brother | Mary J. McCoy-Dressel

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A Time of Fear SOCSunday

Posted at 2:51 pm by Mary J. McCoy-Dressel, on December 18, 2011

Hopefully I’ll be able to do this brain dump in five minutes, but don’t count on it this week. I missed two weeks and really wish I could write something different this week, but my mind still lives in fear for my brother’s family. Here’s my dump and you’ll see why I feel as I do. This SOC doesn’t seem to fit with my Blog’s Christmas theme but I have to have something normal right now.

Last week I received an email from one of my cousins asking if everything was okay at my brothers. He said “I saw it on the news.” It? I had no idea what he was talking about since I didn’t watch the news that morning.

I immediately called my brother and his nightmare became mine, but he was on his way to talk to detectives and couldn’t talk on the phone long. The previous night he was sitting at his table eating dinner and the next thing he knew there was a shotgun in his face and 3 masked men standing in his dining room. His two grown sons were home; my sister-in-law had just left. To spare the details, just know now they are physically okay although one nephew went by EMT to the hospital to get 15 stitches in his head from being hit with the butt of the pistol.

In the end, my nephews got the guns away and the three men took off. Well, needless to say, I am living in fear for them right now, as are they. They went through it and are fearful each night, and I have the after effects as well. To think all three of them could have been killed in the blink of an eye, and what my sister in law could have walked into, scares the crap out of me. I am so worried for them.

I can’t go into a lot of detail right now, hopefully later. I hope and pray they catch these thugs who apparently think nothing of another human life. My brother felt that he was going to die that night, and when his son was hit in the head, he didn’t know if he was shot or what, since a gun did go off. He only knew there was blood all over the floor and my nephew. Each one of them thought they were going to die that night.

My fear is great for them and I so want to be able to protect them, but who am I? Just thinking back at this horrible ordeal makes my heart pound and race. How do they get through their nights, when I think of it all night and I’m on the other side of town. Will the fear ever go away? Will they ever feel safe again. I’m so afraid for them.

This was my Stream of Consciousness Sunday. If you want to participate here are the rules.

Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
Link up your post below.
Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

Now…

1. Grab the button

(it’s over in the sidebar)

2. Write your post.

3. Link up here: All Things Fadra

Posted in #AmWriting | 2 Comments | Tagged armed, break-in, brother, EMT, family, fear, hospital

Christmas Memories

Posted at 12:01 pm by Mary J. McCoy-Dressel, on December 20, 2010

Did you believe in Santa Claus when you were a child? I don’t know if I did. I remember picking out a lot of my own Christmas gifts, but that was when I was older. My earliest memory (I think) was a snowy night in Detroit. It was my parents, my little brother, and me. We lived with my grandmother then. It was nighttime and the side street we lived on was covered with snow. There was only car tracks up and down the road with nothing shoveled or plowed; the snow was deep. I remember the snow covered street because that evening, Christmas Eve, my parents took my brother and I down the street to the hardware store before they closed. They bought us a wagon. A shiny red wagon. They pulled us home in it down that snowy street through the car tracks. It wasn’t easy to pull two kids in a wagon through the snow.

I don’t know if my parents believed in surprises. Wrapping my own Christmas gifts, and putting them under the tree was really the only way I knew Christmas at my house. I did it many times, and my mom did the same thing with her gifts even after us kids grew up and left home. She said that way she could choose
her own gift. Christmas morning was never a surprise at my house as a child. Christmas at my aunt and uncles was always different. We visited early and always had surprise gifts to unwrap. I watched as my cousins opened gift after gift and were surprised at each one. I envied them. I felt like Santa came to their house and not mine. I loved being at their house, whether it was Christmas or not.

Did I carry on that tradition with my own kids? Not at all. Everything was wrapped and nothing got opened until Christmas morning. Everything was a surprise for my boys and everyone else. And they believed in Santa Claus. I encouraged them to believe in Santa. We’d go to the mall and have pictures taken with the jolly man in a red suit.

When we grew up, on Christmas Eve my brother and I always took our families to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. It was then we got to unwrap surprise gifts. I don’t know the reason behind us picking out our own Christmas gifts as children. I suppose it was something my parent’s agreed on and figured we would get what we wanted that way.

But, times changed when they became grandparents. The grandchildren had fun times at their house, and we did too. Even though all the kids are grown now and grandma and grandpa are both gone, I still carry many Christmas memories. Maybe they were different but Christmas was still Christmas. We still had gifts and food and love.

I had step-grandchildren for a time and Christmas with them was a joy, exciting, and filled with love. It was the true meaning of Christmas to see the sparkle in their eyes. When the day comes that I have my own
grandchildren, they will know surprises and believe Santa Claus brought them. Of course they’ll always have their own Christmas memory of Grandma’s love.