Hope Hawkins and Roger Hawkins

00:00 I'm hope Hawkins and I'm 69 almost 70 in May. Today is Friday April 16th. 2021. I'm in Little Rock Arkansas. And this nice man on my left is my husband Rodger Hawkins and he is great, husband of 39 years, I guess.

00:24 Alarm Rodger Hawkins, and I'm 71. And today is April 16th in Little Rock, Arkansas. And many other places as well. I'm Oaks husband.

01:13 Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child. Sometimes. I feel like a motherless child. A long. Long way from home.

01:37 Long, long way from home.

01:46 I'm hoe.

01:49 So,

01:51 Hope you. And I've been together for those two 40 years. And during all this time. I know that you've talked a lot about your mom and your dad.

02:04 And that song is in part of in the in the back of your head. I know a lot of it.

02:14 Really, what happened to her?

02:18 Well, it was 1977 and it was a cold April in Aberdeen Scotland and I was living there in the International Community for kids with disabilities and I had my own dormitory and there was also a fifteen-year-old very disturbed boy from inner-city Aberdeen that I also was in in charge of and I had put my dormitory for kids to bed every night. It was a residential Community but it was a wonderful place where people is a homeopathic medicine and Gardens and it was really a wonderful place for kids where it wasn't like a home. And it wasn't like us a strict boarding. School is more like at International Community for people of all ages, but they happen to have disabilities and so Sheldon, my my

03:18 My fifteen-year-old charge said, goodnight. And I have myself singing this song of sometimes. I feel like a motherless child and I couldn't figure out why I was singing that song cuz I love that song. But I had maybe only sung it a few times. Although I was singing to my dormitory all the time that I was there and I woke up in the morning and Sheldon was right there and he said your mother, your father is on the phone and I thought with this is kind of strange, except I was really excited cuz then about a week, my parents were going to come over and we were going to take a trip together during my spring break, from Camp Hill, which is the name of the place where I, where I work and I'm so I went to the phone and my father said, hoping your mother is in heaven.

04:12 And I I just, I couldn't believe that she said she's in heaven and I just received the message and I said, I'll be home as soon as I can, and he said that will be really good and we hung up the phone.

04:27 And I went to my breakfast and end my, my Down Syndrome, kid in my dormitory said, hoping what's happening. It, did your mom go to heaven? And I said, yes, and he said, oh, that's a good place for her to go.

04:45 And the whole day was just bizarre and so I got on the plane and I had no idea what it happened to my mother, but I assumed it was obviously in a heart attack or something like that, cuz I had a really lucky loving childhood with three sisters and my parents were grade. And, you know, I have some down tricky times but in general, my life was really pretty good. So I was sure that, you know, whatever it was. It didn't really matter that, that bottom line was she wasn't around anymore and I was just trying to absorb that. So I got back to Buffalo New York, where I'm from, and my good friends pick me up at the airport. And I said what happened to my mother and I took me awhile to even say that because I was so used to being schooled into looking on the bright side and not making anyone feel uncomfortable.

05:39 And I'm so they they said there was a long silence and I thought, what is going on here? You know, I said, what, what what, what is the matter with my mother? And they said both, I think there was an accident and they think she might have hit her head.

05:56 And then it was just silence and these were really good friends of mine are family to me and I knew like I could feel that something was really not quite right about this and we got to our house and I got out and I looked and I saw all these cars around and I walked in the front door and I was sort of Spun from hugging person to hug and person some family summer neighbors, summer friends and everybody had fragments of information than they all thought. I knew what had happened to my mother but I didn't one person said I just can't believe this happened and somebody else said, this is the worst thing I can imagine. How are you holding up? Okay, and I'm spinning around and I'm being hugged and I'm LED through the house and I I don't really know what to do and I got pieces of information. And then finally, somebody said, I can't believe he killed her.

06:52 And for a split second, I thought I did my father killed my mother and this was crazy. They had been married for forty-five years, at least, so happily still skipping together. Still holding hands so much in love, and I couldn't believe she was gone. And I, and four for that shocking moment. I couldn't believe, I could believe almost anything cuz it was so unreal. And then I found out that a fifteen-year-old boy who are family had befriended, who cut our lawn and help with some odd jobs around the house and come to our house. One day, just steal a tape recorder. I just an old tape recorder, that barely worked. And so he came to the house and my mother was there. My father had just left for an errand and only my mother was there and

07:47 I don't know what transpired I imagined that my mother was probably really shocked and pissed. You know, what is what is Luthor doing in our house right now is crazy and I am sure that he was really shocked that she was there cuz he didn't think anyone would be there and I don't know what happened. But I do know that I found out later that he had actually strangled my mother.

