Mama

FINALLY, some good news!

But first…the bad. As you know, my mom was diagnosed with brain cancer in late May, and in mid-June, had a tumor removed from the left side of her brain. She has rebounded beautifully, and we truly could not ask for more from that surgery. Following her surgery, a PET scan to detect other cancerous areas was ordered by both her surgeon and her oncologist. Then, the badder news. That paragon of virtue and caring, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, denied my mother’s PET scan, saying it wasn’t medically necessary. Wasn’t medically necessary? Are you serious? WHERE IS DEREK SHEPHERD WHEN YOU NEED HIM???

Fortunately, there are angels among us. My mom’s oncologist made a couple of phone calls, and Rex Hospital paid for her PET scan. Let there never be questions why I will continue to always choose Rex Hospital for my healthcare needs. The PET scan was on Monday, July 26. We got the results on Thursday, July 29. And it wasn’t pretty.

My mom’s base cancer, the root cause of everything else, is lung cancer, from a small mass in the upper lobe of her right lung. Stage 4 lung cancer. There is no survival rate. No matter what measures are taken, she will eventually die from it. Not only that, but it has also spread to her lymph nodes (just above the right breast), the right side of her throat, possibly her liver, and of course, her brain. However, they needed to do more studies on her liver to determine if it was actually cancer. So, an additional MRI was ordered.

Now, for the good news! The spot on her liver ISN’T CANCER! FINALLY! Something good in all of this! There is some concern over a new spot on her brain, but they’re not sure what that is just yet.

For today…I’ll savor that news.

The Late, Great Sadie Cutchins

In late July, our community lost one of its longtime and most beloved leaders. To some, she was a heroine. To many, she was a friend, a mentor, a shoulder, and a leader. But to my friend and colleague, Commissioner Joe Cutchins, she was Mom. Sadie Bell Fogg Cutchins spent nearly 85 years on walking this Earth, and she certainly packed a lot into them.

Moving from humble beginnings in Warren County, at 17 she married Joseph B. F. Cutchins, Sr. and moved to Franklinton, where he was a well respected businessman. (Of course, as Commissioner Cutchins shared at her funeral services, his uncles – her brothers – always referred to his dad as ‘that bald headed man that stole Sadie.’) Together, they built one of the most venerable establishments in Franklinton history – what is now Cutchins Funeral Home. They also began a journey that would lead them both to becoming two of Franklinton’s most prominent citizens.

Charitable, giving, and most of all, loving, Mrs. Cutchins made great strides in not only bridging divides in our community, but in our region, as well. She was the first African American member of the Franklinton City Schools Board of Education (when we were a separate school system). She reached across our community to foster conversation and understanding, to build the bridges that would help unite Franklinton as one. But most of all, as so strongly evidenced by her homegoing services, she was the matriarch of a family that loved her. For that, and so much more, she will be truly missed.

Godspeed, thy faithful servant.

Twenty Years…It Goes By Fast…

I cannot believe that today is August 10, 2010. Standing back on the edge of 15 West College Street in the mid-morning hours of August 10, 1990, this day seemed so very, very far away. Today marks twenty years since my mother was called by the pharmacist at Rite Aid (the drug store that once occupied the space now inhabited by Dollar General) and told that the KARTS bus couldn’t get my grandmother to the door. So, my mother traveled down Hillsborough Street and turned into the driveway of the little greenish white house on the corner with the ½ wraparound porch. She used her key to go into the back porch (which was closed in, and united the back bedroom with the kitchen). She walked in, after walking around the yard for a few minutes calling out, “Mama? Mama?” When she moved towards the kitchen door and pushed it, it came back to her. She pushed it again, this time with more force and placed her body in the wedged opening, and there she found, on the floor, my grandmother. Laying face down, her head surrounded by a pool of her own blood.

My mother reach down and felt of MaMa (that’s my mom’s mom) and realized she was cold. The stark reality that she was most likely gone settled in…as did the fact that this was no accident, and the person who did it may still be in the house. (This was also before the commonality of cell phones.) She jogged into the room that once served as MaMa’s bedroom, and knelt by the bed, calling the Franklinton Police Department on the bedside telephone. (There was no 911 in Franklinton then.) Answering the phone was a young man my mom had known for years, Anthony Young. She said to him, “Anthony, this is Levoie Senter. I’m at my mother’s house. Someone has killed her. I need the police here right away.” He immediately dispatched the police to my grandmother’s house, and then-Police Chief Walter Beckham came to the front door. My mother ran to the front door, and Chief Beckham came in, saw the scene, and escorted my mom to the front porch. My mother then returned to the house, and called work, First Citizens Bank in Franklinton. She told her co-worker and friend, Teresa King, what had happened. It upset Teresa so greatly that she had to go home. Another co-worker and friend, Barbara (Pinkey) Kearney (no relation) came to MaMa’s house, and sat with Mama until my dad arrived.

