One of the greatest things the new board of directors offered was to bring us back to Japan and have us "retake" the school.
In March and April of 2016, several of us will be traveling to Japan. We are officially visiting ASIJ the week of April 3rd right after Spring Break.
I am so excited. Because of the final closure on this chapter of my life I'm finally able to embrace the Japanese in me. I've started relearning the language and actually have a room that I'm redoing in Japanese motif.
Am I scared? Absolutely. My husband wants to go to Miyake. Several of us are planning to travel to Miyake. I'm sure it will be an extremely emotional trip but one necessary to rid us of the evil that perpetrated our young bodies.
We hope to address the school including teachers, counselors, students and parents. It's doubtful that Ed Ladd will be anywhere around since he announced his resignation as of the end of this year. He was very wise to do that. In fact, it's probably the wisest thing he has ever done his entire life. Isn't it amazing what our legacy can do to us? Pride goeth before the fall. I pray to God that he protect me from my own pride.
What happens from here? Well, several of us have been in contact with Lili Bernard one of Bill Crosby's victims. Did you know that Lili went to ASIJ and had Jack Moyer as her teacher? No, she wasn't a victim of Jack's. She and several of the other Bill Cosby victims and several of us are planning to communicate in December. It is our hope that we can help to change the Statute of Limitations for children who were sexually abused. In most cases, child sexual abuse victims aren't able to come out in the open until years later. The current Statute of Limitations vary in each state but they are not long enough. For example in Louisiana: General discovery rule provides suit must be brought one year from date of discovery. But in Maine: Civil or criminal actions may be brought at any time.
So in my case, because I contacted the reunion committee in 1990 and told them then, I had no case and therefore was not entitled to any compensation.
For more information about statute of limitations go here:
http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/state-civil-statutes-of-limitations-in-child-sexua.aspx
I am really going to try to keep my blog updated through-out this next year. It has been helpful to me to go back and re-read everything. What a whirlwind this year has been.
After we left Portland in June I returned to my job and my family in Louisiana. In July, we visited Destin and stayed in the home of one of my board members. It was so peaceful and resting. My daughter and son-in-law were not able to join us but it was a very nice peaceful vacation. Our friend Tim's daughter joined us for a short time. Her father committed suicide in 2014 and we have been able to connect with her and gain another daughter.
In late July I received a call from my sister-in-law asking me to consider taking my mother in law, Susan, in because my niece Fiona, their daughter, just had an MRI and they weren't sure but thought her cancer had returned. She was 27. The MRI showed three spots in her lungs. I contacted my mother-in-law and told her we needed her to get down to Baton Rouge ASAP. We finally got her on a train from Greenville, SC on August 26th. She arrived in Slidell, LA that evening and got to the house around 9:30 p.m. On Thursday, August 27th my sister Cherryl came to Baton Rouge and picked up Mims (my grand-daughter) and me and we drove to Daddy's in Mississippi. We were planning to take my dad to Dallas for a week. Mims and I were to fly back on Monday from Dallas.
That night or early the next morning my phone rang. Middle of the night phone calls are never a good thing. It was Chuck, my husband, telling me that Fiona had died. She had a pulmonary embolism that ultimately killed her. Because Cherryl came to pick me up I had no vehicle. Chuck was planning to drive up and get Mims and me when I thought that I could use Daddy's car knowing that the next weekend Cherryl would be driving him back from Dallas and I could drive back up and see them the next weekend. It's only a two hour drive for me.
Mims and I drove back at 3:30 a.m. Friday, August 28th. I took Mims back home and Chuck, Susan and I got on the road to South Carolina. We drove to Atlanta and stayed on the north side of Atlanta and proceeded to Moore, South Carolina the next day. That morning I got a call from Cherryl telling me that Daddy had gone into the hospital that night with pneumonia. She and Nancy were there with him. I didn't want to take any thing away from the grief my brother and sister-in-law and Fiona's siblings were experiencing so I chose not to let them know about Daddy.
Fiona was buried on Tuesday and we proceeded back to Baton Rouge that afternoon. We got to Baton Rouge on Wednesday and I left Thursday morning to drive to Dallas. That night Cherryl stayed with Daddy at the hospital so I could get some rest. At 4:00 a.m. the next morning she called and said "as soon as you are up please come to the hospital." They had given my dad some kind of medicine that caused him to go psychotic. It took three nurses/orderlies to subdue him and put him in restraints. We thought we needed to get hospice to come in. The nurses suggested that it might be a good idea. However, the doctors kept on insisting that he was strong. (I've subsequently started calling him a cat because he has definitely had multiple lives. God isn't ready to take him home yet.) The following Wednesday I had a flight out of Dallas (I left Daddy's car in Dallas) and Cherryl and Nancy moved Daddy to CC Young - a long term skilled nursing facility.
As a family we began trying to figure out what we needed to do with Daddy because clearly he couldn't stay by himself any longer. He is 92 and has lived alone after my mom and his second wife died. Up until August 27 he was driving.
My sister Nancy decided that she would be the person to come stay with him in his home in Mississippi so she began changing her plans, moving out of her apartment, getting her oldest settled and begin a new life in Mississippi. I know all of my siblings and I are so thankful that she agreed to take care of him.
We are here finishing out a great Thanksgiving week with all of us visiting Mississippi during the course of the last two weekends (week).
I'm heading back to Baton Rouge to a heavy work schedule to finish out this amazingly difficult year. There have been so many blessings and so many tragedies and it's hard to know how to figure everything out.
My mother-in-law is still with us which proves to be a challenge in and of itself. But we have learned to persevere and live together. It is certainly not perfect but for now it works.
I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and a blessed Christmas. Catch you on the other side.
