It’s a story I’ve told a thousand times. That’s how I figured it didn’t hold any trauma. I can tell it and retell it like a Ted talk on repeat; I know just where to put the adjectives. Except it wasn’t until this past week that I realized the story I told was in fact a story of trauma, the one that deepened it and fed it, even as it prided itself on describing the details and actions with precision.
Trauma – chronic trauma that is – is less about a precipitous event and more about framing.
Here’s the story I’ve always told about the hours and days following my mother’s death when I was 14:
The evening I learned my mother died – on today’s date, June 25th, in 1990, I was whisked to my grandmother’s house in a small town an hour away with my younger brother. My aunt was there, with her mental illness and a purse full of narcotics. My grandmother was there too, her normally steely hazel eyes broken and misplaced like a Picasso. Various uncles and cousins and great aunts were crammed into her small kitchen with the brown and orange plaid wallpaper and deep freezer in the corner with a jumble of aloe plants on top. The noise was deafening.
My great uncle RC waved us all quiet as he strained to hear on the mustard yellow rotary phone attached the wall above the aloes. He hung up the phone and announced that someone would need to get on a plane the next morning to start packing up the house and to get my and my brother’s personal things, in advance of he and another uncle driving up the U-Haul in four days time. “Someone’s got to go up there right away,” he said.
There was a pause that lasted what felt like a full minute. I looked at my grandmother, her face almost unrecognizable with grief. My aunt, my mother’s sister, was still keening and rocking in her chair at the table.
“I’ll go,” I said. “I can do it. It’s fine.”
All the noise started back up in the kitchen, Uncle RC picked back up the phone, plans were made, and I was on a plane the next morning. When I reached the airport in Wichita, Kansas, my mom’s best friend and business partner picked me up and took me to her home. The plan was I’d stay with her and together we would go to my house the next morning and begin packing in advance of all the family and U-Haul arriving later in the week. But when I set my suitcase down in her grown daughter’s bedroom and sat on the bed, she crumpled next to me and put her head in my lap and wailed, “I can’t do it. I can’t live without her. And I can’t go there tomorrow!”
The next morning, she dropped me off at my house alone, tearfully waving with her lit Vantage cigarette that she’d check on me and be back after work at 5 to pick me up, and was so sorry she couldn’t face it with me.
I was fine all morning. I remember starting with my room, loading all my stuffed animals into giant garbage bags and then working on my bookshelves, crammed with Lives of the Saints books and the complete Babysitter Club series. At noon, I got hungry and went into the kitchen.
It’s permanently seared in my memory the beige enamel pot I was holding in the center of the kitchen, filled with cooked macaroni noodles, at the exact moment I froze and the shock wore off like a robe slipping off me. I dropped the pot in horror, the macaroni noodles spilled across the floor. My mother was dead. And there was no way I could be in that house alone, without her, for another second.
I screamed and ran to my neighbor’s house, the front door swinging open behind me, and breathlessly asked to use her phone book to look up the only other adult I could think of who might be able to take care me: my most recent teacher. Barbara Tuminello had taught me 8th grade the previous year and I adored her. She was one of those teachers who manages to teach how to be a good human, what to value most, and how to laugh at yourself, somewhere in the middle of algebraic equations and the transitive property. She was the one who immediately came to mind when every other adult I tried to lean on during that time fell away. And when she answered on the second ring, I breathlessly blurted out that I needed her to come pick me up RIGHT NOW PLEASE.
She was there in less than 20 minutes, took me get my suitcase from Pat’s, then brought me back to her house where I lived with her and her family for the next month, while I said goodbye to that chapter of my life along with much of my childhood.
I’ve told this story over and over as a story of hardship, a story of resilience, a story of strength, and a story of the bizarre power of automatic pilot during shock and grief. But what I missed until very recently was that this is actually a story of Help. Since I was a small child, I have told myself some version of “I am all alone and have to do everything myself.” So in wearing those particular glasses, it was easy to see this story as another one, maybe even the seminal one, of me all alone and having to carry a too-big load myself. And with me in the center of the story, that’s a pretty convincing narrative.