Where was my dad, you ask? With me. Or, rather, I was with him. He had court in Oxford that day, and I went with him (as I did many times when I was a kid…never to see what he did, just to play in the office). I’d taken a walk down the street, went to the Hardee’s and had started back. Something stopped me. My eyes were blurry…dark. I couldn’t really see that well for a few moments. Then, I started to see stars, literally…flashing lights. Then, it cleared up, and I kept walking back to the courthouse. When I got back, I came into my dad’s chambers (Did I forget to share that my dad is a retired district court judge? I take for granted that folks know that…), and it was filled with people. This really tall lawyer told me that there was a family emergency, that I had to leave. Before I could say, “What are you talking about?”, my dad stepped in, and said two words…”Let’s go.”

Driving home along those winding back roads, heading down Green Hill Road over a bridge where my dad had once flipped a Chevelle, I said to him, “Please go slow over this bridge.” He laughed. As we crossed over it, he said, “I think something’s wrong at home. I think it’s MaMa Kearney.” Now, mind you, if he was just ‘thinking’ these things, I doubt he would have been driving 80 miles an hour. But that’s how he tried to tell me. I put my hand to my mouth and said, “No…something’s wrong with Mama. I know it. I don’t know what. But something’s wrong with Mama.” I’ll never be able to explain the connection I have with my mother. I know when things are good, and I know when things are bad…and I know how to read through the BS she peddles sometimes, too. I don’t know what kind of intuition it is…but I’ve got it.

We hit the light at Cheatham and Green, and Daddy squealed tires turning right onto our street. He was headed home…and then I turned my head and realized that home wasn’t where we needed to go. I shouted, “It’s MaMa!” I knew, because I could see the crime scene tape from the intersection of West College and South Cheatham, and her house was visible because it was only a block away. My dad made a u-turn at about 50 miles an hour in the middle of the street, and pulled up in front of the house. We were out of the truck before the wheels stopped rolling. When we got out, Pinkey and my dad’s friend Robert Dale Woodlief, one of the owners of Franklinton Hardware store and a longtime family friend, were walking my mom out from the house under the crime scene tape. When she saw us, she yelled out, “Somebody has killed her Larry!”

That’s the only part that can still truly make me cry. Somehow, over time, I have developed nerves of steel when it comes to such issues. When we found out about my mother’s cancer diagnosis, sitting in the emergency room at Rex Hospital, I had only a fleeting moment of grief, as that’s all I allowed myself. Then, came the pragmatist, the questioning, the facts. Many friends and family have shared with me their worry over these past few weeks and months that I’m holding too much inside, that I’m hurting and won’t share it. The truth? Yeah, I’m hurting. But, I discovered at 13 something that carries me through every low I’ve ever faced…everything’s gonna be alright, it’s gonna be okay. (That’s from Light of a Clear Blue Morning.) I’ll cry when she’s gone, but I'm going to enjoy her while she's here. It’s somethign I gained from the life experiences of my 13^th year on Earth.

I spent plenty of time mourning the loss of a grandmother I didn’t really know that well. (Though I did spend lots of quality time with her, I was too young to know her…but by God, I’m getting that ball of yarn my brother and I used to play with…so Chris, don’t get your heart set on that one.) I spent plenty of time grieving over the experience of a loss that occurred in such a public way. But what will hurt until the day I die, and surely until the day she does, is that my mother had to find her…and that she had to go through it all on display for the world. The pain my mother faced is the only part that still hurts.

When my mother yelled out in her grief, I threw my hand over my mouth and began to cry. Pinkey reached out to hold and comfort me. And that would be the point that the ace reporter from The Wake Weekly chose to snap their cover photo for that week. A picture of my mom, Robert Dale and my dad from behind, and my face, straight on, wearing my trademark 1990 Dolly Parton t-shirt (how were there ever questions?), about to break down in sobs. That stupid picture haunts me to this day. I can see it in my head just like the day it was published. This was before full color was used, so the color highlights for big stories just had a light, pastel color background. That week, they used purple. How appropriate.