08:15 And,

08:16 It was just just an unreal time and my father said, you know where you will, you come in and be with me? And I said, well, yes, you know what he said. You should go back though. Just Scotland and finish your last three months of being in this community cuz I was going to get her a three-year course completion then. And I said, oh no dad. I don't want to leave you and you said no, I really want you to finish it and then come back. So I went back to Scotland in such a Leary state of unreality, cuz I was so remove being in Scotland from this whole thing.

08:59 And I just couldn't believe that you could be gone like that like in a Flash. So unnaturally, so I came back from Scotland and and I thought about what is happening to me because I didn't understand why I wasn't feeling more I couldn't. It was as if I had swallowed my grief as if I tried to inhale and it just blew out of me just and and went into my soul when it was the strangest thing that I couldn't seem to agree. I didn't let myself grieve as well because our family had always been very very known to be so strong and my father was

09:46 Absolutely broken by the by his wife's death. And I was, I was terrified of him being so broken, and when I came back to live with him, I thought I've got to switch the subject when he mentions my mother because I I can't it's going to be like quicksand if we both think about it. We're not going to be able to get over this and so we decided to go to go to England and take the trip that my parents would have taken with me. So we went back to Scotland, amazingly enough not to be too long after she died. And I just remember this one day, we climbed the screen and in Scotland, scree is a, it's like a mountain but it's it's like gravel or see stuff that when you try to climb it. It's slips under your feet and you can't really make Headway. So my father and I. Maybe an hour up in

10:46 This screen and we didn't even know why we were climbing. No, it was just, we were in such a daze, but we knew that.

10:57 We thought our mother was there. So we climb the screen and it took us about 3 and 1/2 hours to get down from the screen and my father was so broken and we just and I was so determined that I was going to change his his mind. So he wouldn't have to grieve and I wouldn't have to watch him grief because that was another thing I didn't want to do. It's like he was so strong and so happy and so wonderful that I couldn't imagine him breathing like that.

11:31 So then we came back to Buffalo New York. I, I was going to live in England for the rest of my life, but I came back to spend a year with Dad after it happened. And it was incredible living with him. Because at first he was, he was just a Broken Man by this death and then he started thinking about what made this fifteen-year-old boy, do something like this. And then he did some research and he realized that this boy had been in 11 different foster, homes during his 15 years of life and he had the social workers had been, you know, they've been reached many many times during those different Foster families with the idea that he's getting more and more Disturbed and he really needs help. And so, by the time he got to my mother, my parents didn't realize that he was in trouble or they would have tried to help him.

12:31 States that sort of people. But anyway, my father was was more alarmed even by what happened at person or talk to Luther during his life. And he was even about my mother's death after a while. He started getting really angry with that, something like that. Could happen. So he enjoying the child, abuse task force, and that's where he started. And he, he was getting more and more upset with the task force because he realized that in order for child and do something that was that horrendous. They, they had to have been very, very disturbing. You had to get, you had to really respond to kids when they very very young and teach them how to be responsible parents.

13:26 And so, you know, we stood about that it was it was amazing watching him go from being a really broken man about my mother's death into finding out what happened to this boy. To really he was a really distinguished businessman and it completely changed his life and decided that really kids had to learn to be responsible adults from the get-go. And they had to learn parenting skills from the get-go. So he found, he decided that he started an organization called epic and that stands for every person influences children, and I guess the reason I want to tell the story partly as it's in its 40th year of existence and it's an incredible organization and its housing in Buffalo, New York.

14:19 And it reaches communities and families and individuals who really need parenting skills, really need to learn to become responsible adult and I'm so amazed and so in awe of his his movement from Brokenness to resilience and his resilience, I guess was really through, you know, through discovering epic and and building them that program. So it was an incredible experience for me to

14:55 Participate in this time, my father's life and watch this.

15:01 Transcendence.

15:04 Wow, so what was your mom like she was unbelievably fun. She has such a great sense of humor. She was really annoying because she'd be in a grocery store and she's suddenly start dancing around and she was always saying very sharp when she was in in the in church on Sundays and she absolutely loved people, she was very theatrical. She studied with a woman called Matt and skaya in New York at the time when she met my father. And then with that, but she was always filled with joy and positivity, but one thing she said to me that I'll never forget it. She said, remember your sense of wonder and your sense of Horror.

15:58 And I, I suddenly realized it.

16:02 Now, I'm what's happening now is I'm writing a memoir.

16:06 And I'm realizing that what I did was I and maybe I needed to have to Snuff my grease at that time, but I'm realizing now that that grief is really to be befriended and that you can't really get rid of grief. You can't jump over it. You can't deny it, but you can you 10 befriended and to health brief means that you that you love deeply and resilience means that you, that you experienced loss, but you're able to move through it. So, so I'm finding the right writing this Memoir. Now, I'm finally getting in touch with his emotions. You know, I finally can say the word strangle which I couldn't stay in those days. It was always one might when our mother went or after she died, you know, all these words, these euphemisms and I I couldn't really say

17:06 What happened to her because it was just too awful to imagine. But now I realize that sometimes you have to look at life in straight in the face and acknowledge and then move on.

