The memories I have to bare are the only form of Heaven I have on Earth (Robert Cruz 16y/o)

From what Barbara tells me, after my mother had cleaned the weapon with my father, the argument started. Mom knew that after she had cleaned the gun, she put the magazine in and cocked it which put a round in the chamber and after doing so, she dropped the clip and left the gun on the table where she was cleaning it. I still, to this day, don’t understand what got into my mom’s head. Unfortunately I never will because she passed away in December of 2007. Anyway, my upbringing was marred by a few incidents and accidents here and there but the most memorable “incident” happened when I was about 3 years old and I can remember it like it was yesterday.

After my mother and father had gotten married, they moved to Texas and lived there for a short time. Nobody in my family really remembers anything that happened in Texas. I am not sure why but I am guessing that it has something to do with “selective memory loss”. Anyway, we lived in Texas for about 2 years and finally ended up in Valhalla, New York which is where my father was raised. My dad’s side of the family owned a large house there since the early 20^th century and to save money, the entire family moved in with my grandmother on my father’s side. My mom, dad, sister and brother and I all lived in the basement of the house. Now, mind you, since the house had been built by my grandfather, nobody really knew more about it than my father but as big as the house was, neither my grandma nor my dad chose to actually keep up with the important maintenance. Of course, when it needed a new roof or a paint job then it was done. But since we lived in the basement and my grandmother live upstairs, she didn’t really know that every time it rained, the basement would flood. My dad would complain about it and say that he had to do something about it, but he was always too drunk to follow through on any of his promises. So imagine a family with three young children living in a house in which the basement flooded all the time and nothing would be done about it. Yeah it was that bad.

On one particular evening, my mother had just come home from work and my father had already been tipping the bottle for quite some time. One thing led to another and an argument arose –which wasn’t really an abnormal occurrence in our household- and the five of us were about to have our lives changed in the most unusual and horrible ways that a family can be changed…