We moved to the truck, and my dad got in the driver’s seat. I got in after my mom, and sat on the outside, so my dad could hold her. We drove the four blocks to our house on Cheatham Street, and got out. My mom and dad went for a walk in the backyard, while I went into the house. I came in, and literally slammed a handful of change at the kitchen counter. Pennies flew everywhere. Tigger, my cat, went scurrying off to my room, scared I was angry at him. (For all the things I was, that wasn’t one of them.) I went to find him, and I just held him and cried for a long time. Then, the Charlie Chaplain movie began. We knew there would be a glut of visitors almost immediately…so we had to clean up, and quick. My brother, who was then working undercover for the DEA, came home when he heard the call over the scanner. He, my dad and I began cleaning. And how did we clean? Fast and loose, using a technique I employed many, many years later when I was a finalist for Wake County Teacher of the Year, and the video crew showed up the Monday after Prom. We threw everything in boxes, and shoved it up in the attic.

Within twenty minutes, the well wishers and mourners came. Robert Dale was first. You know, there’s a long held Southern (and, really, human) tradition of bringing food to the grieving family, so nobody has to cook while they cry. Robert Dale was truly a friend of my parents, and he knew their first need wasn’t to eat. He brought two cartons of cigarettes…a carton of Camels for my dad, and Winstons for my mom. If that ain’t friendship…

I laid on my parents’ bed, listening to the scanner. I heard them when they wheeled MaMa’s body out. I heard them when they finished examining the crime scene for the day. I heard every step they took…and couldn’t fall asleep to nap because of it. Then, I heard some commotion. It was my mom’s co-workers from First Citizens. They’d all come together, to see how we were. They all cried when they saw my mom…and again when they saw me. They brought food, of course. But what they brought my mom, and what so many others brought, was worth so much more. They brought love. The brought the village.

The next few days were a blur, but I still remember them all quite clearly. There was a wake a couple of nights later. But the day after Mama found MaMa, we had a mountain of emotion to work through, not all of it ours. You see, my mother has four siblings – Leon, Evelyn, Geraldine, and Betty. Uncle Leon died when I was two, so I have very little memory of him. My aunts, however, fill my memories of my childhood. Visiting Aunt Betty at her house in South Carolina, and playing in her pool. The birthday cake Aunt Gerri made for me when I was three. Aunt Evelyn rolling that godforsaken ball of yarn with me. But, as sisters are wont to do, they didn’t always get along with each other, and for reasons that belong to them, and aren’t mine to tell, my Aunts Gerri and Betty hadn’t spoken in about ten years. On the morning of August 11, however, my Aunt Gerri was sitting in our living room (den), in the overstuffed chair that went with the furniture, crying, and talking about MaMa. Aunt Evelyn and Mama were in the kitchen. I knew that the most difficult of my mom’s connections was going to be with my Aunt Betty, because for all intents and purposes, Betty was her best friend. They weren’t very far apart in age, and they talked like sisters, real sisters, like the ones you see on TV. They shared everything, even after Betty left to follow Uncle Bob as he enlisted in the service.

I knew what was coming with Betty and Mama, but I had no idea, none of us did, what would happen when Betty saw Geraldine. Betty walked in the door, knelt down in front of her, and hugged her. They just cried together. They told each other they loved each other, and then Betty got up. My mom was leaning against the kitchen counter, between the stove and the sink, with a cigarette in her hand. (Surprise!) Evelyn was standing off to her left, in front of the sink. (It’s ingrained, like it was yesterday.) I’d leaned in when I saw Betty walk up on the porch, and said, “Mama, Aunt Betty’s here. She’s coming in.” Mama looked at me and said, “I know. She’ll be in in a minute.” I knew what she was telling me, and I stepped away from her. Betty came through the doorway, her purse on her shoulder, and she just stood there looking at Mama for a second, allowing the emotion to wash over them both. They both burst into tears, and moved toward each other, embracing. They sobbed, and sobbed…and so did the rest of us. (Again…the memory of this brings tears to my eyes, but not for sorrow…for the pain they had to go through…senseless, ridiculous pain.)