17:25 So why have you why you? No?

17:31 In the last half of our life together. I know that. Why are you just now kind of obsessed with?

17:40 Your dad's Legacy about this, I guess partly, because I've always had this story in the back of my mind and it's been like a hot potato for so many years of wanting to write it and then not writing it moving away from it and going towards it and things like an interest in Buddhism and an experience with Al-Anon has made me realize that you know that I would that I said life is to be expressed, you know, stories need to be told and they shouldn't be locked away in your soul know. They should say, you know that there's a world out there that needs stories like this. No, I think I think if covid and I think of I think of sudden Unexpected death and how much that's hit us all in this last year. And how unspeakably

18:41 So many deaths are and so many of them are sudden and unexpected like my mother's death. And I think that's making me think about it. And I was thinking of the opioid deaths and I'm thinking of, you know, suicide and end the gun violence. All of this is sudden Unexpected death, which is different from say sitting with a cancer patient where you have time to say, goodbye. And I'm not saying that isn't equally difficult. It's just very different when it's sudden because you can't really absorb it. It's in a way maybe its shock value that you have this kind of cotton covering for a long time and numbs. You are sort of a fight and flight deal I guess.

19:34 Is since I just thought of this innocence, maybe. Do you think I kind of grief as a gift to you?

19:41 You can actually that you that you don't have to spend a while grieving. You can like all of a sudden, get it or not. I don't know. Yeah.

19:55 Yeah, I think I I think I get it. I get I get my grief but I don't know that I get necessarily other people's Grease. The only thing I think I've got a handle on is the fact that it's not okay to stuff it. It's not okay to swallow your screen. If you do that, it can be very toxic to your body too. And I've had a lot of physical problems and, and neck problems. And, and, you know, lo and behold, you know, she and mother was strangled. So I only put that together. Give me 10 years ago. When I knew that my neck. I needed a lot of acupuncture, and Chiropractic adjustments, and yoga, and stuff like that around my neck. And I realize that we embody,

20:43 Our pain and we embody our grief and that's that's not okay, you know, you wanted it you want to somehow befriended or else it can make you really really ill physically as well as spiritually. A lot of people are used to our sort of just become used to the numbing themselves to the pain. Yeah. It's just become a part of the sort of become a part of who they are and they walk around with it. And where is you? I know you've been trying to liberate yourself from the door deal with it somehow.

21:28 I suppose everyone is having to deal with it and some different way I think so, and I know that people have said to me cuz I've said, I can't believe that I just didn't cry with my father. I was so worried about him and grieving and the experience in his grief that I wanted to save him from grief. Just just, you know, it's almost funny, I think about it now, but when, when it happened, I think I really needed to have that cotton feeling of the grief. Just swallowing it like, bam, you know, it's way in my soul and and I can't even find it. It's so deep and and maybe maybe maybe that's Nature's Way of giving you some

22:17 Somaya.

22:19 A cover a protective covering for as long as you need it and maybe some people can never find a way through the protective covering and maybe that's okay. I don't know. I guess it depends on the person, but I think, if it, if it really hurt you physically and you need to take a really good look at or if it hurts people around you. Oh, yeah. What about your father? Did? He did he grieve? I mean in the way that you're talking about. He was a Bellow. Apparently. I had a friend who came to live with me during that time. And who said that Dad would sometimes get up and just loled out in the early morning. But by the time we had breakfast together, dad would sort of try to put up a stiff upper lip with me cuz I imagine maybe he was trying to protect me from Greece to, that was kind of a double whammy.

23:19 Each were trying to be very.

23:23 Transcend about it instead of just you know, getting out the tissues and screaming our way through it, which would have been a very good idea. I just thought it would be like such deep quicksand that I would. That neither of us would be whatever. Get out of

23:44 This is been a real. This is it. This is an incredible experience. I know that your you your life is filled with this right now. It really is. I'm going, I'm excited to say that, I really am going to finish my Memoir, and I wasn't sure that I could, but I, I'm going to. And I'm happy about that and it's epic. That's the 40th year of its existence. So it's kind of fun feeling to be able to celebrate my father and celebrate his resilience along with mine. Cuz I thought this was just a book about my father initially, cuz I didn't think I had any Brazilian, but I think I do, is it said it's interesting the Serendipity of this.

24:29 Storycorps coming around the same time. The opportunity. This is as the book in the area that are all of that is coming together. The stars are lined up or something. Yeah, so

24:43 Well, that's great.

24:46 Thank you. I think that's it.