Through the eyes of an angel
Part 2 of 4
By Reality Check
This is a real-life story written by an inmate inside of a Florida Correctional Institute (DOC). His name has been changed to protect him; however, the names of the people involved in the story, to the best of our knowledge, is true. PLEASE BEAWARE THAT THERE ARE SOME GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS IN THIS STORY. IF YOU DO NOT CARE FOR GRAPHIC DETAILS, PLEASE DONOT READ. There are two sides to a story and then there is the truth. What happens when a murderer meets the mother and grandmother of his victims? Find out in this Four-part series.
Where would she find peace? Having outlived all her kids, what was now to be her purpose for living. Even in the midst of that suffering she told the judge she didn’t want Leonard to receive death. He was allowed to take a deal for a life sentence. Agnes then left to figure out how to move on.
The cycles of darkness came in waves. Loneliness, fear, misery, directionless, faithlessness, hopelessness, tears, whys, questions, no answers.
In Pat’s apartment packing their stuff, tortured by memories of laughter and smiles. Remembering the woman fleeing from an abusive husband. Pat begged her and her four kids to stay with her. Pat always wanted to be a mother. Chris’s joy at Pat coming home from rehab.
Feeling as if someone had poured gasoline on her soul and set it on fire, she joined a writers workshop in attempt to use her pen to bleed out the poison of the grief. In one of her poems she wrote, “I find myself on paper with my pen as compass when I am lost, my pen touches paper and shows me a direction, a map into my being. My pen often goes down roads I hadn’t planned, roads I didn’t know were there. I find myself exploring scary terrain jumping off cliffs… seven years after their deaths, seven years of fighting anger, hate and resentment, but definition of what peace look like begun to form.
With that came the recognition that to walk the path of peace, she had to first climb the hill of forgiveness. With her pen as a compass, lost, looking for the road to peace, her pen took her down the road she did not initially know was there…
Agnes wrote Leonard. Wanting him to find the piece she was growing into. She, the dove, offering him an olive branch of peace. What pedigree of woman voluntarily travels to Hell to face Beelzebub, stick her head into the monster’s mouth to reach in and touch his heart.
Wading into the waters of the unknown, she knocked on the door, not knowing if it would be answered by a monster or a man…
The absent of his father turned into giant weeds that broke through the concrete streets of Baltimore, wrapping themselves around Leonard’s soul, choking the life out of his soul, suffocating his whole, murdering his innocence, sabotaging his destiny. Beaten violently and daily by his mother and her boyfriend the bats and extension cord he got hit with became devilish pitchforks punching holes into his sense of value and hope. His father addicted to crack cocaine a slave to the streets, his manhood broken, abandoned Leonard to the tornadoes and hailstorms of the streets.
Leonard was 16 when his father showed up saying he found Christ, was born again. While staying in the halfway house his father was living in, while asleep one night, the pastor who would lead his father to Christ, sexually molested Leonard touching his genitals. Leonard ‘s father accuse Leonard of lying, to avoid destroying his father’s faith in the man who’d saved him, Leonard submitted, changed claiming he had lied.
Doubly broken, in an attempt to understand the power and the hypnosis of the drug that stole his father from him, lost teen, Leonard smoked a crack rock… “They know not what they do!”
The day Leonard in that twisted, deranged and toxic logic pond and promiscuous in the concentration camps of inner-city girls, smoked that rock in search of his father’s soul, he lost his own the day he took his first hit was the same day Pat and Chris took their last breaths.
Leonard resplendent, brilliant man child lost in the promise land of Black soul exploitation. A child and so much promise. Fatherless, mentor less, his young soul savagely assassinated by the spiritual death of both his parents.
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