Losing My Dad Saved My Life

The new Star Wars movie had just been released, and was playing on the television when my mother called from Durango, CO to tell me my father was in the hospital, and that she would keep me updated. I began packing a suitcase while the Italian man I was living with was in the shower. I was afraid of him but could not get away because he wouldn't let me work, have a car, or have my own money. So, I stuffed everything I could in a suitcase and shoved it under the bed, then lay down and pretended I was sleeping.

The next morning I still hadn't heard from my mother, so I walked my son the two miles to school as I always did since he was only in the second grade. When I got back home I opened the door to find the "Italian Stallion" standing in the kitchen with his hand on his hip wanting to know what took me so long that morning. I told him to get out of my way, that my father was dead. He looked at me funny, because my mother had called while I was gone to let me know my father had passed from an aortic aneurysm after they wheeled him out of surgery. I knew deep inside me since she called the night before that my father would not make the surgery, he had too many things wrong with him, so I didn't need to hear it from my mother to know what had happened. I made arrangements to take the bus from San Diego where I was living to Durango, CO where my mother and father resided. The next morning I got up and pulled the overstuffed suitcase from under the bed and threw it in the trunk of his car before it was seen. I was in no mood to start fighting with him on this morning of all mornings. I was deeply in grief, and he was a monster that beat me and controlled my life, and I had been beaten for the last time. When we got to the bus station and he saw the suitcase, he asked me why I was taking so many clothes just for a funeral, and I told him I was so upset that I didn't know what to take so I just shoved everything in the suitcase, and to my relief, he accepted the story. My son and I boarded the bus, and I had no intention of ever returning to the Italian Stallion.

The letters from him began to pour in when he realized I wasn't coming back, and then the letters from his parents began coming as well, telling me how good I was for their son, and how much they loved me and wanted me back. As much as I hated to do it, I had to tell them the truth, let them know he was violent and beat me, kicked me, and emotionally abused me by having me write letters to his old girlfriends, and even had one over and expected me to make dinner. They wrote me back and told me they had no idea he was doing that, and that they didn't blame me for leaving him, and wished me the best. In spite of that, he showed up in Durango looking for me, and I had filed a restraining order against him so when he showed up, the cops came to get him. I also reported him for insurance fraud, because he sold insurance to the drunk native Americans on the reservation, and then listed himself as the beneficiary. Once I reported that and they verified my information, he was not allowed to leave the state of California for two years.

I still looked over my shoulder even after he was sent back to California, because he always told me both he, and his father, were connected to the mob in Chicago where they were from, and that they were owed favors. I was lucky I had a place to escape to, but my father dying was a sad and tearful time for me, because he and I had always been close. I remember his shirts hanging in the bathroom that my mother had washed, and burying my face in them and crying my heart out. They still smelled like him, and I wished so much that he was there.

I love you dad, and I'm sorry it took you dying to get me out of a dangerous and abusive relationship.