The House On Duford Road

This is my first real post in years. I’ve given you updates, brief on purpose. I appreciate every single person who has contacted me on here, Facebook, YouTube, etc. All of you who tell me your stories; your triumphs and faults, of grief and pride. I remember all of you.

Depending on your time zone, it may or may not be December 14th yet. For me, December 14th is tomorrow, in a few hours. But in a way, December 14th has been every day of my life for 10 years.

My mom, Terri O’Neal, also known as Terri Strickland to some of you, died a decade ago. Her sudden passing changed everything about me. I’ve since spent the past 10 years attempting to be someone she would be proud of, while simultaneously having questions that will forever be left unanswered.

Losing her destroyed me. I became an alcoholic, just full of rage and sorrow, for a very long time. I’m over 2 years sober now, but there was a time when drinking was one of the only things keeping me going day to day. I could not wake up and face my life without her anymore without being numbed. My smiles were fake, my laugh was fake, I was not happy to wake up every day.

It is hard to think about this stuff. It’s not something I let myself think about anymore. I was 21 when I lost her. I’m 31 now. I’m in a stable relationship, I have and adore my 2 daughters, I have a steady job in a field I enjoy, I have a car and a home and a cat.

I am happy now. Truly. But there are moments, so many moments, sometimes the smallest things remind me she’s not here anymore and I can’t call my mom anymore. I look at people who treat me with disrespect and wonder would they even be standing if they had been through a fraction of what I have.

I’ve even become more open about Fire Dot Com. I recognize there’s nothing I can do about it airing on TV and being on literally every media platform out there. I recognize that I can’t do anything about teachers using my story, my life, in their lesson plans, or teenagers who know nothing of loss or pain making tasteless podcasts laughing their way through my nightmare.

So instead I take the emotions all of it gives me and funnel it into continuing to improve my life and ensure my family never has to go through the things I did.

The spark for me writing this is a dream. A multitude of dreams. I lived in a house in 9th grade, a house on Duford Road in South Carolina. A lot of core memories happened during my time living there, but those are things for another day.

My mom had a hysterectomy during this time. Something that should have been simple. Painful and life altering in its own respect, but it shouldn’t have left the kind of print it did on this life. A sponge was left in her, the surgeon then cut several organs when going back in to retrieve the sponge days later, and her life was changed.

Sure, she was here until 2013, she had had experiences and had those years with me. But she was in pain nonstop, could not walk very far without help. It set off a chain of health problems that I now know my brain registers as being the reason she died.

In the 10 years since I lost her, I dream of that house when I dream of her. She’s never there. In these dreams she’s also dead, and I avoid the master bedroom. When questioned why, dream-me says it is because my mom died in that room.

But she didn’t die in that room. She died years later in another room in another house in another town.

But also, she did die in that room. A future died. She’s missed out on so much, and she didn’t get to meet my children, when all she wanted were “grandbabies”. It took me a decade to face what I blame for her death.

I will only answer this one time. I’ve been asked a few times by strangers over the years of what my moms cause of death was. I don’t know. I genuinely, 100 percent, do not know the exact reason my mom died at 49 years old while taking a nap. But I do know if she hadn’t had that surgery, if she hadn’t had that doctor, hadn’t gone to that hospital, she would still be here. I just know.

But the light shining through this all is that I’ve accepted there was nothing I could have done. I did what I could with what I had and who I was. I can only hope she knew she was loved, and loved by me most of all.