I’ve known a few thousand people on this planet, and each one had the power to cause me pain if they chose to. And although she spent more time with me than anyone else, my mother never hurt me once. Not that I believe the world was out to hurt me, but that’s a difficult feat to pull off in this day and age, especially for imperfect people such as parents. She gave me a love I could trust in and without it, I wouldn’t have made it this far. I couldn’t blame my father for his bad moods. His hard times, before he married, never afforded him the complacency to turn down a job—he needed to maximize every opportunity to make ends meet. He had a hectic work schedule, working in the Port of Los Angeles as a tugboat deckhand. Then, worked an even more stressful job when he was promoted to operator. I recall being awakened many times by the sound of a ringing phone at two in the morning. This was always followed by the slam of a door as another ten-hour shift awaited him. With my father always at work (or away in the army before he landed work as a deckhand) forming a strong bond with my mother naturally occurred. A connection that led me to view women in the highest regard.

With my father being the choppy seas of discipline, my mother became my safe harbor. When my father showed me darkness; my mother gave me light—the luminescence I needed to see my way through things. She had reasons of her own to be bitter and angry about life too. At fourteen, she lost her best friend in a tragic car accident. A year later, she had to quit school, an eighth-grader already behind a grade, to care for her father who fell gravely ill so her mother could work to support the family. In the year that followed, she lost him to cancer—another grandparent I never got to meet. At the age of twenty-eight, and because she grew up in such a poor household making regular trips to the dentist a luxury item, she lost her top six front teeth—wearing a set of fake ones from that point forward. Then, right before her forty-second birthday during a routine physical, doctors discovered a small lump in her breast. After a biopsy was performed, she learned she had breast cancer.

Through all these valleys that usually buried people under the rocks of self-pity and resentment, not once did I notice a change in her demeanor. Instead, she relied on an unyielding faith in God to get her through the rough patches. Rather than shout His name in vain, breast cancer only strengthened her love for Him—instilled early in her life by her mother, a devout Catholic. As a result, I was baptized, communionized, and confirmed to ensure the Lord Jesus Christ was a part of my life as well. One Easter, when I was nine years old, my grandmother gifted me a graphic version with comic-like illustrations of the entire Bible. At times, I even chose it over reading my “Choose Your Own Adventure” series books. I skipped most of the Old Testament though to get to the story of Jesus. Not because of the message within, but because the illustrations were more graphic. I was too young to appreciate, or even comprehend, the meaning behind his betrayal and execution—the reason for his life and death. Even being disappointed he never sought redemption like a superhero would and just merely returning as a spirit.

Bearing witness to my mother’s struggles and then my own, I found no goodness in God—a merciless, cruelly unfair deity who preyed on the blind faith of those who feared death. After taking an elementary logic class during my freshman year in college, I became officially sold on my convictions. After becoming more familiar with science and logical thought, the stories of the Bible appeared to be on par with those found in the National Enquirer. How on Earth could anyone create it…in just six days? If man evolved from apes, how could Adam and Eve exist at the same time monkeys were created? Why could the Bible omit those large reptiles called dinosaurs? How did Adam and Eve last long enough to be tempted by an apple, if they lived at the same time as the dinosaurs? Although I was no Paleontologist, I did see “Jurassic Park” a few times and was well-versed on the behaviors of dinosaurs out of containment. When I was old enough to figure some of these things out, I made my mother aware of it.

“God has a master plan for us all, Landy,” she would say. “With God, anything is possible! Everything happens for a reason!”

“Oh, please. The Bible is just a collection of fables written to scare people into being good.” I would tell her. “The Ten Commandments are good to follow, but it’s just a book of made-up stories so when people are on their death beds, they can be at peace.”

“If that was true and they believed in God and the Bible, wouldn’t they be more afraid to die if they lived a bad life?” she would counter. “Did you consider that?”

“Not really…buuut if they were still bad people after they knew the Bible, something tells me they didn’t find enough value in it to truly believe anyway.” I’d say. “There’s just no way God could exist other than in a really creative mind.”

“You’re wrong.” She’d fight back. “How do you think I’m still here after breast cancer?”

“By the grace of science and the wonders of modern medicine.”

“Well… ‘the wonders of science and grace of modern medicine’ may have helped me with my pain.” She would concede, then pointing a finger to the sky, “but He gave me more time.”

Although she was a bit dyslexic and had short-term memory issues, I feared overstepping my bounds when it came to her disease—never wanting to take anything away that gave her strength. She may have stood only five-foot two and weighed a petite one hundred and ten pounds, but she was a lot stronger than I was. At sixty she looked ten years younger, with a fair complexion, a healthy glow to her skin, and no wrinkles even when she smiled. She took great pride in how her nails looked and had her long bountiful dark hair done frequently, even as she battled cancer. She hid her fight and sadness so well, I wondered if she even had it—instead choosing to lie about it to make me feel guilty whenever I partied with my friends. And while I remained unconvinced of God’s existence, there was one thing beyond true—if I had cancer, or even half the things she endured in life, I would’ve given up a long time ago.

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Our discussions usually evened themselves out as she teased me about what she perceived to be my shortcomings. She may have even been right about her criticisms at times, but I always held my ground.

“Landy! You have no common sense!” She would shout.

“What? You believe in God, angels, and all the crazy Bible stories, and I’m the one who has no common sense?” I’d counter.

“Get out of my room!” She would then yell, slamming her bedroom door after pushing me out, even locking it for good measure.

