In a moment, a story of loss and recovery

In fifteen years of life I've gone through a lot. But I've also learned a lot and I want to share it with you.

                           In A Moment

                       A  story of loss and recovery.       By Anthony Rudolph

 It’s been rough so far. Not like the rough of normal teen problems, but rough like the kind that makes men cry in adversity.  Bereavement has been a large part of my life, and is as normal in a day as breakfast, or as anguish for having stayed up later than I should have. Along the way I’ve learned to forgive, but also to remember. Why? You might ask. Here’s why.

  It occurred to me last year in the early Summer in my blackened room that my birth mother had used heroin and drank heavily while pregnant with me, and that I’d been prematurely born as a feeble child. As I lay there, I Envisioned. the one time I had met her.

  It was at my birth father’s funeral. I was twelve years old, at the same church (-Gitchitwaa Kateri)  where funerals always seemed to take place. Traditional Native funerals last three days and include three feasts. It had been four, maybe five months since I had first met my birth father. I’d always known about him, yet at no point in my life before that had I met George Robertson. He came to church when he was sober. I always sat next to him and we would talk like only a father and son could, and I could see the pride and love in his eyes when he looked at me.

 It was as nice a day as any other, the day I found out he had passed away. I unwittingly predicted his demise. “-Let me guess. There was some chain reaction and George died.” Unfortunately, I was right, and the weight of this loss didn’t hit me until the moment I stood before his open coffin, crying with the rest of my siblings. He’d been robbed for foot medicine, and aused by the kicks delivered to him. However, his liver had already been severely damaged by alhad died of internal bleeding ccohol. I only learned last year that Diane had been in the alley with him when they were robbed, and I know nothing of if she was too high to help or didn’t help at all, like I don’t know if she tried to stop using or drinking so I could have been born normally, or at least lived with them.

 The moment my birth mother walked in I knew it was her. She was a frail, grey haired woman who shuffled in quietly and sometime after the service. I walked up to her and diffidently asked; “ Are you Diane Thompson?”. She smiled, and I think she also knew of how we were related. I sat with her and we talked for most of the night, but two bits of dialogue have stuck with me. “how old do you think I am?” She inquired of me, and I was silent for a moment, before I quietly responded “ Fifty three?” and her face lit up. She was thirty five, yet the hard drugs had aged her once beautiful and always smiling face into wrinkles and age spots. I’d given her fifty bucks to buy a new shirt for my father’s funeral, and she showed up in it the day after and shocked the congregation. However, to this day I still partly believe I supplied her last hit of heroin, because she died three months later. I didn’t attend her funeral.

 This was my combined lesson to not drink, nor to do drugs. I still had a lot to learn. A few years before this, when I was eight, my uncle had smoked himself to death.

  There was a call in the middle of the day, and I was allowed to leave school with my mother. We traveled in our old truck up to bemidji, MN, where my seemingly panicked family loaded into our conglomerate caring caravan and careened up to Fargo over four hours, following an ambulance. Of course, I had no idea what we were doing or why we were out there, so until  I learned the truth of the grisly situation I was happy enough to be out of school and heading north. It was dark when we arrived, and snowing. Phone calls were made, and people were scrambling around. We were eventually allowed to see him. My uncle Clayton, father of three, stable pain pill addict, and chain smoker.

 He had been diagnosed with stage four terminal cancer, and was on his deathbed. My grandmother, still able to walk then, was sitting and holding his hand. He was a kind man from what I remember, And lived in the backwoods of Red lake. His house, a two story log cabin paradise on a small lake. He had wanted to teach me how to hunt, like his two youngest twins. Lucas and Logan. Boy, they were mean to each other. I sat with my aunt, and got up to follow my mother outside while she smoked and made a phone call. Isn’t that ironic? Going outside to smoke while you’re at the hospital visiting a person on their DEATHBED for the same thing? One thing I remember clearly is what I did outside. It had snowed, and the snow was nearing four feet high in some places. I dove like an olympic competitor into a snowbank and was stuck there wiggling my legs until my mother pulled me out.

  As we returned to his room, I went with my aunt to get coffee. She was filling up her cup, worried and rambling on to me. That’s when the beeping started, the frantic beeping. The death call of our world. She grabbed my hand and sprinted back to the room, shoving the crash team out of the way. He had stopped them himself. I got a glimpse into the room just long enough to see him spasming, seizuring on the hospital bed. My grandmother crying out in despair, my mother closing her eyes and turning into the corner, my uncles hugging and sobbing.  He seized and sat up boltright, with a look I cannot describe as anything but awe in life. With his free hand and in the last few moments of his life, he reached up towards the sky and looked beyond anything any of us in the room could see, breathed his last breath and died.

  His funeral was beautiful. They had the same drummers at my father’s funeral. See, the drum was a gift from our Dakota neighbors fifty years ago that put an end to the Ojibwe- Dakota conflict and brought cultural enrichment to the Ojibwe people. His coffin was a polished oak with deer antlers as handles. He was buried out in the woods next to his house, next to all of the assorted heavy machinery he kept in his yard.

