A Eulogy with lots of background material…

Man… where do I begin? My life had been such a train wreck by the time Judith “Judy” Dunn came into it that I feel I need to preface this with at least a little exposition. So where do I begin… well… at the beginning, of course.

I was born in New York City to Ana “Anita” Hernandez Santos and Manuel “Manny” Balbino Santos. I was the third child for each of them. By that I mean that my mother had two previous children, both by different men than my father. The same goes for my father. He had two previous children, both by different women than my mother. For each of them, though, I was the only male child. And in our patriarchal society that made me that much more important than any of the others.

My father isn’t exactly the easiest person to live with so it should probably come as no surprise that my parents divorced when I was two or three years old. My memory is a bit fuzzy from that time so you’ll have to forgive me if some of the dates don’t quite match up. At any rate, some time around my third or fourth birthday, my mother put me on an airplane bound for the Dominican Republic. You see… she had three mouths to feed, and she couldn’t stay home taking care of me.

I lived with my abuela (that’s grandmother in Spanish) next door to my aunt and uncle’s house. I played every day and my grandmother loved me. What else could a four year old ask for.

As you might guess, things changed for the worse. While I do love my father (he is my father after all), I should note that his presence almost always means trouble. So, when he showed up one day at my grandmother’s apartment, I was happy to see him, but I was scared too. He had gotten a job at the local electric company and was soon to remarry. He just wanted to see his son.

I should note here that this is odd for my father. He had worked all his adult life on ships. He wasn’t really made to work on land. There are just too many people on land. My Dad’s not good with people unless those people are on a ship. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me that he moved to the Dominican Republic for one reason only. Me. Some might say that I’m thinking too highly of myself, but I’m fairly modest in everything else… and I’m certain about only this one thing with regard to my father: He would do anything to keep me his son, even if it wasn’t the best for me.

At any rate, he visited often… and one night, while I lay sleeping, he came and told my grandmother he was taking me away. As you can imagine an argument ensued. I woke up but pretended to continue sleeping. The argument escalated. My sister, who by that time had also been sent down to live with us, was crying and screaming. And all I could do was pretend to sleep. Surely, it was a nightmare. I would eventually wake up and it would be over.

My father picked me up, blanket and all and carried me out. I had no idea where I was going, but I don’t remember crying… just pretending to be too groggy to understand.

As it turned out, my father lived across town with his new wife, Dolores. She had two children, a boy, Kiko, and a girl, Julia. Julia was much older, but Kiko was about my age. My grandmother visited when she could, but she didn’t feel all that comfortable in my father’s house so she would take me with her for walks. It was a comfortable life, but by this time, I was living with my third mother if you count my abuela. As you can imagine, it was difficult to keep it all together. The best I could do was to try and forget what had happened and make the best of my situation.

My father, as I noted previously, wasn’t made to work on land. He found a job with a shipping line that worked out of Puerto Rico and Jacksonville, FL. We moved to Puerto Rico first, but eventually found ourselves in Jacksonville. None of us spoke English.

Well, my father hadn’t changed much. He was still difficult to live with, even considering the fact that he was only home on weekends. By difficult I mean, short-tempered, a clean freak and generally not a very nice person. That, and the stresses of living in a place where she couldn’t speak her own language, caused Dolores to divorce my father. She was always kind to me. I loved her for it.

So where to now? My father had run out of options. He couldn’t stop working, and he couldn’t work on land so he came up with this plan. I had been going to a Southern Baptist private school, Victory Christian Academy, and there were several nice church-going folk that might be able to help out with my predicament. The Logan family stepped up, and so my father paid them to “foster” me. Apparently this was better than contacting my mother or grandmother.

At any rate, I lived with the Logan family along with my cousin Bobby for about a year. Oh yeah… Bobby is my first cousin, both ways… meaning that his mother is my father’s sister, and his father is my mother’s brother. Don’t ask… just pretend that it’s normal and we’ll get through this. At any rate, Bobby had been in my life off and on, depending on where his mother was mentally at the time. If you’ve heard me mention my crazy Aunt, she’s the one.

Joseph and Cynthia Logan had fostered children before. They, in fact, had several kids that they had adopted. They also had a few they had on their own. I enjoyed my time with them. I even called the Logans, Aunt Cindy and Uncle Joe. It was nice to be part of a big family for a change, but they weren’t “my” family, not that I had much of a family to speak of at that point. My father was working offshore so I didn’t see any blood relations for nearly my entire stay there.

After a year of the Logan family, my dad decided that living with my Aunt (Bobby’s less than mentally stable Mom, Marilene) was just the thing, because stability in a child’s life is overrated. So Bobby and I were off to Miami where we learned what it truly means to be without parental supervision. We could literally do anything we wanted as long as it didn’t interfere with my Aunt (Bobby’s mother). That’s a lot of power to have when you’re 10 or 11. Sure, we went to school, but we spent our play time shoplifting and doing all sorts of things kids our age shouldn’t have been doing.

During the time that I lived with my Aunt, my father remarried for a very short time to an Ecuadorian lady with three little boys. She married for her green card, and I was some form of collateral. The marriage lasted less than six months. My Aunt was in one of her less than stable stages around the end of the marriage so my Dad was forced, for a very short time to actually live with me.

My father was soon wise to the unsupervised activity situation. He’s actually not a bad person, my father. He just isn’t a good father. Case in point… He moved us back to Jacksonville where I returned to Victory Christian Academy with Bobby. Despite begging him to actually live with us, he continued working offshore. Again, confronted with either working in his environment (on a ship) or taking care of his family responsibilities, he chose work.

