Death of a Child

I Corinthians 13:11-12:
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways. For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known.

We all know that our childhood should fade away into our adult existence as we gradually grow into maturity, but no childhood should end in the manner that mine did. So, I share with you here how my childhood abruptly came to an end.

 My childhood is a blur of memories, both happy and sad. But the most vivid of these recollections is locked in sadness, hidden deep within a small, dark closet … quite literally. When I was 10 or 11 years old, mom and dad were both working. On this warm summer day, my mom was without a sitter to watch over us while she worked. So she arranged for her cousin Dan and his girlfriend to stay with us until she got home. 

My brothers were out back playing in the yard. I don’t really remember where Dan’s girlfriend was – maybe she was out back with the boys, I don’t know. My sister and I were in the bedroom playing. Dan came into the bedroom and began touching us very inappropriately; much like Great-grandpa Clark used to do when we sat on his lap. He also made us touch him. When he tried to force us into doing oral sex on him I rebelled.  This is when Dan put me into the closet and left me there until just before mom arrived home from work.

My sister and I tried to tell mom and Aunt Cora, Dan’s mother, what had happened but the shock of it all cloaked our young minds. All that we were able to tell them was, “Uncle Dan touched us.”

Though I know that both of those women had been similarly abused as young girls, they refused to believe – or even to acknowledge – that this tragedy had happened to my sister and me. When they ignored our pleas, in my young heart and mind there began to live many new fears; fear of men, fear of darkness, fear of being attractive and being touched in this manner once again, and the fear of small, locked spaces … and so the running begins. And I began to live deep in the recesses of my mind, hidden in my thoughts … telling stories, living mental lies – fantasies of my own creation – a private world of plush palaces and secret rooms where only the safe could come and dwell with me … ever running away from the reality that was my life.