 He had died like his father,  a chain smoker who eventually was killed by cancer when I was an infant. His marriage to my grandmother was uncommon, a Pole married to a Native. One of the stories my grandmother told me of him was when he was in the last few months of his life on oxygen, like she was. He was so addicted to nicotine that he would take off his mask and smoke cigarette after cigarette.

 So those were the times I learned not to smoke, drink or do hard drugs. But I knew what not to do, who would teach me what to do?

  There are two people I today give credit to shaping my personality. Richard Wright, a wise man and my tutor, teacher and friend in my parish, Gitchitwaa Kateri. And my Grandmother, Patricia Ann Rudolph. She died on Christmas eve, on our way to church. It was quick, like she’d fallen asleep. But they’ve taught me to forgive. To love.

 My grandmother was a lady who always had a smile for you. She lived eighty years, and lived a difficult life. She grew up poor, with a past she kept secret to me to all but the following. Her father had died when she was young, and she hadn’t had the chance to tell him she loved him. He died in a car crash, and they had fought before he had left. It was like that with her mother too.

 She moved around and worked in factories with her aunts and cousins before landing in Red Lake, where she married my Grandfather and had a few kids before moving down to Minneapolis. She then worked in the coffee shop for thirty years and at the end of her career, she had seven kids. They ordered a limo on the day she retired. The family would have fish fries in her backyard where the kids grew up.

     After her husband died, my grandmother sank into depression. Her kids were reaching middle age. My mother, Lori Rudolph lived near My grandmother and visited her often, and did until we moved in with her. It was July fourth, 2000 when i came into this world. My grandmother had been experiencing mini strokes, and was having trouble getting out of bed. When I was adopted on July sixth, she was renewed with vigor. She preached to love, forgive and practiced it, and was a very Christian woman. When she died my uncle told me I had given her fifteen years of life. I still miss her today, and always will.

 Richard Wright is an older man, yet I’m not sure of his true age. He has children, whom I today know have never followed down the dark path of addiction.I had heard him talk, and I believe he  was an alcoholic earlier in his life. But today, he attends church regularly, and I learn valuable life lessons and wisdom. I follow in his path of being a pipe carrier, a very esteemed position in Native spirituality.

 I speak with him a lot, with our topics varying from the great beyond to jokes and the weather. Everything is new, always being renewed. Anger and sadness, they are how we as people deal with the changes around us. Fear, happiness, and all of the emotions we know are natural.

Lessons are beautiful gifts, and you don’t always learn them by spoken word. There are times you have to receive scars and maiming, both mentally and physically.

December 1st, 3A.M.

29th and Lyndale, North Minneapolis.

  It was a dark street. Dark night in general, but I didn’t care. At this point I was too far gone and head over heels to care about getting in trouble. I was going to meet a girl, and if you don’t live under a rock you’d be able to deduce exactly why I would be out there at that hour. In my pockets I carried a knife and stolen cigarettes, along with my pipe and tobacco. My grandmother was still alive then, and I believe my careless attitude came from her troubling talks of moving to Red lake. I was on the phone with this girl, and for her protection I choose not to procure her name.

I was walking and it was three in the morning when I heard rushed voices behind me. I didn’t have the reasoning to understand why they were there, but I soon found out. “ Don't F****** move!” I turned, alarmed and suddenly alert. Adrenaline rushed into my system, but I still froze in fear. My knees buckled as three thugs ran up to me. I saw a flash of chrome. They pushed me into a wall, and frisked me. I’m not entirely sure why, if it was out of fear or just from a desperate need to get these guys to go a little easier on me, but I was as vulgar with them as I am a close friend. Reaching out, grabbing a shoulder. Having him toss my arm off. There was an exchange of words. I don’t remember much, and I today know that that’s probably because I was horrified. Absolutely petrified. My brain is suppressing painful and fearful memories so as to avoid damage to mentality. But I remember their faces. Their heights. Being hit. That hurt terribly, and I was struck in the face until I lost my balance and stumbled into the fool with the gun, and again carelessly grabbed his shoulder for support. Momentarily I saw surprise. and then anger. He made a motion with his free hand, and waved the other two people off. They ran. He skipped backwards with his feet, aimed the gun and I looked him in the eyes. My only desperate thoughts were “NO!, NO! Oh God NO!”. But then I saw the flash, heard the thunder and closed my eyes. I thought I was dead.

    I moved my finger a little. Making sure I was alive, I opened my eyes. The robbers were halfway down the street, sprinting away under the cover of the blackness. I was in shock. Fearful angry shock, unbelieving in the madness of our capability as human beings for violence and cruelty. Their lack of compassion and complete disregard of my life, and I was reduced down to a sick dog. Shot because there was nothing else to do. I trembled as I limped down the street, and I didn’t believe I had been shot. The pain, the burning pain in my foot was just heat from the bullet hitting the sidewalk next to my foot. I hadn’t been shot. They had missed. People like that have the aim of a stormtrooper. There wasn’t a hole in my shoe, but my foot was really hot. Burning, and it hurt to move. Hurt to walk. It hurt to be.