But what I missed until recently is that Barbara is the center of the story. She’s the one who leaps into action to help save a 14-year-old former student. There is no telling what she had to do that day. Her kids were around 9 and 12 then, or maybe even younger, and as a teacher, she reserved her summers for family time and projects around the house. As a mom of kids around that age now, I know what distraction and busy looks like, and I can’t say I would have taken the call, or at least would certainly not have been there that fast, nor opened my home up without question to a stricken teenager the way Barb did.
The story, as it turns out, is not a story of my aloneness in a crisis, nor even my resiliency and strength. It’s a story of connection, of help, of how held and supported I am, even and maybe especially when I am brought to my knees. The story has always been less about the person drowning, and more about the one who jumps in the water.
I am internalizing this new realization now, as I am again feeling so desperately alone, stumbling under a burden too big for my shoulders after my husband abruptly and mysteriously left me and our children, without discussion. In the immediate days and weeks and months following his relapse and abandonment, I would bring my forehead to the wall, or a tree trunk, or the floor, and pray the only prayer I had, “Help.” I prayed it over and over, “Help.Help.Help.” And minutes later, without fail, a friend would call or text to check on me, or my youngest would wrap his sticky arms around me and slide a note in my pocket, “Mama, I love you with my hole herat.” (sic)
What if I could change the lenses in my glasses to see the help that is always there, the abundance of the support and love always running its little stream along the margins, instead of what I have lost? How could I even revisit the old stories to see them more broadly – like my stepmother telling me she and my dad had no idea I traveled up to Wichita all alone at 14? How might I begin to expect life’s generosity for me, instead of its hurdles?
I am about to leap with my children into a new chapter, and maybe soon after a new city in order to give us a fresh start and new life. I am terrified, but I am picturing Barbara zipping into a driveway in her minivan. I am witnessing my stepmom and chosen family helping us get there and the friends of friends I have never met before in places saying, “Let us help you find a neighborhood and good schools” and dear friends now saying, “this is right.” Our transition is one colored by support and abundant gifts.
Life is generous. And there is always Help. This is the new story I am telling.
ebeauvaisblog 
A wise woman once told me stories about how the world works and the love that lives at its core. I am beyond grateful to have befriended that wise woman and to be given the opportunity to listen to her speak and to read the words that reveal her truth, our truth. As always, thank you, dear one.
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Your walking next to me, always, is such a light and a joy. Grateful beyond measure for you, my dear friend.
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Your walking beside me, always, is such a light and a joy, my dear friend!
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There you are! I have missed your voice and expression of life in its complexity and its simplicity. This is no happy homecoming however. I am crestfallen at the news. I am nonetheless encouraged by your authenticity, which helpfully evokes clarity and conviction as I hear you. Your brutal experience is rendered communal. Of this new Beauvais reality I offer only love and ready buoyancy, in whatever form, as your fresh voyage weathers the inevitable vagaries of its course. I weep and yet I am warmed by your renewed proximity and its accompanying insight and fragile fortitude. Peace and steady progress E!
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Oh Michael, this is so kind of you!! Thank you for this, and for your big Cadillac of a heart, my friend. I’m so glad to be emerging and looking forward being back in better touch. Peace right back to you!
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Elizabeth, this piece is so beautifully written and speaks from such depths of your soul. Your decision to frame your experiences with a new lens shows depth, courage, and hope. My prayer is that your planned move brings a healing and a new beginning for you and your children. As you said, you are much loved and will continue to be looked after by those of us who care so deeply about you — and there are many of us!
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So grateful for my star head cheerleader! Love you, Debbie!
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My dear, dear Elizabeth… You had me in tears as I read this and they remain as I write. I’m am humbled that you should be so kind as to honor me in the midst of your heartache and pain.
Why God has tested you with so much hurt and pain I have no answer. My heart knew something was going on with you and I should have reached out to check on you. I still need to learn to listen when the Spirit speaks. To this day, through all the time, distance and separation you remain in my heart as a shining light.
This post has touched me more powerfully than you will ever know. You were and will always remain much more than a student to me and I am always just a phone call away. You are a survivor and you will remain one. Depend on those who love you to help get you through the dark, painful, empty times and remember how strong you are and what an amazing example you are for your precious children.
No fourteen year old should have had to go through what you did, but you survived that and you will survive this with your beautiful children through God’s guidance, the people who love you, and always your beautiful Mother who still loves and watches over you.
