MY STORY TO TELL

COMING HOME

With the help of my mother, we lined up an apartment in Birmingham and trucked back to Birmingham. We probably spent 3 years total living in New Jersey and I really enjoyed it there. I really enjoyed the winters, because I am a snow lover. I was however glad to be home and to be back on good terms with my mother. It appeared that we had put all the bullshit behind us. Times were good, no times were great.

One thing in life that I truly hated and probably one of the only things I was ever truly jealous of others about, was their ability to spend time with their grandparents. I was close with my two grandmothers, my father’s mom passed away when I was in 6th grade and my mother’s mom, well she was senile and crazy as fuck. Though she wasn’t always like that. I do remember as a child when we were at the beach together, she would always be an early riser, just like myself and she would always take me for walks down the beach early in the morning. She would let me fish off the pier and I always enjoyed that time with her. At the same time, I remember my parents dropping me off with her at her apartment when I was just a small child while my parents went to a wedding. Well not long after my parents left, a man came over with a 6 pack of beer and the two of them when to her room and closed the door and she very strictly instructed me not to bother them. I never forgot that because my parents, especially my mother was so anti drinking due to her father being an alcoholic. So that always stuck with me. I knew my grandmother had gone through a lot of mental issues; she was even treated with electric shock treatment from what I was told. It really fucked her up in her later years in life. One time after I was married, I believe, we were all at the beach and out of no where she told me she hated me and wouldn’t even cry at my funeral. I laughed and reminded her she wouldn’t be alive to attend my funeral. That ended up being true and I had to witness the shit she put my mother through. As my mother was the only one who took care of her. She was such a handful, none of the other siblings of my mother ever took care of her. My parents paid for everything.

Unfortunately for me, I never knew either one of my grandfathers. That along with the fact I lost one of my grandmothers early on in life, I knew I wanted to have kids at an early age so they would be able to know their grandparents, at least I thought they would be able to. With that understanding, Stephanie and I agreed to try and have children and sure enough, it didn’t take long before we found out Stephanie was pregnant with our first child. I was so excited I purchased three different pregnancy tests and they all three came out positive. I immediately called my parents. I was giving them their first grandchild!

August 14, 1997, the day my life changed forever. It was on this day my beautiful baby girl Hannah Elizabeth was born. I had two dozen roses delivered to the hospital, one for her and one for her mother. I had to make sure I was the first man to ever buy my baby flowers! Hannah was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in this world. It was funny, well kind of because I was so young, 23, that people asked if I was the brother. I was no like no fuckers; I am the mac daddy!! Hannah was my first blood relative I had ever known in my life, at least in the life I could remember. She was my everything. Everything changed for me then. I no longer cared about anything but Hannah.

As Hannah grew, it was apparent she was extremely smart and beautiful. We had the best relationship and even though she was little, she was fierce! I took Hannah with me everywhere. We went on trips together, we went backpacking together, the beach, movies, you name it. I was so in love. I was so happy to be able to give my parents their first grandchild and they were absolutely in love with Hannah. I was fortunate that I lived in the same town as my parents. When we found out we were pregnant with Hannah, we began building a home on family land. We did not want to raise our daughter in an apartment and we moved in a few months after Hannah was born.

During this time, my relationship with Stephanie became very troubled and our time was in constant turmoil. I had taken a job in Kentucky on a temporary basis and things were not going well. It was at this point that I came home and found my in-laws at my house with a trailer and were going to be packing up and moving Stephanie and Hannah down to Pensacola, where they had recently moved. First thing I noticed when I stepped in my house, all my guns were moved. Guess they knew better than to try and take my kid out of state. I immediately got in to a very heated argument with my then father-in-law and before things escalated any further, I left. I then contacted my father and said, get an attorney to file a motion to prevent them from taking my daughter out of state. It was a nasty situation, but thanks to my father, cooler heads prevailed. Stephanie and I agreed to work things out. I wish I could say our relationship turned around, but we had truly grown in such different directions. Stephanie hated my outgoing personality, she hated that I liked to have a drink, I was a sexual person, she most definitely wasn’t, we were just two different people.

If I told you our relationship was all bad, that would be a lie. We definitely had our good times. It wasn’t long that Stephanie found out she was pregnant again and we were both very excited. Unfortunately, that excitement turned to disappointment and sadness when we found out that the pregnancy had terminated itself. She had to undergo a DNC and so we became one of the many couples who have experienced a miscarriage. It was extremely difficult for me to accept. After that point Hannah was growing up, things were going so good with Hannah that we decided to not have any more children.

