Chapter 18
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise. . . .
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I rise
I rise
I rise.
- Maya Angelou ("Still I Rise" )
I was naive and I was at a loss to understand the reason for this injustice. My mind was spinning, and my stomach and my heart were heavy. And I remember one of my friends, reacting to the statement in the assessment that accused me of "faking good", incredulously stating "But you are a good person!"
There was something intensely evil and wrong about this assessment with its 100% inaccurate representation of my responses to the numerous questions posed to me during the interviewing process. I was determined that I would gather my strength and rise up and fight against this foe rather than allow this injustice to stand. They were attempting to defeat me with lying words and I was not going to let these words stand unchallenged. I was determined to respond, in detail, to this assessment line by line.
Considering this was an assessment of 27 pages, this was a project of enormous magnitude. Determined to make this more than a "I didn't say that, I said this . . ." document, I planned to include affidavits to back my statements from a number of people which I specified throughout my response.
Meanwhile, my uncle, now in Alberta, stood solidly by my side, and still very much connected with this case became my co-editor. My response to this assessment was to be complete and accurate, and would consume every bit of my energy for months to come. In the end, my response was twice the length of the original assessment, but this was necessary because, wanting to clarify exactly what I was responding to, I lifted quotes directly out of the assessment, and as mentioned earlier, there was not once that my responses had been accurately relayed.
To facilitate this new relationship with my uncle, I rushed out to buy a fax machine so that we could send the various edits back and forth to each other. I felt it very strange that I should have such technology in my home, after all I was not a business person like my uncle, but then my situation was unnatural, leastwise in a civil western civilization, my situation should be considered unnatural.
Unfortunately, as I have researched the subject of injustice concerning the courts and Children's Services, I have come to realize the "naturalness" of this situation not only in this province but across this country as well. The "natural" is only believed to be "unnatural" because it is a shame that has been secreted away from all but the victimized. It is time for this shame, that has been allowed to naturalize, to be exposed.
During the horror of my ordeal, I was exceedingly thankful for the support and encouragement that I received from my uncle, my uncle by marriage, who maintained a close and meaningful relationship with his own grandson. Though he, himself, was being challenged with difficult circumstances in his own family, he sacrificed long laborious hours helping me in this case and for this I will be forever grateful. Shortly after my case began, one of his brothers developed brain cancer and his family seemed to be doing everything in their power to keep a spark of existence alive in him. My uncle’s family, a family of affluence had more options than the average, and from what my uncle relayed to me they clung onto every option that promised to extend this man’s life. I often wondered about the soundness of these decisions for both this man and his family. How difficult it must be to let go of a loved one in your family, and how much more difficult it must be if circumstances afford the availability of additional options to prolong life. These were trying times for my uncle yet he graciously gave of his time to me.
But then fate continued to grind by uncle down. Soon after the death of this brother, another brother developed skin cancer on a large portion of his back. This brother eventually received an extensive skin graph. After this, his elderly mother began to do poorly and she eventually came to live with my uncle so that he and my aunt could watch over her and tend to her needs.
Both my aunt and uncle are "good people", but eventually our relationship was suddenly and mysteriously strained. As it turned out, this mystery was just one more peculiar dynamic of my bizarre "unnatural" case.
Together, my uncle and I counseled my lawyer as to our expectations of her. First and foremost, we expected her to work diligently on completing the affidavits that I required to support my statements in my response to the assessment. It was important that the lies of this assessment be smashed as soon as possible. As drafts of the response with indicated affidavits were completed, they were immediately handed over to the lawyer so that she could efficiently complete the affidavit interviews as soon as possible. The initial plan was to file the response and the affidavits together as a single unit.
On a second front, my uncle and I wanted to explore the option of having another assessment done. My lawyer, though indicating that this was a positive move, did little to help me procure an appropriate professional person. This is a process that a lawyer working in family law should be familiar with, and a job which the lawyer should be doing for a client on their behalf . Instead, my lawyer left me to muddle through as best as I could to find an appropriate psychiatrist who was able to do this for me. And muddle I did. Halifax is a small city and as I phoned and spoke with a number of psychologist, the dynamics of this professional community slowly crystallized. Being a small city, the people in the profession tended to know each other. Most psychologists were not willing to do assessments, especially if it is meant to go up against another assessments that was done by someone else in the community. Other psychologists were backlogged and would not be able to do the assessment for months and they told me that the assessment would have to be done over a period of time far longer than my original "quickie" assessment. Only one psychologist was eager to take on the assessment and the probing questions that she fired at me led me to believe that she was personally close to the psychologist who was responsible for my original assessment. Needles to say I was not trusting this person!
Eventually, my lawyer suggested that a psychologist ---------- miles away might be available but the schedule of appointments that I would have to maintain at such a distance was impossible for me: I was working full time, I had my thrice weekly visitations with my grandson, and I did not have a car and did not drive.
Meanwhile, my lawyer relentlessly dragged her toes on my requests for the affidavits. Wanting my response filed as soon as possible, I had it filed immediately upon completion in draft form with the accompanying affidavits pending. Again, and again both I and my uncle, verbally and in writing, requested that this work be done as soon as possible, my uncle often spending considerable time clarifying our instructions to her via long distance phone calls. But all this lawyer did was dither and doddle, eventually becoming rude and telling me that she was busy.
In the end, out of nowhere, she suddenly tried to argue that these affidavits were not relevant and would be a waste of time gathering. These were not irrelevant. They were extremely important to my defense. In the six months this lawyer worked for me, she only managed to finish 3 of the 13 affidavits that she had been instructed to gather.
THIS CHAPTER NOT FINISHED
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