Again, I am truly humbled by this post, love you dearly, (The two pictures you gave me still hang on one of my bedroom walls.), and pray that your future will be brighter than you can even imagine.
Oh, and I don’t have a minivan anymore, but I have a CRV that works just as well!
Love and prayers always,
Barbara
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Barbara, words are inadequate. Thank you. I love you so.
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Gosh I am moved all over again by this story. This is such a perfect Nan “what lenses are you wearing” story. So touching. Thank you.
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thank you, dear friend. I sure wish I could share it with her too. xoxo
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You are deeply loved and obviously the Warrior Woman…your future will unfold…you will step into it….you will “help” escort your gifted children right were they belong! Prayers and hope ahead! Don’t loose sight of the destination when the journey seems to beg to differ! ❤️🙏❤️
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thank you so much, Pam! I love the notion of escorting my children to right where they belong.
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Oh, I love this. And you, and how you continue to seek the light in this mess of a world. Thank you for this lovely reminder of how to replace our lens to one of gratitude… You are amazing. Thank you for sharing, being vulnerable….
As always, know i am rooting for you and am in your corner… Sending lots of love ~
Abigail
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Thank you, dear Abigail. I love you!
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Elizabeth…this morning as I sat outside my room at Lake Ouachita, I began reading “The Story”….then stopped short in disbelief. I have memories of that summer in Shreveport, but I never knew about you going back ALONE to pack up your house! I still can’t get past it. Lauren has filled me in on your life’s challenges in past months, and you have been in my thoughts and prayers. But…I can’t process or embrace the fact that you were allowed to fly back, ALONE , to take care of things. You were but a child!!!! A budding and mature young young pre-adult…a child. Unbelievable. Just know my love and prayers for you continue.
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Thank you, Cynthia. You were such a safe haven and surrogate mama for me during that summer and those years after — thank you for all of that love and support and mothering. I think a lot of the adults around me didn’t really know I was taking it on myself and it didn’t help I kept saying I was fine. The big learning for me was to realize how readily help is the minute I reach out my hand for it. You’ve been a big part of that! Lots of love to you!
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You are so powerfully strong, and yet even stronger to be able flip your story from yourself — your loss — to a faith that there are those who who will always be there to love and help you. I don’t know you, nor you me, and, I always find your writings a great inspiration. Thank you, Elizabeth, and best of everything in this new chapter of your life.
Susan
New Orleans.
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Susan, I’ve always felt so touched and honored when you write to share and comment – largely BECAUSE we don’t know each other, so it’s a testament to how hearts can connect, and so personally gratifying that my words might resonate beyond my circle. Thank you so much.
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There is always Help. Thank you for these reflections, for sharing your story. And come what may, here’s to the Help that WILL come in your next chapter. Love to you, friend!
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Love right back to you, Candace! Porch tacos again soon?
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This is so beautifully written. Life is a set of stepping stones and each one makes up our journey. You are the great E because you are resilient and you’re going to slay this next chapter. The telling of your truths will help so many of us. Thank you for sharing.
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Oh Hardette, thank YOU my dear friend. Your support means so much
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This is so touching, well-written and wise. We could all be well-served to consider changing our lens on some of life’s challenges. To be able to see such trauma that way is brave and such a great example for your children. We were only acquaintances in Shreveport, but I really admire your writing and and appreciate Judy sharing it. I wish you all the best as you figure out how to live your best life.
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Sally, thank you for this! I have such fond memories of the few times we were around each other in shreveport, and have loved staying in some kind of touch over facebook and through Judy. Your encouragement means a lot!
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Thank you dearest Elizabeth for so generously sharing this beautifully crafted story told in your strong voice. Even, though I cried the whole time reading it, knowing that you now see it in a whole new way is so positive. Thank you for putting it into words. Your story is amazing and inspiring. You are always supported, and loved.
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Dear friend, I am so grateful to have you by my side – and to get the chance to be by yours. You always inspire me.
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Elizabeth, you are a beautiful person, always have been. You told this story so gracefully. Thank you for sharing you journey. I always remember the fun times we had together in Wichita with a smile. Kerry
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Was thinking of you tonight during the virtual Dar concert but you have disappeared from
Facebook (as I wish most days I could). Hope you are doing well – and the concert was filled with oldies/goodies and felt very healing – watch if you can!
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