The Freedom of Forgiveness

      own business. My mother was a maid all of my life growing up, and she taught her three boys how to clean, along with many other things she felt we needed to know how to do for ourselves. As a kid, I always thought that my older brother and my younger brother would purposely put very little effort into their chores, leaving most of the cleaning and laundry for me to do, since I took pride in being clean. I was my mom’s default “go-to” person when cleaning, doing laundry, or anything else needed to be done, and “done right” as she would say to me when my brothers would not clean something up to her standards.

      It frustrated me on many occasions, because I felt that if I could clean efficiently, so could they. But when I grew up, the training I had received made starting a cleaning business easy and effortless for me, not to mention the fact that I could do it with my role model, my hero, my mother.

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      The Freedom of Forgiveness

      At this time I was living at home with my mother, my stepfather and my older brother, called Kevin. My younger brother, Jeff, was in and out of the house, sometimes living with friends, other times moving back home. The relationship among us brothers was somewhat strained. My older brother and I got along fairly well; we had our times when we argued as all siblings do, but overall, he and I were cool. But with my younger brother, our relationship was more volatile. We would not only argue, but on occasion, we would physically fight.

      Upon graduating from high school in 1985, I immediately left home and joined the U.S. Army. I got out of the Army in 1989 and returned home only to find out that my youngest brother was a homosexual. How times had changed! Back then, it seemed to me that being gay was embarrassing, and at the time, my ignorance of homosexuality caused me to be extremely troubled, really agitated. It was also disturbing to discover that my brother was not working and seemingly uninterested in being employed.

      The Freedom of Forgiveness

       His idea of supporting himself was to mooch off my mom. Now the fact that my mom would secretly, and sometimes openly, give him money was troubling to me as well as my stepfather and my older brother. This issue kept us all at odds with my younger brother. In my opinion, I considered him to be a bum. He was very disrespectful to my mother in many ways that I would not tolerate if I saw them. For example, he would argue and even curse at her at times. We were constantly at odds. Often we would engage in physical fights, always initiated by me because it pained and angered me to see him use my mother and play on her emotions to get money from her.

       And, just like a mother, she always defended him and at times got angry at me for the way I treated my younger brother, even though it was all because I didn’t like the way he would treat her. But they tell me that’s a mother’s love, and I will never understand a mother’s love. She defended him, sneaked money to him, and allowed him to live in the house even when my stepfather was adamantly against it.

      The Freedom of Forgiveness

      My normal routine was usually to go directly home, catch a quick nap, and get ready to head out to clean banks with my mom. But December 17, 1993 would be different. On this day, I didn’t stick to my normal routine. I decided to go by a car dealership. I was in the market for a small pickup truck to use for the cleaning business. At the time I was driving a two- door hatchback Honda Accord. But I felt like it was time to get a more suitable vehicle, not to mention, the cleaning business was going pretty well financially. Normally, whenever I made what I considered to be a big decision, I consulted my mother first. That would be especially important for something she was directly involved in, like the cleaning business.

      At the time, there was no apparent reason for me to break my normal routine, and in fact, after spending an hour or so looking at several small pickup

      The Freedom of Forgiveness

      trucks I told the salesman that I needed to go, and that I would be back with my mom to look again. So I left the car lot and headed home, only to remember that I had a doctor’s appointment. I rushed home to change clothes for my appointment. When I arrived home, my mom was up to her normal things, fiddling around the house. I asked her if she had seen my younger brother, and she told me that he had just left, and that I had just missed him.

      “Did you give him money?” I asked her with an attitude.

      And my mother gave me her classic response: “Mind your own business; he’s my child!” and walked away. My stop at the car dealership had made me miss my brother’s visit. No doubt, I thought, he had come by with some of his friends to get money from my mother. I would later find out that his visit to the house had ended in a heated argument between him and my mother, but that didn’t mean she would entertain me

      The Freedom of Forgiveness

      and my disdain for him. It’s funny, looking back, I never did get to that conversation about the truck I was considering purchasing.

      I showered, dressed, and headed out to the podiatrist. As I was leaving, I told my mom about my appointment and that I would be back in time to head out to clean the banks.

      And my mom would say something to me that I didn’t pay any attention to that day, but it rang loud in my mind years later. As I was walking out of the door, my mom said to me, “OK, I’m tired; I’m going to lay down and get some rest. Wake me up when you get back.” These would be the last words I would hear from my mother’s lips.

      After seeing the doctor, I headed back home to get ready to go clean the banks with my mom. I took the quickest way, so that I would have a few minutes to relax before heading to work. As I drove home

      The Freedom of Forgiveness

      everything was normal. I don’t remember what music I was listening to, but everything else was normal, normal traffic flow, normal weather and a normal overall feeling.

       But as I approached the neighborhood that we lived in, things were not normal at all. Things were actually quite abnormal.

       To start, as I turned into our neighborhood, I saw police cars all over the place. I don’t think I had ever seen so many police cars at one time in one place, and all I could think was that something bad must have happened. As I continued to drive, I also noticed a few paramedic trucks, so now I was thinking, wow, something really bad has happened! As I continued to drive up the street going into my neighborhood, a police officer in the road was pointing and directed me to pull over. I rolled down my window, and the police officer asked me where I was going. I told him that I was going home and that I lived on the street they had blocked off.

      The Freedom of Forgiveness

       The police officer asked me for my ID. I gave my ID to him and he asked me to get out of the car. At this point all kind of thoughts were racing through my mind. As I got out of the car, the police officer asked me to walk with him.

       At this point my heart was pounding as if it was going to jump out of my chest. I can still remember every step. While it was only a few feet from where I parked to where our street began, it seemed like one of the longest walks of my life. As we turned to walk onto