They all sat together, talked together, and planned together. They met as a family of sisters in my brother’s bedroom, and talked. They talked about the funeral. They talked about what should happen to the murderer once s/he was found. They talked about MaMa. Then, they went to the wake. I was worn out. I slept right through it. Just as well. What I didn’t know until years later was that Hazel Allen, a good friend of the family, a fantastic woman beloved by most of Franklinton, stayed at the house and sat with me in case I woke up while everyone was gone. Angels among us.

Betty and Evelyn didn’t have a place to stay in Franklinton. At that point, there was no hotel that they’d want to stay at (we’d sold the Rimrock, and it didn’t exactly have a high reputation at this point), and the closest hotels were in Louisburg, and nobody wanted anybody that far away, so they stayed at my other grandmother’s (Granny), out at the homeplace, the house on the hill. When Mama went over with Evelyn, Ray (her husband), Betty and Bob (her husband), as they walked up, Granny hugged them all, told them she loved them and how sorry she was…and Betty turned to her and said, “Will you be our mama now?” Now that…that will just break your heart.

The time came that Saturday for the funeral. We all loaded into cars. Mama, Betty, Evelyn and Gerri were in the big limousine from Sandling Funeral Home. Daddy, Chris and I rode in Mama’s (relatively) new Caprice Classic. I sat in the back, with my head between the seats. We looked at the limo in front of us, and I said, “Wow. Well, Mama’s feeling okay today. She’s talking.” Chris looked up, chuckled, and said, “Ain't no doubt about that.” My dad laughed, and said, “How do you know?” I looked at him, and in the first hints of my adult sense of humor, said, “Don’t you see her head?” And, true to form, there it was, bobbing away in the back of that limo, as she told everyone in that car what was on her mind. Some life patterns don’t change easily. You can witness the same thing today if you’re on the porch at 440 S. Cheatham St.

We headed to the funeral, and that last vestige of polite society was displayed once more. As we drove down the road, cars pulled off to allow us to pass. Bystanders on the sides of the road, on the sidewalks, on the corners, all bowed their heads and removed their hats (there weren’t exactly thousands of them, but a good twenty or so were out and about, and paused in grace). We got to the funeral home, and for some reason which is still not clear to me, we were sat in the room adjacent to the chapel. Likely, that was best. My mother had reached out to the man that was her longtime pastor, and MaMa’s favorite of them all, Jack Sammons. He had been the pastor of Franklinton Baptist Church in the early 1980’s, and for many nights had sat by my bedside while the doctors at Rex Hospital worked to keep me alive through illness after illness. My grandmother loved him, and so did my mom. He joined a Franklinton institution, Dr. C. Ray Pruette, in eulogizing my grandmother that Saturday. I can’t remember much from the funeral, but there’s one moment I’ll never forget. Dr. Pruette talked about how MaMa loved the Senior Center, and how she loved her family. Then he shared how MaMa only had one child left in Franklinton, and her daughter spent many years loving and caring for her. He then turned, and said, “Thank you, Levoie, for devoting so much of your life to your mother.” My mom lost it…and so did I.

Then…back to the house for more food. And more food. And more food. I was a teenager…I was all for that part. I didn’t really understand it all until later on…why people brought the food, what the real meaning of it was. But buddy, at 13, I didn’t care. Bring on the buffet! (Words that came to haunt me later on, that’s for sure.) Lots more hoopla followed. About a month after MaMa died, her sister, Eula Mae, passed away at her home in Granville County. That left only one of my grandmothers eight or nine siblings. My relatives are truly scattered to the wind across Franklinton, Franklin County, the central Piedmont, North Carolina, and the Eastern Seaboard. We’re everywhere. You can’t throw a stick and not hit one of my blood relatives from one side or the other. They're part of that fantastic village that raised me.

Then, nearly four months later, my brother came to Franklinton High School and got me out of school early. Everybody knew what had happened. Hell, it was front page news on The Franklin Times for weeks. The same for The Wake Weekly. It had been a feature story on WRAL, WTVD, and WPTF (the station that preceded WRDC as the NBC affiliate). The immediate world knew what all had gone on. For a long time, I didn’t know if people were nice to me because they liked me, or out of pity or sorrow. I questioned that until I left Franklinton for college. Being at Elon was truly the first time that I knew, really knew, that people liked, appreciated and respected me for me, and not my family or my past. It took that long to move past it.

