Here's what I didn't know and what would become the impetus for the core of our lives as a broken family. As quickly as my mother said the words "Get out" a resentment was placed at her feet. She would use it as a sword - she would wield this weapon around without any discipline because of the deep levels of pain it brought to her. I believe she experienced her own violent separation from God and faith as I did as a child, yet she was an adult when it happened. This holds an instructive lesson for me even to this day. The idea that a resentment has the power to kill us. It has the power to kill not only faith but our God-consciousness. The power to create a separation from God, to create a wider space between us and God. At its core resentment is about re-feeling something over and over and over again. Sometimes they lose their power over time yet at other times they just hang in there without mercy. And as long as I am in this state, as long as my mother was in this state, all things worthwhile are easily set aside or tossed aside. To a great extent it causes many to just give up. God-consciousness and faith being the driving force in our lives is supplanted with a deep level of defeat. This is indeed what unbeknownst happened to me when my father walked out of the door, and what happened to my mother when my brother was taken.

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My mom was in her third term with her third child when my father abandoned us. By all accounts, hers included, she absolutely loved being a mom. She loved the idea of having a family with more than one child as she grew up as an only child. She always said that she loved my father's family because it was larger than hers. Even as I watch the videos I had transferred to DVD from the old reel to reel cans I can see the spark in her eyes. I can feel the power in her smile that backed the spark. I can see the deep levels of satisfaction in her body language while she was surrounded by not only her son and daughter but the family. Hers and my father's. She seemed to be whole. She seemed to be at ease. She seemed to be content. I do have memories of her in this state and when my mind falls upon them, they are sweet and very touching.

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As my mother and father separated my mother held the hope that they would get back together, that her dream of a family would be restored. My father had different ideas. He found another woman and began seeing her.

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The decision to abort my brother at such a late term was not my mother's. It was my father's decision to make. She left it up to him. She gave her power to my father and without a conscience he absolutely annihilated it. Why my mother ever posed the option for continuing their marriage and relationship upon the fate of an unborn child and handed this decision to my father will be forever lost on me. It became the greatest regret and guiding force in her life from that point forward. It was a decision she would come to wholly regret and a decision that would lead to her own defeat. She began to give up and perhaps rightly so.

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I didn't know what was happening at the time though later in life I recall the exact day it happened. The entire family was well aware of what was going on and what was going to happen. Later in life I would reach out to my aunt, my father's sister, and simply request if I could ask her some questions about my mother and father.

Abruptly, without any hesitation at all, she said "No. Ask your father." I believe she knew exactly what I was going to ask about and she didn't want any part of it. As if this denial would continue to add more cement to the wall I think she used to continue to block it from her memory. She followed the refusal by unfriending me on social media.

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On another one of the not a cloud in the sky filled with sunshine days my sister and I had just walked the twelve or so blocks home from elementary school with our friends who lived on our street. We came into the house through the side door at the driveway and Mom wasn't there. My aunt was there which awakened an awareness in me, a suspicion of sorts, that I wasn't used to. I don't remember where my sister fit into the scene, I don't remember what she was doing. I remember standing in front of the big ass 70's television, the turntable and stereo now removed from the top of it, in the same manner my father was removed from the house. The front door was wide open. The front door was rarely open, and I remember thinking this was odd. It fit the scene's awkward nature.

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I looked up into my aunt’s eyes. I asked her where Mom was, and she refused to answer the question much like she refused to answer any questions later in life. I remember her I instinctively knew something was amiss. Something was seriously wrong, and I knew deep within it involved my Mom. She answered by telling me "We have to go." We left our home and I do not remember anything else about that day. I time traveled. I checked out.

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The idea of "time-traveling," the blocking out of reality, the evasion of reality, would become a part of my nature. My insistence on denying the reality of my senses began at a very young age. As quickly as I became aware of my surroundings this ability to evade awareness's arrived. At times it can be a healthy reaction of sorts creating a level of protection, survival, but I've found that most times it is the opposite. It creates more damage and clearly indicated my inability to process hard truths, reality.

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Mom wasn't home because the decision to abort my brother was being followed by the action of making it happen. Although I don't have the benefit of answers to the questions I've always wanted to ask my aunt, I believe deep in my heart she was angry. Maybe even hurt too. She herself would have three children. As a nurse I believe she didn't agree with any of it and her participation in it by looking after my sister and I that day perhaps haunted her.

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My mother would never be the same after this. The spark in her eyes was extinguished. Her body language began to match the dimness. Her soul was cut to the core and the scars would exacerbate the deep resentment that became the rudders in not only her life but in the lives of my sister and me. She was now broken and by extension my sister and I were too.

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My brother was to be named the opposite of mine, a play on my name. He was to be Ernest Robert, but he didn’t make it.