives. Author Diane Davis documents the tragedy of addiction, depression, and the downward spiral of those closest to her. Although tragic, sh

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diane Davis
• Release date: May 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781953535665

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losing my daughter

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

I wish I could still hear her voice, the voice of my daughter who would always say, Hi Mom, it’s your daughter! You don’t know pain until you crave a conversation with someone no longer alive. What happened? That question rings in the mind of any parent whose child is taken over by a substance and leaves before her time. Gone too soon. Parents do their best to give their children wings to fly and roots to grow, but sometimes the roots grow in the wrong direction.

Chemaine Diane Johnson, my daughter, was her name. She gave birth to a son, Taj Kemper.

One morning Taj got up to go to school. As he was looking for his mommy, he saw her sleeping on the couch. Mommy, wake up! Mommy, wake up! But his mommy didn’t wake up. Mommy had gone to sleep forever.

Little five-year-old Taj picked up the phone off the floor, next to the couch where his mommy lay, and called her boyfriend. Mommy won’t wake up. Mommy won’t wake up. Mommy’s boyfriend, Bo Braxton, rushed over to her apartment, but mommy was gone. Bo called 911. The police, ambulance, and coroner all arrived before the eyes of frightened little Taj.

Chemaine lived in Honolulu, Hawaii. She left the Bay Area to explore life on the Hawaiian island, Oahu. Life for Chemaine was a series of ups and downs, more downs than ups. Jobs, no job. Not always having a place to live, smoking pot along with cocaine, which became her drug of choice. Chemaine suffered from severe asthma. One evening Bo gave Chemaine a pill to help with her asthma. Then they shared a joint and a few lines of coke. Bo went home. Chemaine fell asleep on the couch. The pill, pot, and coke stopped her heart, and she never woke up.

I was living in Philadelphia with my husband Ron. We had moved from the San Francisco Bay area in order for Ron to take a new job in Philadelphia. I was a personal trainer for Buttonwood Square condos where we lived.

It was a snowy winter morning in Philly that day. A blizzard of a storm, snowing sideways. I was training my neighbor Monica in the condo gym. My phone rang. It was early, 9:00 a.m. in Philly. I saw that the area code was 808. Oh my goodness, it’s six hours earlier in Honolulu!

Hello Bo, is everything OK...? No, um, No um.

"What is it Bo? You’re scaring me… Is Taj all right? Is Chemaine all