   I limped around for the next half of a block, and found a car with four foreigners formulating plans for their night. I deplored of them for help, begged with tears in my eyes. Yet, all I got in response was “Sorry bro, we don’t know the neighborhood.” And they left, turning a corner and pulling over. I then saw my salvation and my doom.  A police SUV on the street ahead of me, facing me. I was crying with both fear and happiness. They stopped, frisked me, and had me put my hands on the hood. “I was out for a girl! I screwed up! Oh God, I screwed up!”, I blabbered through the tears. “ Did you shoot her? Did you shoot the girl?” The stern voice asked, and I was shocked that they could assume that of me. “No! I was mugged and I think I got shot!”. They were skeptical, but told me to take off my shoe. I was hesitant, and the moment I did I saw blood. My life changed then.

   The confiscated my knife, and my shoe with the bullet hole. There were so many squad cars around, I thought I was screwed. But I felt so safe, so relieved by the presence of the people I had been trying to avoid all night. They called an ambulance and I answered the same questions of general identification I had been answering all night. I’m allergic to morphine, and was frantically explaining to the EMTs that unfortunate condition. They doped me up, and I was taken to the hospital. As I sat in the hospital room, happy but terrified to tell my mother, who was already stressed out by my grandmother. I called a close family friend, but was turned down by an unfamiliar aunt. Finally, in tears I called my mother. She was in disbelief. I spent the rest of the morning getting my wound cleaned and getting a cast on.

  I hobbled around on crutches in a stupor of fear for a long time. I was angry. Tupac was an inspiration to me. He spoke of revenge and laughing at your enemies. I was laughing crazily, not believing I was alive. The days were gray. Dull. I searched for revenge, talking to people I know would have eventually heard word of my situation from the robbers. Word eventually gets around because nobody can keep quiet. But they managed to elude me, and still do to this day. For a long time I had dreamed of putting a gun in my hand and squeezing the trigger to hurt them, maim them, kill them. I couldn’t sleep for days, and my mother insisted on taking me out to where I was robbed. I shook and was in tears when we arrived. But today I couldn’t. I’d make friends with them.

  I’ve matured into manhood way too soon. Many people do, and this is my story of loss. But isn’t this a story of loss and recovery? I’m better today, laughing and joking with friends like I would have a few months ago. Today I walk with a limp, my scar reminding me of my bad decisions. I don’t smoke, but I did out of sadness after my grandmother’s death. I learned that isn’t the way to cope after I returned to wrestling and couldn’t keep up. It’s a nasty, smelly habit. I don’t drink, yet I also admit to drinking after my grandmother’s death. It made me ill, and I haven’t touched a bottle since. I would never dream of doing an opiate, or any drugs. I was born an addict and went through withdrawal that left my hands shaky to this day, but I refuse to die an addict. Today I’ve forgiven those who shot me. They changed my life for the better. I’m practicing humility and forgiveness. I’m very grateful for my life. I still mourn my grandmother, but I carry her wisdom in my heart.

 I’m seeing the circle every day. The circle is a native belief of reciprocation. When my Grandmother died I walked past a room leaving the hospital and heard a baby crying. Even in death there’s beauty. I may have a scar in my foot, but that bullet gave me more than it took. In fear there is hope and strength. I nearly lost my mind in the months after December, but I clung to something. I’ll never know what exactly stopped me from going bonkers, but I’m thankful for it. I still regret a lot. I didn’t visit my grandma enough when she was in assisted living. I shouldn’t have been so angry as to try to solve my problems like I did.

 There’s been talk over the years. Leader. Ogimaa. “You’ll bring back the old ways.”...” You’re the head of every table you sit at.”... “ When you speak, people listen.”...Many different people have guided me on this path to becoming one to rise above the others. To be one people listen to. I’m not an ogimaa yet. Richard says there are naming rites I have to go through. But I am: Anthony Michael Rudolph, originally Henry Robertson, Known to the catholic world as Patrick from my confirmation; known to the Native American world as Waubojeeg which translates to White Fisher, I am a scarred and forgiving man, fearful still today of those men in groups of threes, Joker, friend to many and all who are willing to share friendship with me, a source for venting, a son, a brother, an uncle, a cousin, a nephew, and a leader. I just hope I’m not a father yet. Because that would be hard to explain.

Credits to:

Richard Wright

Patricia Rudolph

Lori Rudolph

The Rudolph family

Every enemy I’ve ever made

Every friend I’ve ever made

All of my teachers, especially my English Teachers.

All of those not mentioned by name is this work

The cruelty of the world

Karma

The joy I see every day

My conscience

Whatever higher power you believe in

All the pain in the world, and whomever I have helped through difficult times.

Good luck to all who read this, and all who will ever read this. Chii Miigwetch, and Gigowaben.

Author's Note

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