Kemo's War Storiez: The Boy In Her Arms

At only five years old a child was enjoying family time with their siblings and mother by the fireplace in the living room of their home in Pensacola, Fl when suddenly, bullets came hurling from the fire. Everyone ran for cover. This five year old child was struck by one of these bullets which (prior to this incident)were thrown into the fireplace by the mothers' ex who just walked out of the house in an angry rage. The child survived the gunshot wound. Seven short years later, at the age of twelve, the child's mother decided to let her girlfriend come and pick her and the children up in her station wagon and head into town to visit family.

While cruising along the road, one of the tires exploded. The wagon spins off of the road and flips five times. Miraculously, everyone in the vehicle survived the horrible crash except the mother who died of internal bleeding--leaving three boys and five girls to fend for themselves living in vacant homes and panhandling for food. The children's father wanted to be in their lives but had to flee from Pensacola to avoid prosecution for stabbing a man to death. He lived in Saint Louis at that time but no one knew of his whereabouts--it would eventually take him two years to learn about the death of the beloved mother of his children.

After learning of her death, he mustered up the guts to return to the very place where he murdered a man in search of his kids (only 4 of the eight were his), only to find out that only one child would leave with him, the same child that got shot by the bullet in the fireplace. That child became a young adult who is now a twenty-five year old single parent of two little girls. They later met the person of their dreams that not only treated the two little girls like their own but had two more with her. They were two people deep in love, soul-mates, life partners, and every other synonym you could think of.

They now have a six-year old girl, a five year-old girl, a three-year old boy and she was eight months pregnant with another girl. This twenty-nine year old, eight month pregnant woman wakes up one Sunday morning only to find her beloved twenty-seven year old husband struggling to breathe he was non-responsive. He was pronounced dead at the hospital just two weeks before his daughter was born.

His father--a mortition, prepared him for his burial.

Now picture this: A young woman standing at her husband's casket with their two little girls, holding his three year-old son in her arms, stomach looking like a beach ball and two weeks away from giving birth to his third daughter. I was the boy in her arms.

-Kemo