Just as with the Logans, my dad had another brilliant plan. We moved back into the apartment complex where we first lived in Jacksonville. Bobby and I would live alone in our apartment, but we would be taken care of by our neighbor, Mrs. Cobb. So we basically had our very own apartment… and very little adult supervision… AGAIN. That’s not to say that Mrs. Cobb wasn’t a nice lady. She was, and her sons Frank and Barry were about our age so we had instant playmates. But yeah… a brilliant plan, right.

For anyone keeping count, we’re up to 8 maternal figures in my life, if we include Mrs. Cobb. That’s eight in 12 years. The funny thing is that during this entire time, I had never been undernourished or physically abused. Never. My father always provided for me.

Now comes the weird twist of fate. My father got injured while working on a ship. Thus injured, he was forced to come home and finally live with me permanently. Bobby was still with us at the time, but the lack of adult supervision was bringing out the worst in him. Let’s just say that Bobby never really recovered from the various setbacks life threw at him. He’s currently in rehab in Brazil.

At first living with my father was great, but as I have noted before, he’s not the best person to live with. He can be an incredibly difficult person to deal with on a daily basis. And yet, somehow, he can also be very charming. I don’t quite know how else to describe him. He had a few girlfriends here and there so he definitely could talk a good game.

My dad was on disability due to his injury, but it wasn’t enough to cover everything so he found a way to make money that didn’t require him to do any heavy lifting. My aforementioned Aunt was dating a Cuban guy back in Miami. This guy was part of a crew that dealt in stolen cars. My father had bought a car from him, but (my father claims) he never knew it was stolen. At any rate, the guy offered my dad a cut if he could sell a couple of cars in Jacksonville. My father sold three or four cars this way over the course of two years. I mention this sad episode in my dad’s life because it was during this time that a couple of very special people entered into my life.

I met Angelique “Angel” Bradham not long after she moved into the River Park Apartments. We became fast friends. You might say that we acted like brother and sister from the beginning.

Angel’s mother, Judy, had divorced and was bringing Angel up on her own. Her eldest was off in the Army. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but my father started talking to Judy. Talking led to a dinner here and there. And that led to a marriage proposal.

I’m fairly certain that Judy wasn’t all that attracted to my father, but my father’s offer was solid. If there is one thing that is certain, my father knows how to work it with the single mothers. Note how every woman he married in my tale thus far was a single mom.

I saw what was coming. My father would marry. He would return to work, and essentially use Judy as a nanny for Bobby and me. This time I was wise to him. I liked Judy and Angel a lot so I didn’t want them to get sucked into his black hole.

I talked to Judy about it and tried to warn her off. She thought I was jealous, that I was trying to protect my father. She married him anyway, fortunately for me. We all lived together at River Park for a short while, but then moved into a rental house in the San Mateo neighborhood on the north side of Jacksonville.

Normally, at least as far as I understand my father’s marriages, the bride would eventually become dissatisfied with my father’s constant hectoring and seemingly endless bleak moods. This would lead to a turbulent period of fighting behind closed doors that would lead to an end to the marriage.

Well, in another bizarre twist of fate, my father’s fencing of stolen cars came back to bite him in the ass. The police had caught up with the Cuban stolen car crew and my father was, of course, implicated. My father’s side of it is that he didn’t know the cars were stolen. He always thought everything was above board, but even no one was buying that line. Fortunately, the police weren’t really after my dad… so they let him off if he ratted out the Cubans. My father sang the sweet song of the rat after which he feared for his life.

After a phone call or two from some very evil people, my father decided that staying in Florida was not the best course of action. He decided to run home to Brazil. I had to make a decision at that point. I could either go with my father or stay. It was really up to Judy at that point. She could have said no. She could have told me to go with my father. She didn’t, and my life was the better for it.

I stayed with Judy. My father moved to Brazil and I didn’t see him again for a few years. Bobby moved to Brazil for a short while, but then made his way back to the US to live with his mother in Miami. As I noted before, he’s currently in rehab in Brazil. It’s not his first trip to rehab. Unfortunately, it won’t be his last.

Getting back to Judy and Angel… The departure of my father came at a perfect time for both of them. My dad had begun to wear on their nerves, and his leaving lifted a cloud from their spirits. Unfortunately, Judy had to deal with the aftermath of people that had been sold stolen cars. Throughout it all, Judy could have chucked me aside. She could have called my Aunt and had her take me. She could have sent me to live with my father. She didn’t.

She acted like a mother to me. She protected me. She took care of me. She made sure Angel and I had everything we needed. My father, as always, provided. He might not have been there physically, but he always sent money. He may not be a good father or a pleasant person to live with, but in this one way he was always there for me.

By this time, Angel and I were in junior high. We were growing up. Angel was the wild one. I was the quiet one that liked to read. We both had our good days and bad days. We were kids after all. Judy had her good and bad moments too, but over time she and I built a bond.

If you asked Judy how many children she had, she never hesitated to say three: two sons and one daughter. She always included me, even though she had every reason in the world to cast me aside. She went beyond that. She loved me. She loved me despite my father. She loved me when it would have been easier to get rid of me. She loved me because it wasn’t in her to do otherwise.

I lived with Judy until I moved to Orlando to finish school at UCF. I was 22. As the years pressed on, I went back home to Jacksonville less and less. I had staked a claim on a new life, but every time I did return home Judy was there with her easy smile, her quirky sense of humor and her limitless well of love and kindness.

So yeah… Judy was my step-mother, and for those keeping count she was the ninth maternal figure in my life, but I think we all know that she was truly the only mother I ever had. Her example made me into the person I am today. I didn’t understand that for a long time while I searched for myself as an adult, but over the last year as her health slowly deteriorated I was able to convey these thoughts to my mother. I’ll always be thankful for that. I love her and I’ll miss her for the rest of my life.

Goodbye, mom. I’ll celebrate and honor you in some way every day.