Fearless: A Journey to Financial Peace

My father’s name means “brave, strong, boar”. My oldest brother’s name means “watchful, vigilant and swift.” My father is a deep, dark ravine with an unpredictable temper. At a very young age I remember my father beating my brother. Wild-eyed and snorting like a mad animal the beatings would cease only after the rage was spent.
Memories of my mother are memoires of encouragement. “Nancy” she would say to me, “where you plant a rose, a thistle cannot grow” quoting The Secret Garden. She loved gardens and flowers and plants and things that seemed impossible. “Look at that,” she would smile and point to a blooming plant growing up out of a cement sidewalk. She believed God’s goodness and beauty could grow even in a dark corner. In many ways she was both fearless and hopeless.
I was born in 1960 and my brother in 1958. Three other children followed in the family after us. We grew up in old neighborhoods’ where the trees touched high in the middle of the street and summer evenings were long and spent outdoors on the porch swing. Sometimes we lived close to our maternal grandparents and were able to benefit from their slow paced life. Our family read books and my mother regularly took all of her children to the Carnegie Library where we would eagerly descend the basement stairs to the children’s room. Color abounded in red, orange, yellow, blue, green and violet on the library shelves all books waiting to be discovered by us.
My mother and grandmother made sure we attended St. John’s Catholic Church every Sunday with the exception of my father. We went to the adjoining parochial school for our elementary education. Although my childhood was filled with savors of walks with my mother down honeysuckle fragrant alleys and endless afternoon of my grandmother watching me ride a bike; beyond those comforts was a horrible secret peering and piercing my heart with its baneful eyes. When writing about it in my early journals, I referred to it as “the dread.” No matter how sunny a spring day or how thick and white a Christmas snow, “the dread” hung like a cloud over my heart as a reminder that all was not right in our lives. And it all seemed to revolve around money. It wasn’t until I was a grown woman that I realized how these ingredients of violence, fear and “the dread” shaped my life. They were the small seeds sown into my soul that grew into the rudder that directed my life. My life reflected my past. I did not have any understanding of financial security just financial survival. My financial carelessness was evident.
I found myself at financial crossroads on Saturday November 25, 2006, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Around 10 o’clock in the morning I received an urgent and unsettling phone call from my brother’s wife. She sounded frantic because she could not find my brother. A few days earlier he had shared with me about some of his financial problems.
A voice in my husband’s head warned him to go with me. My husband with laundry in hand said, “I don’t want you to go alone. I don’t feel good about this.” I agreed. Thoughts of my brother raced through my mind as we drove. He had followed my mother into her real estate career and specialized in selling and preserving older homes. At 6’ 2” with dark wavy hair and olive color skin, he was very handsome. He was well known in the community and well liked. He had been a single father for 16 years and had just recently married combing his small family with another.
First, we stopped at St. John’s Church first, although he was not religious, in times of stress he would use the church as a place for reflection. After climbing the outer stairs and entering the large wooden doors, seeing the stain glass windows and altar, I began remembering him as an altar boy in grade school. He had a shy smile, brown eyes and a short crew cut. His legendary high I. Q. set him apart at the school. He won writing competitions but my father wanted him to be a football player.
After searching the church, we headed for his home on the opposite side of town. We pulled up into his driveway and rang the doorbell. His new wife answered the door looking grave.
“He did not come home last night, “she said as we entered the hallway. I quickly thought he may have gone for a walk in the woods behind their house and had a heart attack.
“And a gun is missing.” She said as we entered the living room.
Things had escalated so fast my emotions were trying to catch up. Fearing the worst, I began to ask her a lot of questions. “When did you see him last?” “What was that last thing he said?”
She told us his car was still at the house so I ask my husband to look around.

It was only a matter of minutes before my husband had found my brother. From the look on my husband’s face, I knew my brother was dead. His wife ran out the back door and I frantically called 911. The operator asked me for the address. I had not committed their new address to memory so I ran outside to find it. The door locked behind me. Terrified of going around to the back yard where my brother’s body was, I pounded and screamed at the front door. No one could hear me. I knew I would have to go around the house and threw the back door to get inside and that I would encounter my brother’s dead body on the way. I did not want to see him dead.
After a deep breath and what seemed to be the longest, heaviest walk of my life, I went around the house to the back yard where his body lay slumped. As I staggered toward him, the sense of loss was overwhelming. For a brief moment, I stood over him and patted his hand saying, “We love you.” Before entering the house to give 911 the address, I knew then that I was standing at the crossroads of my life.
I harbored my own financial distress and secrets just like my brother. Instantly, I knew that I need to tell my husband about our own descending financial situation. “The dread” was back with its baneful eyes piercing my soul. I was utterly lost and I need to find a way out.