Chris took me home…and my mom was waiting in the bedroom. December 14, 1990. I came in, and she was crying. I said, “What’s wrong?” She said, “They found the man that killed MaMa.” I grabbed for her, and she pulled me to her, and we both cried. I sat down next to her, and she rubbed my back, and said, “From a distance, baby.” You see, Bette Midler had come out with a song earlier that year called “From a Distance.” It was a hit song, and was everywhere…and I had fallen in love with Bette Midler in Beaches. I played the song for my mom before MaMa died, just in the car, and she didn’t pay much attention to it. But riding in the car one day after Eula Mae’s funeral, the tape played it again…and she teared up. The song took on new meaning. “God is watching us…from…a distance.”

The man that admitted to killing my grandmother is called Terrence Lucas. He had gone to my grandmother’s house in the late hours of August 9, 1990, before midnight. He knocked on the door, asking to use the phone. She let him in. He saw on her dryer a wooden mallet, the kind you’d use to tenderize meat. He picked it up, and hit her on the back of her head, behind the right ear. She stumbled forward, hitting the refrigerator, breaking her nose. It was the broken nose that caused her to bleed so much, and ultimately, that loss of blood is what killed her. For a long time, my mother’s greatest concern was whether or not she suffered. Now, I’m sure there was at some point some pain, because she was struck in the back of the head. However, my mother, and the rest of us, choose to believe that she was struck unconscious, slid down the refrigerator door, and in her sleep bled to death on her kitchen floor. No more of a positive way to go, but it allows us to sleep at night ourselves. My mother did have the opportunity to see her before she was moved. She told us all that she had an expression of true peace on her face.

Terrence Lucas, in part due to my mother’s testimony, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. His sentence for my grandmother’s murder was handed down to run concurrently with his sentence for mugging Mrs. Julia Carr, grandmother of one of my best friends from high school, Adrianne Burnette. Were it not for Mrs. Carr’s quick thinking and health from being a retired physical education teacher, she might have been his next murder victim. But, she saw an oncoming car, elbowed him in the stomach, and ran out into the street. While he was in jail awaiting trial for those charges, the SBI ran his fingerprints against those found in my grandmother’s house, and found a match. After questioning, he confessed.

It took time for us to move forward. In some ways, my mother has never recovered. I know she still has dreams of those days. But, she has come a mighty, mighty long way. I called her tonight, and asked how she was. She began to launch into the treatment of her cancer, and started talking about today’s doctors appointments, and I stopped her, and said, “No, Mama…that’s not what I’m talking about.” She asked, “What are you talking about then?” I said, “What is today?” She said, “Oh…oh. Yeah. That’s why I couldn’t sleep last night! I couldn’t figure it out!” How fortunate we are that she’s reached a point where this day isn’t such a prescient point in her memory…though her subconscious still reigns supreme, I imagine.

I attended high school with Terrence Lucas’ sister, Kristina, one of the sweetest, kindest, most wonderful young women anyone could ever meet. We never discussed it. She’s a couple of years younger than I am. We were polite, and we moved on. A classmate of mine who was his cousin, and a friend of mine in school growing up (we went through all thirteen years together, as so many of my 56 classmates that I graduated with did), and I did have some words on a couple of occasions. But…one day I told her he confessed. She denied it, and went home…and found out the truth. We didn’t talk about it anymore, save for when she told me that she knew, and we're still friendly to this day.

There is a saying, a proverb, and a book, which shares the notion that it takes a village to raise a child. Well, my village is a town called Franklinton. I was already looked after by half the town. Everybody knew who I was…and everybody felt the need to report my every move to Levoie K. Senter, Senior Customer Service Representative at First Citizens Bank Franklinton. But following my grandmother’s murder, and then, eight months later, my aunt Bonnie’s murder (my dad’s sister, a crime still unsolved)…this community wrapped their arms around me and embraced me. Yeah, kids still called me names (some rude, some true, some prophetic), but by and large, I knew I was loved in this little town growing up. It’s one of the reasons that I’m glad I’m here, even though I resented having to come back when I first moved to Second Street in 2002. I suppose we reach a point where those old ghosts don’t haunt us like they used to. I drive down Hillsborough Street and College Street and I don’t see the crime scene. I see my Aunt Evelyn’s house. I see the place where I used to help my grandmother sweep leaves. I see the place where I used to play with my cousins David and Felsie when I was little. And I see the place where Elizabeth Miranda Woodlief Kearney went home to rest.

Twenty years...it feels like an instant. But, twenty years later, I wake up every day with the privilege of knowing angels watch over me. Today, I remember one that was taken before her time. I love you, MaMa.