I’d then grab the key she kept in the cabinet drawer right outside her room, and let myself back in; just so she knew I had enough “common sense” to get back inside. Our spats though, usually and always ended up in a truce.

“Two tacos?” She would ask me. “I’m hungry.”

“Okay, Two Tacos.” I’d cave. “I’ll go right now.”

In particular, tacos from Taco Bell were her kryptonite, and signaled the end to our disagreements. During my years in college, I called her “Two Tacos” more than I did “Mom”. Her simple taste for tacos, a vice she enjoyed infrequently, left me even more perplexed with God. She didn’t drink and she didn’t smoke. She never ate fatty and sugary foods, yet she had cancer? If God was any good, why would he punish one of his most ardent defenders? The only cause I could pinpoint to was how she always found some reason beyond reason to worry. If there was nothing to worry about—she would find a way to worry about it. Never allowing herself to enjoy life, instead sabotaging her happiness by drowning in a constant state of worry and stress. Not only was it easy to believe I was the reason for my father’s unhappiness, but I also carried the burden of my mother’s cancer—nothing worried her more in life than me.

Growing up in a traditional household, my mother took care of the house while my father was the sole breadwinner. When she started to work part-time as a cafeteria clerk at my elementary school, it flashed me back to the time I overheard a conversation between them.

“I got my first paycheck today.” My mother enthusiastically reported to my father as he returned home from work.

“Oh yeah? What you do with the money?” He deadpanned, while throwing his keys on top of the kitchen counter.

“I bought Landyn a new pair of shoes. He’s worn his old ones out.”

“Already?”

“He’s had them for three years, Paul.” She retorted, shaking her head. “Not only that, but he’s grown out of them—they were hurtin’ his feet.”

“What kind of shoes you buy him?” He inquired, folding his arms.

“Pro Wings.” She lied, placing her hands on her hips. “I took him to Payless this morning.”

“Oh yeah? What you do with the rest of your money, Susie?”

“That was the rest of it.”

Thankfully, my father didn’t know the difference between Pro Wings and New Balance shoes—she didn’t want me to wear shoes the kids at school would tease me about. Even though she didn’t make much, my father still felt slighted. Why was she able to keep the money she earned, but my father had to surrender all his money to pay the bills? These small inequities in their marriage usually led to blown out of proportion arguments anytime a single cent of her money went to me. The more they argued, the more they bickered about other things that annoyed them. Even as these disagreements became routine, I refused to resign to the belief marriages were unrealistic. Instead, they made me aware of what seemed to be their greatest divide—a lack of common interests. She loved to watch movies; he hated them. She loved to read the entertainment section of the newspaper; he preferred the front page. He loved to travel; she never wanted to leave the house. He loved to go out to eat: she preferred to cook. He wanted to move to a larger home: she wanted to stay put. He loved the show “The Honeymooners”; she hated it. Their only real connection with each other seemed to be me.

My father was only four years older than my mother, but he seemed impious towards her simply because he was older—always talking down to her. He respected her right to air, he just believed the air he inhaled and exhaled carried more value than hers. Since they never made concessions to each other, and my father held himself as the superior being, I saw how their partnership lacked an essential quality every marriage needed—mutual respect. The manifestation of this impiety only showed me how much they weren’t meant for each other. That my birth was the only reason they got married in the first place. I’m not saying they didn’t love each other, but if they shared common interests, their arguments had a chance to cross a bridge of compromise. In the aftermath of their arguments, I often found my mother inside her room, broken and defeated. The sound of her sobs brought me to side with her, even as I tried unsuccessfully to tune out their arguments. Without mutual respect, it led me to wonder two things. Did they just tolerate each other? And did this represent most marriages?

After bearing witness to this iniquity for years, I vowed to never marry someone I viewed as less than my equal. I didn’t have all the answers and wanted to meet someone who I respected and could learn from too. To enter into any partnership in life with someone who you thought you were better than, would only rob the other person of their right to happiness. Didn’t we all want to feel valued and appreciated in life? When most of our hard work was done in the shadows and taken for granted and unappreciated? Happiness helps us survive those days when life is unjust to us. There was only one way to reach the zenith of contentment from the deepest valleys in a marriage—through true love. A love that had all three of the essential elements—mutual love, respect, and trust. A love that gave a marriage bridges and paths. That made life right for all those around it. These three essential elements were not mutually exclusive; they had to all be there before saying “I do”. They needed to be in place for a marriage to survive the test of time. Without one of them, a marriage could survive but ran the risk of broken vows leading to dishonor the ones they promised to love.

Although an idealist, I knew it was impossible to be happy all the time, even with true love, but if we were mostly unhappy, how could we ever serve our real purpose in life? With true love in our hearts, we had a fighting chance to cross the bridge of understanding and live a life full of value, meaning, and purpose. It’s what I took away from my parent’s combative union. This didn’t mean they never got along—I just couldn’t take the chance of being unhappy because I would never serve my life’s purpose. I also didn’t want to unleash my displeasure with life on those around me because I thought I was in love. I vowed if I couldn’t have true love, I would have some semblance of all three of its essential qualities before I promised the rest of my life to someone who blessed me enough to accept.

I don’t know what brought me to these thoughts while enveloped in purgatory—it’s clear at this point I was on auto pilot. It made me realize Culver had a history as much as I did. That even his history was intertwined with mine. Seeing the pain in Paige’s eyes, as Culver’s blade dug into the black ground beside her head, I still had much to learn about true love.