Let me introduce to Jack Daniels. I forgot to tell my ole buddy Jack that I wasn’t having any more kids. Maybe God knew better than either one of us. Because after a fun filled night of drinking, Stephanie became pregnant again. This time we were having a boy. At first, I was angry because I was convinced that there was no way I could love another child as much as I loved Hannah. Not possible. Not fair to even bring another kid into this world. Though when we learned we were having a boy, that made things better. See my dad is John Paul Vinsant, I am John Mark Vinsant and I was definitely naming my son John, just needed the middle name.

August 1, 2003, we welcomed John Abram Vinsant into this world. I gave my dad a grandson, a grandson that was named after him. I was so happy. Abram was a completely different type of child than Hannah though. Whereas Hannah was content playing by herself, never sick, never any trouble, well Abram was the complete opposite during his early years. Regardless of that, he was my boy and I didn’t know it then, but Abram would be sent here to save my life, and he did. I am so blessed with both of my children; I couldn’t imagine life without either one of them.

I wish I could say the addition of a child helped my marriage to Stephanie, it didn’t. I don’t know if it caused more issues for us, I am not sure. We just were two totally different people and things escalated when Stephanie insisted on having a Bris for Abram. A Bris is a Jewish ceremony for circumcision. Let me just tell you it was a fucking nightmare. One I am still angry about to this day. I was adamant that we were having it done in the hospital unless she could find a medical doctor who happened to be a Rabbi. Well fuck me, she found one. What a cluster fuck that turned out to be. I really lost my shit. Thankfully my father was there to calm me down. I relied on that man so many times. I can’t even tell you.

We moved on past the Bris, but I never forgot it and I still have not gotten over it. What should have been truly the happiest time of my life, things transitioned into hell. My father who had been a firefighter for 40 years, recently retired as a fire captain, we all knew his retirement was going to fuck him up. But what really started my father’s downfall was the death of his brother years earlier to cancer. My father and my uncle were extremely close. They worked together and my uncle was my father’s elder of 10 years. They worked together, they vacationed together, bought land together, did everything together. When my uncle got sick and eventually passed away, life really changed. The true colors of our “family” came to light. Honestly, I should have known then if they could treat my father the way they did, they could easily treat me the same way.

Well, this company that my father and uncle ran, granted my father only owned 5% of the company, never the less, he was part owner and when my uncle passed away, the company was the handed over to my cousin. My cousin who was and is a fucktard of epic proportions. He could not have my father there overlooking his every move, so what did he do. He had my father escorted out of the building, changed the locks and fired my father. Forget the fact that my father owned 5% of that business, didn’t matter. My father had to sue his family to get his money out of the business and in nature of doing the right thing, my father settled for $50K, even though the company had millions of dollars in the bank and was a multi-million dollar corporation that had bene in business for over 40 years. Well, he got fucked, but it was easier for my dad to just settle and move on for the sake of the family. It wasn’t 3 years before my cousin had bankrupt the company and it was forced to shut down. 3 fucking years. What a fucking joke. He is truly a cocksucker. Same motherfucker who claims to be such a Christian, he would give sermons at church. Shaking my fucking head. Same mother fucker who refused to let me fish at the family farm for no particular reason at all. Sure, he gave one, but it was a bull shit reason, a blatant lie because that is the type of cocksucker he is.

You can imagine all of that taking a toll on my father, so by the time Abram was born, my father was running his own construction company and getting it going. Thing is, I was always going to get into the business with him, we were just waiting on the right time. I worked construction for my Father & Uncle's company for many years as a teenager, also I had been next to my father during many house renovations and building of houses, so I knew the business.

I just spoke of that right time; well it was Spring of 2005. I had been working with The Sherwin Williams Paint store for the previous 7 years. A job I loved and one I hated leaving. It was a job that I had gone as far as I could without having to uproot my family and leave. Had I stayed; I would still be in the same position that I would have been 16 years ago. That was part of the issue, the other issue was that my father finally agreed to let me come on and learn the family business. I was ready and excited. I loved my father and though we had our disagreements, it was miniscule in the grand scheme of life.

There was but only one problem, see my father had been complaining of abdominal pain for the previous 10 to 12 months. He had been to doctor after doctor searching out the source of his pain. None of the doctors were able to locate the source of his pain. My father finally went to a doctor who was able to locate the source of his pain, thank you Dr. Greg Champion. He had a spot on his pancreas and they believed it to be pancreatic cancer. After some more test were run, it was confirmed to be pancreatic cancer. My world was shattered beyond anything I could have ever imagined.