“I grew up on eggshells my whole life. I never felt safe in my own home from the time I could barely walk until I divorced by my first husband. The fear and started with my father.  When I was 18, the guy I loved with all of my heart was killed in Vietnam and my friend Kay was killed by a drunk driver two weeks later. I was floundering when I met my husband. The man I thought was my life raft became an anchor that almost pulled me under.  I just needed one person to reach out and help me.  There was something in me that said I could have a better life, it just took a long time to get here. 

I am almost 71 and happy for the first time. I have total freedom of my thoughts and what I do. It has taken me a year and a month to adjust to being on my own after my second husband, Leon, died. He was a wonderful man, but not always easy to live with. Leon would have protected me with his life. My other husband would have killed me if he could have gotten away with it. I was dancing to Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’ in my kitchen the other night. That song used to describe how I went through life. I was a bookworm and read all of the time because books were my escape. I excelled in school and work because that is where I had control and could prove I was worth something. 

I want to be involved and help people who are hurting. I love sitting with people who are at the end of their life. It brings me back to the days when I worked for the phone company and they started a clown corp. I did it with everything in me. We went to children’s wards where the children were very sick and cheered them up. I was Daffy and my son Eric was Daffy, Jr. We went to nursing homes and met some of the most amazing people who were waiting for people to listen to them.  I thought I was helping someone else, I didn’t realize how much they were helping me. I learned I wasn’t the only one suffering. 

I always wanted to write but felt people wouldn’t think much of it.  Leon was my biggest fan and he wanted to read what I wrote to everyone who came over. Writing is therapeutic and I wish I had written back then, but I would have been too embarrassed to write about what I was going through. Now I want to write the stories of the people who are dying in hospice and call it ‘Lessons Learned.’ They say, ‘Oh, my dear, I wish I had done this differently,’ and I try to learn the lesson they didn’t learn. I can’t let their words just fall on the floor. 

I am most proud of my boys. They are adjusted and don’t show any signs of being like their father. I also made sure they went into music because it is in my family. My father and great grandfather were violinists and they played all of the barn dances in Meridian, Mississippi. My cousins played gospel music. I don’t sing or play anything, but I used to be a part of a comedy act with two other women. We called ourselves the Saidie Sisters and were Sadie Allday, Sadie Allnight and Sadie Sometimes. We sang songs like “Oh, Lord It’s hard to be Humble” and the band backed us up.

It is on my bucket list is to be in a local play at Joe Jefferson or Mobile Theater Guild. I also want to have at least one article in the Lagniappe. I feel empowered like there is nothing I can’t do. I feel like I am 25, but I have a mirror. Age and gravity makes things drop down, but you have the same capacity to go gaga over someone at any age. That is a wonderful thing, but I am not going to do it again.  

I always obeyed whatever my parents told me and I am rebelling now in little ways. Mother and Leon never liked pedal pusher pants and pants with a pattern. Now I have pedal  pushers with stripes, flowers and polka dots

Nobody ever stood up for me, so now I try to stand up for underdog. I wish I was this self-assured when I was younger so I could have done things more worthwhile. Whatever time I have left, I am living every minute of it with purpose. I have learned I can handle the silence of being alone and no one interrupts when I am writing. I can play the music I want and dance around the kitchen like a fool. Life is not perfect, but it is good to be here.”

(Her story of abuse is part of the “From Hell to Hope” series about domestic violence that began this week in the Lagniappe in Mobile).